Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Advice. My first 3 days impressions on the Samsung Galaxy S 7 as a fully blind user. (self.Blind)
submitted by romanj35
So, so far in my smartphone life I have owned every Galaxy S model but not including the edge models. I don't play favorites, I also own a Ipad Mini 4, a Samsung tab 4, a windows 7 and 10 pc, as well a mac. My inlaws own iphones, so I have played with 3 models of those as well.
Ok, so first day impressions. These are the worst usually because it takes some time to find the system settings that have been rearranged, shifted, or moved. There was only a single point of contention with this. Samsung removed the 'contacts' off of the single bottom row. I thought from now on I was going to have to go into the apps and find it there, or in the 'phone' app, and select 'contacts' from there. It was in the app drawer, once found I re-added it to that bottom row, problem solved.
Now for the point of contention that drives most I-phone fans nuts. Google Talk Back...
It's no longer pre-installed within the device. Instead Samsung opted to go with their own, which is called 'Voice Assistant'. It has a beta feel to it. The automated back/recents buttons next to the physical home button has to be double pressed, as most options have to be to activate. Once more this is an easy fix if you prefer. Download Google Talk Back from the playstore and go into accessability settings and turn it on.
There was a problem. There is actually a repeat problem. New operating systems downloaded to a device, if you're updating the S 6 for example, well it seems to lose any kind of text to speech support for a large number of chrome-based games. Games that use a server to play, but the user interface is downloaded to the device. This problem also, somehow, also makes it so that some of the buttons within games can't be pressed. This solution requires Google to update the Android System web view app. After a google playstore update or 2 it seems to iron itself out. Time is the solution for this.
Overall the phone is very fast. On wi-fi apps load instantly. Out on cell data its a slighter lag, but only hardcore gamers are going to notice it.
I would say the screen is a little more sensitive then I'd prefer. It makes swiping from left/right vice-versa slightly more aggrivating. There's also a slight lag with pressing the power button to get the screen to turn off. If its not a lag with the screen cutting off, then it lags in announcing it aloud.
Ther is one feature then seems a little new. You can setup accessability presets. That way if someone wants to pick up the phone and use it, you can draw in a square on the screen, or any shape you prefer if I heard the directions correctly, and accessability turns off and on from the gestgure.
I, myself, would prefer the double tap home button for talk-back/voice assistant to turn on like I-devices use, this exists on the power button for a double tap it blacks out the screen, but it's a nice add.
Overall the phone was a great upgrade for me. Easy for me to use and very fast. The storage expands with a micro sd card, and its water resistant up to 3 feet for 30 minutes. Battery life was very nice for me, twitter, facebook, messenger, messages, what's up, reddit is fun, twitch, tune-in, i-heart radio, and digitally imported radio all seem to run without any noticable lag.
I hope my review was informative for you guys. -Roman out.
Ok, so first day impressions. These are the worst usually because it takes some time to find the system settings that have been rearranged, shifted, or moved. There was only a single point of contention with this. Samsung removed the 'contacts' off of the single bottom row. I thought from now on I was going to have to go into the apps and find it there, or in the 'phone' app, and select 'contacts' from there. It was in the app drawer, once found I re-added it to that bottom row, problem solved.
Now for the point of contention that drives most I-phone fans nuts. Google Talk Back...
It's no longer pre-installed within the device. Instead Samsung opted to go with their own, which is called 'Voice Assistant'. It has a beta feel to it. The automated back/recents buttons next to the physical home button has to be double pressed, as most options have to be to activate. Once more this is an easy fix if you prefer. Download Google Talk Back from the playstore and go into accessability settings and turn it on.
There was a problem. There is actually a repeat problem. New operating systems downloaded to a device, if you're updating the S 6 for example, well it seems to lose any kind of text to speech support for a large number of chrome-based games. Games that use a server to play, but the user interface is downloaded to the device. This problem also, somehow, also makes it so that some of the buttons within games can't be pressed. This solution requires Google to update the Android System web view app. After a google playstore update or 2 it seems to iron itself out. Time is the solution for this.
