HTC One A9 Tips and Tricks

If you are browsing a website and have zoomed in or out and the column you’re reading doesn’t fit the screen properly, you can pinch to zoom in.

Then double tap on the column.

The column will then be reformatted to fit the screen width.

This is useful for browsing sites that aren’t optimised for mobile friendliness.

If you find that a particular App is sending you too many notifications, there is a quick way to disable these.

When you receive the notification, pull down the notification screen. Then long press on the notification. You should see a small ‘i’. Press this and you should see the notifications specific to that App.

Simply select Block notifications to disable them for that App only.

When entering text into Apps such as your Messaging App, Facebook App and so on, you can tap on the words to start selecting text.

Normally, you would then drag the left and right sliders to select the word, or words you want to highlight.

If you double tap on a word however, it will quickly select that word.

Very handy for quickly copying and one words, name or place.

There is a great app called Moves by a company called Protogeo that makes use of your devices accelerometer to record your movements, whether by walking, cycling or running.

Go to the Play Store and search for Moves.

If you want to setup new email accounts, like Yahoo or Hotmail, go to your list of Apps.

Find the Email icon and press on it. A setup wizard will then be launched.

Enter you email address and password into the fields. You can also change the settings after this step.

Once you’re happy with the settings, give your account a Name and you’re done.

Most Android devices come with an alternative way of entering text called Swype. Many prefer this method and believe it is quicker.

When any text entry box appears, press and hold the box. Then select Input method: SWYPE. Once enabled, you simply drag your finger around the keyboard moving over the letters in the correct order to spell a word.

If you are abroad and don’t want to pay high data roaming charges, then you can save Google Maps for offline viewing later. Here are two ways to do this:

The first method will depend whether your phone supports it.

First, open Google Maps and navigate to a section of the map that you want available offline.

Then on the search bar at the top, press the Hamburger / Menu icon and select Offline areas.

Next, select Custom area. Then zoom and pan around the required map area. The size of the offline map will be shown beneath the map area. When done, press the Download button.

Alternatively, open Google Maps and zoom down to street level. Then scroll around area you’ll be travelling too. If you’re visiting a city for example, do this at street level and cover as much area as you think you’ve be visiting. If you’re travelling outside a city, then street level view might be too detailed, so zoom out and just cover the main roads, towns etc.

This will load all the segments into your phone’s cache. Then when have arrived at your destination and you have data turned off, you should see the areas you’ve stored on the phone’s memory.

Note: this won’t give you your GPS location because that normally needs a data connection to pinpoint your position.

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 – Personal – Accessibility – Answering and ending calls. Then select Pressing the power key.

To enable / disable your notification light, go to Settings – Device – Sounds and notifications – 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.

Locking your phone is a great security feature, but when you’re at home it’s normally not necessary.

A featured called Trusted Places enables you to bypass the lock screen when you’re at specific geographic places.

To set it up go to Settings – Lock screen and security – Secure Lock settings – Smart lock – Trusted places.

You can also set up the bypass to work when your phone is connected to specific Bluetooth devices such as Smartwatches or Audio devices.

You can also override this (i.e. lock your screen when it is at the location). To override, just press and hold the padlock icon on the lockscreen.

This may not work on all phones, models or networks.