Huawei Ascend Y300 Tips and Tricks

Android 4.1.1 (Jellybean)
Phone: Huawei Ascend Y300
Factory OS: Android 4.1.1 (Jellybean)

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Then view tips for the most recent OS version(s): Android 9 (Pie) & Android 8 (Oreo)
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To change the homescreen or lock screen wallpaper, press on a blank part of the homescreen. Then press the plus icon in the top-right corner and choose Wallpapers. Then choose Live (animated / moving wallpapers) or standard wallpapers (images) and choose whether you want the wallpaper on the homescreen or the lock screen. Then crop the wallpaper and press Ok in the top-right corner.

You can also use images Gallery images taken with the phone’s camera for your wallpaper.

To change the backlight screen timeout, go to Settings – Display – Sleep. Then choose the screen time out duration.

You can also tell the phone screen to always stay lit when it is plugged in via USB. Go to Settings – Developer Options. Then check Stay Awake.

The brightness of the browser is set separately to the phone’s main brightness. If you find the screen dims or brightens when you go into your browser, then you can change this by opening the browser, pressing the Menu key and scrolling down until you see Brightness and colour. You can adjust it from here.

To adjust the phone’s main brightness, go to the Homescreen, press Menu – Settings – Display – Brightness.

An alternative is to use a third party browser like Dolphin, Firefox, Opera and so on. These all use the phone’s main brightness setting.

Lastly, sometimes Power Saving Mode affects the screen brightness. Go to Settings – