How do you use the SIII wireless share technology on other Android phones?

I thought the Samsung Galaxy S III deja vu commercials were pretty spectacular. They started out looking rather Apple, with hipsters camping out in front of the store, waiting for the Next Big Thing. "The connector's all digital; what does that even mean?!" gushed one Apple enthusiast. "I hear the headphone jack is on the bottom," another claims, with an accompanying 'blown mind' audio/visual aid. Then a sweet old couple comes up to a young man in line and thank their son for holding the spot. (Wait... old people own iPhones?) "Have you ever had deja deja deja deja vu?" (Are we becoming pitiful, on this our 5th wait for the not-so-different new iPhone?) Sure, some laugh the commercial off ("Yes, insulting people is a great way to get them to buy your product."), but it was witty, it was talked about, and it worked. It's funny how we think we can't be influenced by get-inside-your-head tactics that subtly begin altering our point of view (I might be guilty, myself), but if you hear enough times that buying an iPhone is following the pack, you might think about Androids next time you're in the market.

Since that commercial shows two Galaxy S3 owners touching their phones to exchange a file, this is my segue (who else was certain that was pronounced say-GOO when they read it in intermediate piano books?) into discussion of Wi-Fi Direct sharing.

The really cool part is that you don't have to have an S3 to do this. The S Beam program (what it's called on the S3) is a combination of Near Field Communications (NFC) and Wi-Fi Direct. Let's say you just took a picture of yourself and your friend, and your friend would like the picture too. Go into your phone's settings, and touch More Settings, under the Wi-Fi section. Phones with compatible Android versions will have the option to turn on Wi-Fi Direct there. The owner of the transfer-to phone needs to turn Wi-Fi Direct on as well. Now go into your gallery, find the picture you want to send, touch menu, touch share or send, and select Wi-Fi Direct as your method. After a few seconds of scanning, phone number 2 should show up. Select the phone, touch Done, and after approving a connection with your phone, phone number 2 will receive the file. Of course any file can be sent this way. After you're finished with Wi-Fi Direct, it should be turned off for 2 reasons: 1, it's not secure to have your connection floating around; 2, your phone's Wi-Fi connection will be down until it's turned off. After a few minutes of no use, Wi-Fi Direct will be turned off automatically, but just doing it yourself right away would be a good idea. Since this is such a convenient and fast way of transferring files, you might want to think about saving time by putting a homepage widget to control whether Wi-Fi Direct is on or off.

How do you move contacts from an old phone to an Android phone?

If you've had an Android phone before, then your contacts are all saved in Google, so just going through the set-up process with your new phone (see blog post Getting Started) will pull in your contacts.
However, if this is your first Android, then there are a couple different ways to avoid that hideous process of manually re-entering each number.

First, and most likely to work, on your old phone, export your contacts to your SD card. Open your contacts, then open the contacts menu, where you should find the option to export to SD card (you'll have to have an SD card installed in your phone at this point). Then take out the SD card and switch it to your new phone. Now open your contacts on the Android, touch menu, and import from SD card.

Second, sometimes you can't move your contacts to your SD card, but, if the phone is GSM (meaning uses a SIM card), you should still be able to move them onto your SIM card. Sometimes you'll have to move them to storage on the SIM card one entry at a time, but that's still a lot faster than manually entering the numbers. This, as when putting contacts on an SD card, will be in menu or settings, under contacts. Look for a way to move them all at once, but if you can't find that, then open one contact at a time, and then the menu button should reveal the option to switch it to SIM storage.

If your phone charges via micro USB, so you can plug it into your computer, then your last option is to plug it in, "Open device to view files," and see if you can locate a folder with contacts in it. If so, copy that folder onto your desktop. Then disconnect that phone, and plug your Android into your computer. See if you can locate a contacts folder there, and then copy the old contacts folder contents into the new contacts folder, on your Android.

If you try all of these and have no luck, comment to tell me what's going on. You can also let me know if you run into some confusion going through any of these steps. If there's a way to do it, I'll help you get it figured out!

How do you put music on an Android phone?

