Android 4.4 (Kit Kat) Tips and Tricks
Depending on how your phone is set up, sometimes you will see lag when swiping between homescreens. There are a number of things you can try to fix this, as follows:
First, try restarting your phone. This will fix many problems.
If that doesn’t work, then remove any Widgets that pull data to the phone, such as Twitter, Weather widgets etc
If you have Live wallpapers turned on, then try turning them off by going to Settings – Display – Wallpaper, then changing to a different Wallpaper.
Go to Settings – More – Developer options – Window Animation Scale and Transition Animation Scale. Try changing these to 0.5x (or even 0).
Sometimes the problem can be with the phone or operators skin or launcher, so try going to the Play Store and downloading a third party launcher such as Nova launcher or Go LauncherEx. Note: you will need to re-create your homescreen shortcuts, but they are both great launchers.
Another tip is to always press the Back key instead of the Home key when leaving Apps. The Back key will often close the App properly, while the Home key will leave it running in the background.
If you don’t want to hear the shutter sound when you take photos, then there are a few things you can try.
Firstly, some countries have laws to force the phone to play these sounds. Assuming you’re not in one of these countries, then the first thing you can try is to go to the Camera App – Settings – Shutter Sound – Off.
If that doesn’t work, then you can try turning the volume of the phone down or put it in silent mode when taking photos.
The last option is to Root your phone. If you don’t know what that means, then it’s best not to attempt it unless you have thoroughly read about the process. Once Rooted, go to this folder on your phone: /system/media/audio/ui and rename the camerashutter and/or cameraclick OGG files to something else.
Alternatively, on a rooted phone you can use a Root Browser, to edit /system/csc/feature.xml and set the option to TRUE. Then you should be able to go to Camera App – Settings – Shutter Sound – Off.
To remove numbers from the call log that you don’t want anyone seeing, then open your Call Log.
This will normally be found on your Apps list or you can also go to your Dialler and find Logs or Call Logs.
Then press and hold on the contact you want to remove. When the Menu appears, press Delete.
Android now comes with a sound Equaliser so you can adjust your bass and treble.
Simply open a music file using the Music Player App. Then go to Settings – SoundAlive and select Custom.
Then simply drag the sliders up and down to adjust the bass and treble.
When browsing on your phone you may notice images are quite blurry. This is because your telecom provider is compressing the images before they are downloaded on to your phone.
There is no way to prevent this, but if you have a WiFi connection nearby, then you can turn that on. This will mean that all browser downloads come through the WiFi connection, rather than the carrier, and your images will appear normally.
Android manages your applications so if the phone is running low on memory, it will close the oldest running App.
If you do need to manually close an application go to Settings – More – Application manager. Then swipe the screen from right to left until you are on the Running screen.
Then choose the application you want to stop and select Force Stop.
To add a widget, simply long press on a blank part of one of your homescreens. Then select Widget. Scroll through the list of available widgets and choose one. It will be placed on your homescreen and you can move it around as you desire.
The brightness of the browser is set separately to the phone’s main brightness. If you find the screen dims or brightens when you go into your browser, then you can change this by opening the browser, pressing the Menu key and scrolling down until you see Brightness. You can adjust it from here.
To adjust the phone’s main brightness, go to the Settings – My device – Display – Brightness.
An alternative is to use a third party browser like Dolphin, Firefox, Opera and so on. These all use the phone’s main brightness setting.
Lastly, sometimes Power Saving Mode affects the screen brightness. Go to Settings – My device – Power Saving Mode and change the Background Colour Only mode in there. Power Saving Mode can also be found by in the Notifications bar by swiping down from the top of the screen.
If you call someone regularly this can be useful as you will have a shortcut to them handily placed on your homescreen.
To bookmark a Contact on your Home Screen, then first go into your Contacts App.
Find the Contact you want to add to the Home Screen. Then press and hold on the name. Select Add shortcut to home from the options.
Then go to your Home Screens, find the Contact. You can press, hold and drag to another position.
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