HTC Desire 516 Tips and Tricks

An almost essential setting is the ability to lock your screen by pressing the power key once. It will save plenty of time in the long run.

If this isn’t enabled, then go to Settings – My Device – Lock Screen. Then select Lock instantly with power key.

Sometimes those Lock Screen widgets are great, sometimes they are a pain.

To disable them completely, go to Settings – More – Security

Android now has a way to display your name, phone or email on your lock screen. Perfect if you have lost or misplaced your device.

To enable this go to Settings – My device – Lock screen – Lock screen widgets. Then at the bottom press Owner information. Here you can enter any information you want, such as your name or email address.

Smartphones that are always connected to the internet are great, but if you have a data plan that is capped each month, then you will want to keep an eye on how much data you are downloading. Fortunately there is a built in feature to monitor this.

Go to Settings – Connections – Data usage. From here you can set a limit and set the usage cycle (e.g. a from and to date).

If you press the Menu button on this screen you will also see a number of features such as restrict background data usage (although this will prevent some Apps from working).

Sometimes you may need your screen to stay on when plugged in via USB.

To do this, go to your Home Screen and press the menu key (bottom right). Select Settings – More – Developer Options. Then check Stay Awake.

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.

While the stock standard keyboard is fine, there are much better keyboards available. First, you need to go to the Play Store and download one. Try searching for the word ‘keyboard’ and you will see a number of options.

One of the best keyboards is a keyboard called Swiftkey, which is a top-rate App. This will literally change the way you feel about your phone as the standard keyboard can be quite a frustrating experience.

Download your chosen keyboard and go through any install steps that you are presented with.

If you see a warning saying the keyboard will collect all information (including credit cards) just ignore this. This is just a security feature that Android shows for every third-party keyboard that you install.

Then, go to the App you want to type in. You should now see a little Keyboard icon on the row at the bottom of your screen, towards the bottom-right corner. Press that icon and you can switch between all of the keyboards you have installed.

Having GPS on your device is great, but it does slowly chew through your battery life.

Fortunately there is a way to improve this in recent version of Android. Pull down your notifications screen from the top of the phone. Then press and hold on GPS. Then select Mode – Power Saving.

To save an image in an email or in the browser, long press on the image and a menu will appear allowing you to save it.

For images inside text messages, you might have to press and hold on the message itself, rather than the image.

To copy photos to your computer, plug the device in via a USB cable. (you might have to install your device’s software or drivers first).

Then locate the new drive on your PC. Go to the /DCIM/Camera/ folder Your photos will be stored there.

This may vary slightly between devices, however once you have opened the device’s drive, you can do a quick search for .jpg files which will show you where your photos are located.