Here are a list of Tips and Tricks for Android users that will help you use your phone. Android Phones are selling extremely well and many users are not getting a good send off from the carriers.
1. Airplane Mode
Sometimes you need to put the phone into Airplane mode without digging through menus. With the phone unlocked press the power button and hold for about 1 sec then release. An on screen menu is presented with the following options:
- Silent Mode
- Airplane Mode
- Power Off
2. Volume Control
While access to the ringer volume is on the side of the phone, if your playing media it will only control the media volume and not the phone ringer. There are a couple possible solutions for this.
- If you just want to turn the phone ringer off you can follow the instruction above and select Silent Mode
- Additionally, with the phone screen locked you can slide the speaker icon to the left to switch to silent mode
- Finally, if the goal is to just reduce the notification/ringer volume you can create a short cut as follows
Press and hold the screen until the on screen menu appear
Select Shortcuts | Settings | Sound & Display Settings
From this short cut you can adjust all notification volumes. I only suggest the shortcut if you find a need to frequently adjust the volumes when listening to audio.
3. Accessing Running Apps
Until someone lets you in on this secret most people do not know pressing and holding the Home button allows you to get a list of running apps. This is a fast way to navigate between open programs.
4. Going back
If your trying to modify a setting and get a phone call, thus jumping you out of a well buried setting. When the call ends you may not get put back on the settings page, but clicking the back button puts you back on the last screen.
5. Notification Panel
I know too many people that have troubles pulling down the notification panel. From the home screen click the menu button then notification.
6. Settings Screen
If you need quick access to settings but don’t want to create a shortcut you can again hit the menu button, then settings. This is faster then pulling up the main app window and scrolling down, and avoids adding shortcuts to the home screen.
7. Default Search Widget
Get rid of the default search widget. I know this may sound crazy, but remember you have a dedicated search button that yields the same results so why waste the real estate. To get get rid of the search widget just press and hold then drag the widget to the trash when it appears.
8. Getting to Center Home Screen
Double tabbing the home button takes you back to the center home screen.
9. Alternative Options on virtual keyboard
On the virtual keyboards a long press on almost every key gives you some alternative options. For example a long press on 1 provides 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/8. Â I suggest playing with this feature a bit.
10. Adding Ringtones and notifications
If you want to add customer ringtones, notification, and alarm sounds just create the folders on your SD card. Once you add your sounds they will show up in the listing to choose from
