HTC Desire 816 Tips and Tricks

To stop the Photo App or the Music player from indexing your files, place a blank text file called .nomedia in the folder containing your photos or music.

The best way to do this is to connect your device to a PC and then navigate to the relevant folder via your PC.

To enable Face Unlock, go into Settings – My device – Lock screen – Screen lock.

Then select Face unlock. From here you will be required to look at the phone via the front facing camera. It is usually better to do this during the day when the lighting is better, although the phone will guide you through the process.

To add an email or phone number to your contacts from a text message, you can long-press on the email / phone number. Then select Add to contacts

When taking photos or videos, tap the screen where you want to focus on. The phone will automatically adjust the settings to improve the image or video

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).

The following is a list of commands that can be used for the Google Now service. This can be accessed by using the Google Search widget on your homescreen. Simply press the little microphone icon and say the commands below:

General
Search for
Who invented
Show me the stocks for
Author of
How old is
How tall is

Time & Date
What time is it in
When is the in
When is the sunset in
What is the time zone of
Time at home

Weather
Show me the weather
Is it going to rain tomorrow?
Do I need an umbrella?
Do I need a jacket
What is the weather in
How is the weather on going to be?

Maps / Location
Map of
Show me the nearby on map
Where is situated?
in
Navigate to in car
I am hungry (shows all nearby food points on map)
How far is from

Calculations / Conversions
How much is times
What is percent of
Square root of
… equals
What is the numerical value of Pi
Convert into
Temperature of the sun

Sports
points table
Who won the last match between and
scorecard
Schedule of games

Websites
Go to
Open
Show me
Browse to

Entertainment
Listen to
Play
YouTube
When was the first episode of
movies
Who acted in
Who is the producer of
When was released
Runtime of

Notes / Reminders
Remind me to at
Wake me up in
at
Self note to
Set alarm for

Contacts / Communication
Call
Send to via text
(shows the contact card)
Call in
Send a text to
Email to , B C C , Subject , message

Flights
Flight Status of
Has landed/departed
When will land

Other
Do a barrel roll

If you want to type non-English letters (e.g. those with an accent), long-press on the relevant letter. A list of options will appear for you to select. For example, to insert an acute á, then press and hold the a key, then drag your finger to the accented character.

It is best to avoid task killers such as Advanced Task Killer. Android is designed to automatically pre-load certain applications, even if you don’t load them yourself. If it starts to run low on memory, it will smartly unload the oldest running apps automatically.

Manually killing tasks will only mean they get loaded in memory again. Task killers can make the phone slow, laggy, or drain battery life more quickly.

There is a hidden Easter egg on the phone. If you go to your Homescreen, then press Menu – Settings – About device, then tap on the Android version option 5 times you will be surprised.

Once you see something on the screen, you can then rub the screen with your finger to produce another surprise.

By the way don’t expect to see an actual Easter Egg. That is just the name given to things hidden inside software or operating systems.

If you are not happy with your notification light, then you can change and tweak it. Go to the Play Store and download an App called Lightflow.

You might need to enable the notification light before the App works. Go to Settings – My device – LED Indicator and tick Notifications.