[Galaxy S II General] thompps:
Hi all, I love the XDA forum, have been browsing it for years, but this is the first time I thought I could add something and wanted to post!

This may not be perfect and I'm certain some of it is replicating, however

I thought maybe a post that covered everything in one place would help someone like me out there making their first foray into Android. And please no haters, I have taken a significant chunk out my night to share my travels with you. :)

I have spent the last three days trying to ratify my decision on replacing the iPhone with the SG2. The first night was filled with lot's of appreciative 'oohhs', as I explored everything from the beautiful screen to the plentiful configuration options which was exactly what I was hoping Android would be about.

I then spent the next few days (until now) trying to do things that would have just taken an hour or so to do on my iPhone. Namely syncing contacts, calendar, music, photos and videos. This post is aimed at Mac OS users who are taking one small step at a time to Android / Windows 7 :D.

Firstly, connectivity: two options. You can either go into Settings->Applications->Development->USB debugging which is used by some synch programs, or more useful Settings->Wireless and Networks->USB Utilities->USB mass storage. You'll need to unplug any cable already in, click on the above, and then plug in your cable. Then click on the button that says 'turn on USB storage'. You should then see the internal storage mounted as a drive on your Macs Finder where you can look through folders etc.

Note that if you have an SD card, this will also get mounted, but as a separate drive. I found it useful to use my Finder to rename both drives so I could always be sure which I was looking at.

Business stuff:

Email: Easy if you have a consumer service such as gmail, yahoo etc. For small business owners like myself, unless you run an Exchange server, first thing you should know is that only IMAP mail will give you 'push' to your phone. POP3 will work but requires manual synch and not the best use of your battery. I use Zen Internet to host my domains in the UK, and they list their IMAP settings which you'll need. Works great, even SSL for secure email. And full push email, for iPhone users, this is the direct replacement for using MobileMe for your work email.

This was the first and consequently easiest thing I did after purchasing that lead me into a somewhat false sense of security at the purchase :D

Calendar: You'll need to share your iCal with Google. Easy enough, just do a search on Googles help for CalDev and iCal, I can't post the link as a new user :rolleyes:

Contacts: If you have a newer Mac OS, you can go straight into Address Book and under preferences, share the book with your Google account. This will also transfer photos for your contacts if you use them which is nice. Note, you need to press the 'Sync now' option in the top right on your Mac screen where the two arrows in a circle are for the sync to happen. If you don't have this icon or it is greyed out, set up iSync in your System Preferences under the Apple logo top left.

If like me, this function didn't work great (seems that ppl have better results importing from Google rather than exporting to Google with this method) you can either download vCards from your existing contact system and import them into your device (after connecting), or import them into Google via a browser connection. They will then sync with you SG2. Note you will NOT get photos from vCards, they are just text. However, the SG2 has a nice facility for adding photos from your photo collection once that is synced.. see below.

Personal Stuff:

Quick preamble, there are LOADS of different syncing softwares out there, most tend to do one thing OK, but no replacement for iTunes and iPhone users will be dissapointed. I downloaded countless types. Doubletwist (DT) as recommended by many on this forum was the way to go for me, although of significant note was the iTunemywalkman app which you have got to love for its simple and effective coding, especially the fast on the fly re-encoding of your music if it is DRM (EDIT: not DRM! see below!) or lossless, or you just want mp3 rather than AAC. You can even set the bit rate, top notch bit of software. It is however focused on music.

However, with a little usage help, DoubleTwist does photos, video and music.

Photos: thought you might like to hear how I deal with this. For those who haven't used DT, it is a one-way sync only of photos e.g. it will put all your iPhoto pics onto your SG2, but won't take photos from it.. :mad: - don't worry easy to work around.

On my GS2 I have the 16GB internal and 16GB SD card. I use DT to do my photo sync to get the library onto SGS, then once I have mounted the phone storage and can see it in Finder (as per above), I open iPhoto and import the photos I've taken into my library straight in iPhoto just like any other regular import such as from an email or downloaded jpg. File->Import to Library. Then navigate to your internal storage, and go into the DCIM folder to find your photos.

I then delete all photos from my internal storage on GS2 through Finder. As the DT software will download my library onto my external SD card, I still have all my photos to look at on the phone, but it keeps it on separate storage areas and easy to manage. For me it feels similar to when I would 'delete camera roll' after syncing my iPhone and it is really not a hassle.

