I've been out of town until this afternoon. I got a Pixel intending to use GrapheneOS but so many things came up last year that I never had time to do it. So, unless the pace of life slows down, I will just get a Samsung next time, in all likelihood. I had one before making the switch to Google.
OK i'm back from AT&T
my new phone is Galaxy S24+ ( replacing Galaxy S10+ )
it was $999 and i got $800 off for trading in my phone that isn't really worth anything at all.
so i only paid $200.
to qualify for this i had to upgrade to unlimited data plan but i don't mind that as it was only about $15 more than the plan i had before.
why didn't i do this sooner ? WTF was i waiting for ? i spent over $200 just replacing bulged batteries on my old phone. i should have gotten a new phone the moment my battery bulged.
lesson learned.
thanks everyone for your help !
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Discussion
the process of migrating from Samsung S10+ to Samsung S24+ was as follows: the girl at ATT store ran "Samsung Smart Switch Mobile" app and in 5 minutes everything except pictures and videos ( which i requested not to move, because i didn't want to waste storage space on new phone ) was copied over.
i will manually copy pictures to my desktop which has about 50 times more storage than the phone.
but anyway, not just all the contacts and text messages were copied but all the apps and widgets showed up in exact same spots on the screen as they were on the old phone and even all my alarm settings were copied.
it was the lowest effort phone switch in my life. i was glad i kept my old phone for the time being though because somehow google account verification message still went to the old phone despite the number being transferred to the new one ... but ATT gives you 30 days to turn in your old phone with the trade-in promotion.
if i didn't stick to Samsung it would be a much bigger adjustment. this is how companies like Samsung trap the customer in their ecosystem - but Kudos to them - they really made it seamless.