Overall the phone is very fast. On wi-fi apps load instantly. Out on cell data its a slighter lag, but only hardcore gamers are going to notice it.
I would say the screen is a little more sensitive then I'd prefer. It makes swiping from left/right vice-versa slightly more aggrivating. There's also a slight lag with pressing the power button to get the screen to turn off. If its not a lag with the screen cutting off, then it lags in announcing it aloud.
Ther is one feature then seems a little new. You can setup accessability presets. That way if someone wants to pick up the phone and use it, you can draw in a square on the screen, or any shape you prefer if I heard the directions correctly, and accessability turns off and on from the gestgure.
I, myself, would prefer the double tap home button for talk-back/voice assistant to turn on like I-devices use, this exists on the power button for a double tap it blacks out the screen, but it's a nice add.
Overall the phone was a great upgrade for me. Easy for me to use and very fast. The storage expands with a micro sd card, and its water resistant up to 3 feet for 30 minutes. Battery life was very nice for me, twitter, facebook, messenger, messages, what's up, reddit is fun, twitch, tune-in, i-heart radio, and digitally imported radio all seem to run without any noticable lag.
I hope my review was informative for you guys. -Roman out.
fastfinge 2 points 7y ago
Those are huge killers for me. I'm completely blind, and don't always have the luxury of nearby sighted assistance if anything goes wrong. The screen-reader has to work perfectly out of the box, and keep working no matter what. If not, I could lose my phone for days or weeks before I can get any help fixing it. This is the main reason I have extremely high standards of accessibility, and don't consider Android accessible, by my standards. On an IPhone, even if the worst happens and voiceover somehow breaks completely (this has happened once in 6 years), iTunes is accessible on the computer, and I can use that to reset the device to factory settings. As far as I know, Android has no similar accessible option that could be used in an emergency.
romanj35 [OP] 1 points 7y ago
Actually yeah Samsung does. Simple plug in, back and restore settings. Plug into the pc and it imports your pre-existing settings. In fact, when I'm switching devices, both devices get an application called 'smart switch' which uses the phone's wi-fi to transfer settings, contacts, apps downloaded, texts, pictures, and anything downloaded. Its not 100 percent perfect, but nothing is. But yes, samsung has a setting for saving settings that you just plug into the pc for importing those settings.
fastfinge 1 points 7y ago
Yeah, but smart switch isn't going to work if the phone isn't talking at all. And if the speech is dead, I doubt importing pre-existing settings will help; it's gonna need a factory reset.
romanj35 [OP] 1 points 7y ago
I liked the S 4 model but the talk back on it felt like it was going to left behind with updates to me.
Hey Finch, so I went in and set up the back up settings on pc, turned off accessability, deleted two songs, and then plugged it in to see what would happen. There's a reset settings and data feature on the pc. I clicked it and about 5 minutes later it was done. Yes, it put talk-back back online on its own. My wife and I were shocked. It also replaced the 2 songs. By my guess, it saves the phone as a save state, and the reset just loads that save state.
Hey Finch, so I went in and set up the back up settings on pc, turned off accessability, deleted two songs, and then plugged it in to see what would happen. There's a reset settings and data feature on the pc. I clicked it and about 5 minutes later it was done. Yes, it put talk-back back online on its own. My wife and I were shocked. It also replaced the 2 songs. By my guess, it saves the phone as a save state, and the reset just loads that save state.
angelcake 1 points 7y ago
I passed this onto my partner who is an android guy and low vision. It always takes him a few hours of rattling around under the hood to get things the way he wants them again.That is the one thing I didn't like when I had an android tablet, instead of simply adding features and doing stuff in the background like Apple does, major updates change a lot of the basics. I was never a BlackBerry user but I appreciate the appeal of not having to relearn every time they do a major update. Even if they just left all the accessibility features in the same place, that would be a big help.
[deleted] 1 points 7y ago
[deleted]
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