Fresh off last week's post outlining different ways to you use your iPhone more efficiently, we're back with a post for Android users.
One caveat: Android tips are a little trickier to offer than iPhone tips, for a couple of reasons.
For one, it's often up to carriers or manufacturers — rather than consumers — who have control over which version of Android your phone is running.
Furthermore, there are so many more kinds of Android phones, which have their own neat little features, so menu options may be different depending on the type of phone you use.
CUSTOMISE, CUSTOMISE, CUSTOMISE
The best part about being an Android user is the fact that you can mess around a lot with your phone to make it your own. Many readers wrote in to say that they like using custom keyboard apps on their Android phones. (In the interest of fairness, you can also do this with newer versions of iOS.)
But there's a whole world of customising apps out there available exclusively to Android phones. For example, you can choose to change the way your very home screen looks, or how your apps are organised by using something called an app launcher.
You can also download a variety of dialers and caller ID apps, for example, to further customise your phone. Really, the world is your oyster.
EMBRACE ALL OF GOOGLE
Another key advantage of the Android life is that there's a lot of integration if you're a Google user. The core apps such as Gmail, Calendar, Photos and others should work seamlessly with your phone. Google's voice assistant is just an "OK Google" away.
A particularly nice feature in the latest version of Android (Marshmallow) is Google Now on Tap, which sort of acts as a Google-powered footnote to whatever you're reading — hold the home button and you'll get a Google search based on whatever you're looking at.
KNOW WHAT YOU'RE SHARING
One question about apps is how you can see what you're sharing with them. You can do this by going to your Settings menu and finding your Applications Manager. Selecting any particular app should give you a list of permissions, along with an explanation of what they mean.
If you happen to have the latest version of Android, you should also be able to get a little more control over the app permissions. So if you want to, for example, share your location with an app but aren't that happy about sharing your contact list, you may be able to switch that off. It depends on the app, as well, so this may not work for every one.
MESS AROUND WITH YOUR DEFAULTS
Another major perk of being an Android user is that you can change the apps that handle certain functions automatically. So if you have a browser you prefer, or a PDF reader you really like, you can use it automatically. If you'd rather always see YouTube videos in the YouTube app instead of on the mobile web, you can do that too.
It's pretty easy to do this; most often, your phone itself will ask you if you want to set a default app when you perform various functions. If you change your mind, you can go into the settings for whatever default app you've chosen through the Settings menu and choose "Clear Defaults."
TRACK YOUR DATA USE
Worried about exceeding your data plan? Android phones should have a built-in data tracker that lets you keep tabs on what you're using. This should be in your Settings menu, under the heading such as "Data usage."
DISABLE USELESS APPS
You may not be crazy about every app that comes with your phone; often carriers and manufacturers add apps that you simply won't use. But while you can't always uninstall these apps, you can often keep them from running on your phone. On Android, you can disable these apps to keep them from running in the background. Just head to your phone's version of the application manager, tap on the app you want to sedate, and hit "Disable."
CONSERVE YOUR BATTERY LIFE
If your phone has a power-saving mode of some kind, you can choose to have it automatically kick in when your phone's battery hits a particular charge percentage. Head to the "Battery" section of your Settings menu. If your phone does have a power-saving mode option, go into that feature's settings and set it to kick in automatically when your battery's at various power levels.
BECOME A DEVELOPER TO MAKE THINGS RUN MORE QUICKLY
If you want to make your phone move a little more quickly, you can enable its developer options to speed it up. The process to turn on this option is a little funny; you have to head into the "About this phone" menu in your settings, then find the section that says "Build number". Then — this is seriously true — you tap that item seven times.
Congratulations, you're now a developer. At least, according to your phone. You should see a new item pop up in the About menu, called "Developer options". Within that menu, you can change a few options - namely "Window animation scale", "Transition animation scale" and "Animator duration scale" — to .5x or lower. This should speed up your phone by reducing the time it spends animating transitions between windows and apps.
SWIPE DOWN FOR QUICK ACCESS TO SETTINGS
Need to get quick access to your flashlight? A one-touch option for Airplane Mode? Locking the screen rotation? Swipe down from the top of your phone and you should find the Quick Settings menu. This is a pretty basic tool for navigating your phone, but you'd be surprised how many people either don't know about it or forget it.
Source:Washington Post
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