Sony Xperia Z Ultra Tips and Tricks

Android 4.2 (Jellybean)
Phone: Sony Xperia Z Ultra
Factory OS: Android 4.2 (Jellybean)

Have you updated your Operating System?
Then view tips for the most recent OS version(s): Android 9 (Pie) & Android 8 (Oreo)
Or view tips for all Android versions

First open your Contacts App and select a contact. Then press the phone’s Menu button and select Edit.

Then you should see a silhouette of a person. Press this, or a little + sign next to it and you will be given a number of options to create a photo or image for that contact.

Normally you can simply insert a SIM card and you will be able to browse the internet using 3G. Sometimes, this must be setup manually however. Before you start, you will need to ask your carrier or Telco for your APN settings.

Once you have those, from your homescreen press Menu – Settings – More networks – Mobile networks – Access Point Names.

From here press the Menu key again (bottom left corner) and select New APN. Then fill in the details your carrier gave you. Then press the menu icon again and press Save.

If you find yourself being stalked or receiving unwanted calls nuisance calls from people or companies then you should use the Call rejection mode.

Simply go to Settings – Call – Call rejection. From here you can manage your rejection list of numbers.

To enable / disable your notification light, go to Settings – LED indicator.

From here you can choose various options.

This may not be available on all models. An alternative however is to download NoLED from the Play Store, which has many options for incoming notifications.

To show the Browser History, open your Android stock browser (the default browser). Then press the Menu key (bottom left) and select History.

To clear history, press the Menu key again and select Clear History.

Android has a feature allowing you to update Applications automatically. This is turned off by default, but you can turn it on.

Open the Android market, then Menu – My Apps.

Then you need to open up each installed App, then press the Menu key again and tick or untick Auto-update

Unfortunately you do need to do this for each App.

In Contacts press Menu – Settings – Sort list by. Then choose Given name or Family name.

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 – Wallpapers, then changing to a different Wallpaper.

Go to Settings – 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 want to remove an entire text message thread, go into Messages and look for the thread. Then long press on it and select Delete thread

While in your email App, a handy trick is to pinch and zoom out to see a ‘day view’ of your emails. This is handy if you have a lot of emails and want to quickly sort them by recency.