Videos you just do the same thing.

Music: Ahhh, music...the biggest pain in the butt. Easy to drag and drop music files and playlists onto your SG2, but for me and many other would result in Unknown Artist, multiple entries for collection CDs and almost worst was complete lack of playlist, despite it being in the storage!!

This is where itunemywalkman comes into its own BTW, as you can send music through grouped by Album, Artist or Playlist (where in the SG2, playlists were listed as albums, partly solved it).

Anywhooo, to ensure you get the best results, I first recommend you go into Settings->Applications->Manage Applications->All and then go to Media Storage. Select 'clear data', this will not delete any existing music (although I recommend you do, except for music purchased on the phone which I would then import into iTunes and then delete from phone). This just deletes the index, which can cause problems in getting the rest to work if you don't.

Then you go into your DT software, and sync your music. Make sure you sync to the right Samsung device listed, again one will be your internal storage and one your external.

It will also re-encode some music for you, but not DRM which you can sort out with paid for apps, or I think burn a CD and then rip mp3. Other threads will explain... pain in the arse considering you 'own' the music. One of the reasons I moved from Apple... Another issue to resolve is the multiple entries per album, this is to do with your iTunes setting, go into all the tracks listed on the album and tick the 'part of a compilation' box and if necessary paste the album name into each track. This will ensure the SG2 will see it as one album despite lots of different artists.

Once you have all the music on the SG2, unmount the storage from Finder by pressing the eject button, and the you can do the same on the phone. It will take a little while for the Media Storage scan to do its thing as it is rebuilding its index.

Then go into the Market, and download a free app called 'MediaFix'. The guy who developed this should be given a Google Knighthood for doing what they seemingly couldn't. It will repair all the missing meta data, such as artist name and album etc... Most importantly for me though, the playlists require the correct meta data and after running this app (it took about 20 seconds to do my whole 8GB catalogue), suddenly all my playlists showed up! Hurrah!!! :D :D

One last thing, download from Market 'Cover Art Downloader' to get all your album art back, or at least a fair bit of it. DT has their own version for £2.99 which you'll need if you have lots of covers like me... Cover Art Downloader seems to crash after about 430 new albums discovered!

I should note I use the DT player on my phone too, for some reason the Samsung player still doesn't see my playlists although it does have the track meta-data now.

All with correct info, and the most crucial thing my SG2 needed to do well for me...

DT will keep this sync'd for you, just quickly wipe your Media Storage file before sync and then run MediaFix after. A little painful, but I have noticed in my case anyway that if you don't do this every time your playlists can get a little messed up again missing artist info (even though the songs and albums still have it...)

With this for photos, DT for audio and Google sync for iCal / Address Book I have now got an iPhone replacement. MediaFix from market is essential to get it working properly though (or convert everything into MP3 before syncing, like you need to do for DRM)... this is because music loses meta data with the Android media index, this will also resolve playlists not showing up, which rely on the meta data.

Hope this helps someone.. I have spent days trying to get my (amazing!!) SG2 working. Quite a contrast to when I updated my 2G iPhone to 3G and after a 20 minute synch was basically left with the same phone as before with more memory and slightly faster. A little underwhelming an experience for a new phone (but I can hardly moan at Apple for getting sync so right), the SG2 has been far more exciting and a steep learning curve. . talk about them being at opposite ends of the spectrum.

The SG2 is better hardware, but it takes more effort to get running the synch as well, but nothing good in life comes easy.... I'm quite technical and didn't lose faith, but I have been left far from satisfied with the experience which is such as shame as the hardware is so great. Google will NEVER challenge the iPhone until they sort this. I have to admit, if the iPhone 5 came out looking as amazing as the SG2, I would probably somewhat reluctantly strip off my shame and get back into bed with it - purely because of syncing.. :rolleyes:

It's hard to believe that the hardware is just so far ahead of the needed unified desktop software written by Google for Android with all Android hardware providers submitting an API into their 'bloatware' (I actually quite like the Samsung TouchWiz).

Sorry for the long post, please let me know if this has helped, it will make the lost 2.5hrs of my Saturday night seem worthwhile.. :cool:

Peter