Notes on the Pixel 4a

Here are some notes about things I discovered when setting up my Pixel 4a after switching from a Samsung Galaxy S8. These are mostly for my future reference but may help other users. 

Email: I was happy with the Samsung Email app but it isn't compatible with my phone (some Samsung apps will install but not that one). I used it to monitor my soltys.ca email account. After a bit of searching, I found BlueMail, which has far more features than I am likely to use, but it will do for my limited needs. Installation was easier than I expected it to be, having spent too much time getting the Samsung app working on my old phone. (Yes, I know about Gmail and use it too).

Browser: Although the phone has a dark mode, Chrome doesn't use it for viewing websites. It does have a Simplified View mode, which uses dark mode and removes advertising distracting elements, but which doesn't always work. So I installed Samsung Internet and switch to that for most web browsing. At some point, I will look at the new Firefox for Android. 

Clock: The Clock app has the same features as the Samsung one, but its interface could use an overhaul. To enter time for an alarm, you have to enter all six digits of the time in HH:MM:SS format. On the Samsung clock, you could enter numbers in each field for hours, minutes, seconds; so for example 1 in the hour field and 30 in the minute field. The Google Clock app starts out with seconds, so if you want an alarm for just one hour, you have to enter 5 digits instead of one. Of course, I could just use a Google Assistant voice command, but still, it's not user friendly.

Notification Sounds: On my Samsung, I could control the ringtone and notification volume separately. Not on the Pixel. This is a pain, because if I keep the ringtone volume up high, I get bombarded with loud app notifications unless I turn them off individually. There are some apps that I want to hear a notification sound from, but not at a loud volume. If Samsung can do this, why not Google? (I may have found a solution. More on that later).

Gestures vs. Buttons: One of the very first things I did was turn off the gesture navigation introduced with Android 10 that replaces the Back, Home, and Overview buttons. I have no idea why anyone would think that gesture navigation is better. I'd be perfectly happy if I could find a way of moving the Back button to the right side of the screen, which is where it lived on the Samsung phones and ten years of muscle memory expects it to be.