Android Phones Tips & Tricks
- Use widgets to make your home screen work for you
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With widgets you’re in control of what goes on your home screen. The weather in your city. Your Facebook news feed. Your diary for the day. Whatever you want– see it the minute you pick up your phone.
To choose a widget:
Hold your finger down on any open space on your home screen until the pop-up box opens, select ‘Widgets’, then scroll down the menu and choose the widget you want.
A lot of widgets come with a large and a small version. You can choose how much space your widgets take up on your screen, depending on how much detail you want to see. To find out more, search the Android market.
Move between apps
Press and hold down the Home button to show your most recently launched apps. Then tap the one you want.
- Tips for writing
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Let your phone type long words for you
You can add long names and other words to your dictionary to speed things up the next time round. Here's how:- Type the long word into the phone text field.
- Press and hold the word.
- You'll get a pop-up box that lets you add it to the dictionary.
Let full stops write themselves
Your phone puts full stops in for you when you're using the onscreen keyboard. Just double tap the space bar at the end of a sentence. Your phone will put in a full stop and a space. And capitalise the next letter.
- Surfing and sharing
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Get your photos onto Facebook
Want a shortcut to get a photo on Facebook? Here’s how:
- Open the Facebook app and tap the logo on the top left.
- Tap ‘profile’ and then the camera icon on the left.
- Choose a photo. Or take a new one.
- Add your caption.
- Tap the box on the right to choose the album you want to put your photo in. Then upload.
Press and hold the address bar on the web browser. This lets you share that link on Facebook, messaging, email or Bluetooth.
Share an image
Press and hold the image in the browser. You’ll get a pop-up box asking if you want to save it. Once you’ve saved it, you can share it on email, messaging and Facebook.
Get back to that website. Not that one, the other one.
When you’re surfing the web, hold down the Backbutton in your web browser to bring up a list of all the sites you’ve been on recently. Tap the one you want to go back to. - The nuts and bolts
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Get your technical fix
Want to find out how many hours, minutes and seconds it is since you last charged your phone? Check the temperature of your battery? See how much Wi-fi you've used? Dial *#*#4636#*#* to bring up a hidden screen with your phone stats. Geek heaven.
Make your battery last longer
There are two things you can do to use less battery power:
- Change your screen timeout. That’s how long it takes for your screen to turn off once you stop using your phone. The longer it is, the more your battery will drain. Here's how to do it:
- Go to 'Settings' and choose 'Display'.
- Tap 'Screen timeout'
- Choose the time you want. (We say go for between 30 seconds and one minute.)
You can also change how bright your screen is here. The brighter your screen is, the more battery power your phone uses up.
- Keep track of your apps. Some apps use up a lot more battery power than others. Go to 'settings', choose 'about phone', then tap on 'battery use'. You'll see a list of all your apps and how much battery power they're using. (But you can't do this on Cupcake versions.)
- Change your screen timeout. That’s how long it takes for your screen to turn off once you stop using your phone. The longer it is, the more your battery will drain. Here's how to do it:
