[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] quenting22:
Hi !

I'm new to this forum, and a new user of Android (2.1) / SGS. I recently switched from the iphone 3G, which was ****ed up by ios4 and after swearing I'd never buy another crapple product ever again.

As a linux user / open source fan, I love my SGS so far. I've started messing around with a number of things already, mostly basic customization and application / widget picking, and have landed on a launcherpro+folderorganizer setup. Now enough about my life nobody cares about, I have a few noob questions that are yet unanswered by my initial research, thanks to anyone who will take the time to answer !

1) Regarding plugnplay'ness : when I plugged my SGS to my computer (win7), at first it wasn't recognized. I had to google the error, find some samsung drivers, install them (took a while) before I could access the phone in explorer mode. Is that normal behaviour ? I kinda hoped the phone would be recognized as a "usb key" on any computer without having to install anything.

2) For Android updates : from what I understand, the way of doing them is to install Samsung Kies on a PC and pilot the upgrade from there, correct ? Or is this only for major updates ? Is there a way to auto-update the OS from the phone itself without needing to use Kies ? Are there other things I can only do with Kies (without needing extensive knowledge of Android internals) ?

3) About root : apart from installing android versions that are not yet official, what are the common uses that require root privileges ? I'm familiar with what being root means under linux, but I guess my question would be more like : what are the restrictions on the default user and what do they prevent him to do ?

4) The "lag" : I see everywhere mention of this "lag" problem. I haven't noticed any. Granted, I come from a world where simply opening an application can take anywhere between 15s (iphone 3G+ios4) to 10s (iphone 3G+ios4.1), so maybe I just got used to things being slow ? Or is this happenning only on some specific devices / setups ?

5) The keyboard : is there a way to hand-pick the keyboard layout ? I have my locale set to english because I like the english OS interface better, I have my input language set to french because that's the language I write most in, which results in an azerty keyboard layout which sucks. I'd like to hand-pick the swiss keyboard layout (qwertz with accents), I know it exists because it switches to it if I pick german as input language, anyway to do that ?

6) Android market and security : is there any control from Google over if not the quality, at least the security of apps in the market, or not at all ? Is it my duty as a user to make sure that any app I would download from the market is "safe" ? Is there any justification for installing something such as an anti-virus on android ?

7) MarketS : there are other markets than the "default one" out there. I do not understand their sales pitch. Aren't applications that are in other markets also in the Android Market anyway ? Where is their added value ?

8) Taking notes. On the iphone I loved the iconic notes application. It allows to create a hierarchy of folders and subfolders and write/store notes inthere. I haven't been able to find anything similar yet, the market seems spammed with forks from an "hello world" notes application. Any recommendations ?

9) RSS : I haven't been able to find a good RSS reader as well. By good I mean feed categories, widget, and support for images. Any recommendations for this ?

10) Media files : it seems that the embedded applications that aim at reading media files (images / music / video) auto-scan the folders on the SD card for supported file types and include them. Is there any way to prevent this on some folders ? For instance I used ringdroid to create a few ringtones, but now those appear in my music player, so I'd like to prevent my ringtones folder from being used by the music player.

11) GPS : haven't played with it much yet, but I read here and there it was buggy. Is it a general state or country-specific ? On an unrelated note, are there offline maps navigation applications available ?

Well 11 questions is probably enough to start with. If you take the time to answer, I thank you in advance :).