Every so often I seem to find out about some tip or minor feature that I previously wasn’t aware of on my Android phone (tips and features I probably would have known about if I’d bothered to read the manuals). So I thought I’d start to compile a list of these useful little tips and I’ll update it as I go along. If you have any suggestions, let me know and I’ll add them in.
Copy and Paste- To copy text (this doesn’t work in all apps, but should work in those that deal with text such as web browsers and messaging), press on the touch screen for a few seconds until a menu appears, one of the options is Copy Text. Select Copy Text and then drag your finger on the screen from one side to the other and highlight the word or words you want to copy to the clipboard. Press on the touch screen for a few seconds again to bring up the menu to allow you to paste the text.
Show list of recently opened apps – (confirmed for HTC Hero but should apply to most Android devices) I only found out about this one this morning by accident. To see a list of the apps recently opened on your phone and quick launch them- press and hold the home key and a menu should appear which lists the recently opened apps.
Tips for extending battery life - (on HTC Hero, but the principles will apply for all phones) Out of the box, the HTC Hero is a power hungry beast, but a few tweaks here and there can increase your battery life quite dramatically. I don’t have too much of an issue with battery life myself as I’m rarely far away from a USB cable, but these are good to bear in mind for those times where you forget your charger on a weekend away.
- Disable Always On Mobile Data Connection – There’s just no need for the thing to be permanently connected to the internet, so turn this one off by tapping Menu from one of your homescreens, then choosing Wireless Controls, then Mobile Network Settings and de-selecting Enable always-on mobile
- Use a task killer application. The very first thing any new Android smartphone user should do is make sure they can manage running applications somehow. In the case of the HTC Hero, a third party app is the best method as the built-in method of killing apps is fiddly to say the least. I reviewed Advanced Task Killer a little while back, but there are other apps out there such as Taskiller that do the same job. This is a double-edged sword in that killing unneeded apps improves performance and frees up resources, but if those apps were checking in with a server on the internet periodically, it’ll also reduce your data connection time too, both of which will help conserve battery power.
- Turn off wireless location – Your phone can use the wireless data connection to roughly work out your location. This is unnecessary as the phone can use GPS for location based services. To turn it off, press Menu, then go to Settings, then Location and untick “Use wireless networks”. I keep Enable GPS satellites unchecked too and just use a GPS toggle widget on one of my home screens to turn GPS on/off. I’ve since heard that this check can be left on as the GPS services will apparently only turn on when needed, but I’ve had no problems doing it my way, so I keep GPS off until I need to use Google Maps or the like.
- Turn off wi-fi and bluetooth when not needed – This I guess is fairly obvious, but I know that it’s a bit of a chore to remember to turn off wi-fi when you’re finished with it. There are apps out there, such as the Y5 Battery Saver or the superb Locale (which was of one the Google Android Developer Challenge Grand Prize winners) that will do the job automatically for you.
Input special characters – To input special characters, such as characters with accents (eg: è, ã or ü) whilst typing, keep the base character pressed until a menu appears (eg, to get è keep e pressed), select the special character you require from the menu.
Installing non-market apps (from a .apk file) - To install a non-market app, you can use the Android SDK and adb to do it, but that’s more than a little fiddly and complicated for most users. A far simpler way is to download an app from the market that does it for you. Apps Installer is an app that does this very job, but some of the file explorer/manager software out there does the job too (eg- I use Astro as my file manager and it has app installation functionality too). It’s probably more efficient to use a combined app. To install the apk file from Astro (I’d imagine other file management apps will follow a very similar method)- all you need to do is copy the file to your SD card, then browse to it on Astro and select it, then choose Install.
Wake up the phone’s screen whilst on a call - A question I keep hearing being asked is; how can I wake up my phone whilst I’m on a call so I can use the dial pad? I think a few of the hard buttons such as Home work, but I end up missing the button and ending the call all too often. I find the simplest method is just to click the trackball, you can’t mistake it for another key whilst you’re distracted.
Search for updates for installed apps - One feature of the Apps Market application that a lot of people don’t seem to know about is you can use it to search for and install updates for your installed apps. If you open the Apps Market and go to downloads, you’ll see a section called My downloads. Open it and you’ll see a list of the apps installed on your machine. Any which have an update available will appear at the top of the list where you can tap on them and then tap on Update and the update will be downloaded and installed.
USB cable- You don’t have to use the supplied, and slightly unusually shaped USB cable to connect your phone to a PC for charging or data transfer – a standard mini-b USB cable will do.
Entering Safe mode – To enter Safe Mode on an Android device (this has been tested and confirmed to work on the HTC Magic and HTC Hero) – Power down the phone, then, whilst pressing the hard menu button and keeping it pressed, power the phone back up. When the phone has fully loaded, it should show the words “Safe Mode” in the bottom left hand side of the screen.
Find out the IP address assigned to an Android device – To find out the IP address assigned to an Android device, do the following-
From any homescreen, tap the menu button. Then choose Settings, Wireless Controls and then Wi-Fi settings. From there, tap on the wireless network you are currently connected to and you’ll see a list of useful information such as the connection speed, wireless channel in use and, of course, the IP address.