If you have a decent-sized MicroSD card in your phone, your Android can double as an iPod/Mp3 player. No, it can't sync with iTunes (the Android app called DoubleTwist does some finagling to get Apple-owned iTunes to cooperate with Google-owned Android), but it's still very easy to move your music over to your phone.

What you need:
- A phone with enough free space for your music (this can be internal storage or a MicroSD card)
- A computer with music on it
- A USB/Micro USB cable (probably what you use to charge it)

Step 1: Plug your phone into your computer. If your phone is the kind that asks which connection, select Media Transfer, USB Storage, Mass Storagae... something to that effect, meaning create a link to move files.

Step 2: Click "Open folder to view files" on the computer, when your phone's information pops up. If it doesn't pop up, find your phone in your "Computer" page, from the computer start menu. Find a folder called "Music" in your phone's information on the computer.

Step 3: If you do not use iTunes, skip to step 4 here. Open iTunes and select all the songs you want moved (Ctrl + A to select all and then Ctrl + Click to deselect ones you don't want might be fastest). Then copy and paste into your phone's music folder. If this worked, skip to step 6. If not, never fear... there is a second, more consistently successful method, continued in step 4.

Step 4: Open the location where your music is stored on the computer. This may be just by clicking "Music" in your start menu, or, if you use iTunes, try the file path Music>iTunes>iTunes Media>Music. That should take you to a list of artists in the folder.

Step 5: Select all the artists from your computer's music folder that you would like to move (or select the entire music folder, if your storage capacity is large enough), copy the selection, and then paste it into the phone's music folder. This will take anywhere from a  few minutes to a few hours, depending on how much music you move.

Step 6: Right click the USB icon in your taskbar and eject your phone. Unplug the phone and look for an app you already have on your phone, simply called "Music." Ta-da! Your music should be there, neatly organize by album or artist.

If you experience difficulty anywhere along the way, let me know in a comment what went wrong, and I'll see if I can help you resolve the problem.

How do you know how much phone storage is enough? (Buying Guide Part 1)

The amount of storage you need (which is generally measured in gigabytes [gb]... 1 gb = 1,000 megabytes [mb]) is determined by what you plan on storing. Almost all phones' storage capacity can be expanded with a microSD memory card, which is usually purchased separately, such as here, where you can find 8gb, 16gb, and 32gb MicroSD Card choices. That option to expand the phone's storage seems like it should eliminate the problem of low internal (the phone itself, not a memory card) storage, but a week or two of use will show why that is not true. The main issue is that a lot of apps can't transfer over to the card, so you'll quickly encounter  that irritating message, when trying to download an app, that you need to open up the low storage wizard and create more storage (by deleting items taking up room). 

So how much space do you need? Assuming you add a memory card (you should), let's talk about the options. 

If you want this phone to be a means of making telephone calls and maybe a text or two a week, without any intention of raiding the Google Play Store for apps, you will be happy with the lowest storage capacity options, from 512 mb to one or two gb. Since you're storing very little, a lack of storage will pose no problems for you.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you download all the latest games, store a lot of e-books in Kindle or Google Books, keep up with newsfeeds and Nasdaq, and Facebook/Google+ your heart out, don't try anything much under 4 gb. That should be plenty to cover everything you can't move over to your memory card.

The average user, in between those two options, uses Facebook and Angry Birds, probably moved a little music from the computer (mostly to set as ringtones), and takes and saves pictures pretty frequently. If this is you, then you'll be happy with around 2-4 gb. 

Now you know what to look for, but how do you look? If you are starting at square one, without any idea what phone you want, watch for the upcoming post with specific recommendations. If you know some phones you're considering, search on the word "specs" and the phone's name (Samsung Galaxy S3 [my current favorite], for example). You'll find a variety of pages giving all this information we're talking about, including an entry called "Memory." The "Memory" choices are divided into something like "Card Slot" and "Internal." "Card Slot" simply indicates how large a capacity memory card is supported. "Internal" is the part you're looking for. It will say 512 mb, 2 gb, 16gb... whatever it is -- the point is now you know what you want. 

UPCOMING POST: Part 2 of "Buying Guide" series -- Camera