HTC One Tips and Tricks

Android 4.2 (Jellybean)
Phone: HTC One
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

The phone has the ability to send quick response text messages if your phone is ringing but you can’t answer it.

To change these, go to your Dialler App – Call Settings – Set up call reject messages. You can then add or edit your reject messages.

There is no need to be stuck with the standard Android keyboard.

Go to the Android Market and search for ‘Keyboard’ to see some great alternatives, many of which are more accurate and make typing much easier.

One of the very best is Swiftkey. They provide a free trial, but once the trial is over it is well worth the small amount of money they charge. It can increase your typing rates massively.

Another good one is GoKeyboard.

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.

If you have been browsing websites that you would prefer other people to not know about, then it’s relatively simply to clear your browsing history.

Open the browser and press the Menu button. Then Settings – Privacy – Delete personal data.

From here you can select whether to clear the cache, cookies, passwords and more.

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.

To speed up your phone, you can turn off screen animations. Go to Settings – Developer options.

Then scroll down to Window animation scale and select that. From here you can choose to turn Animations Off. This will make screen transitions faster.

Note: Developer Options is not enabled by default. To enable, go to Settings – About Device. Then tap on Build number 7 times.

The stock Android browser does not have a privacy or incognito mode, so the best solution is to download Google’s Chrome browser for Android from the Play store. Then open Chrome and go to Settings – New incognito tab.

Another option is to use the popular Dolphin browser whenever you want to browse privately. Then each time you exit, Dolphin asks you whether you want to delete your Cache or History. If you select yes, then your activity will be untraceable.

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 – Applications – Manage Applications – Running. Choose the application you want to stop and select Force Stop.

To enable or disable the vibrate function when you receive text messages go to the standard Messaging App. Then go to Settings – Notification settings – Vibrate

If you want to find your phone’s WiFi MAC address (for improved WiFi security), then from the Home screen, go to Menu – Settings – About Phone – Status.

Then scroll down until you see WiFi MAC Address. The address should be a series of Hex numbers and letters.

If you want to resize your homescreen widgets, then press and hold on a widget for 2 seconds. If the widget is resizable, then an outline will appear around the widget. Simply drag the sides to resize the widget.

If the outline doesn’t appear or you can’t drag the lines, then the widget is a fixed sized widget.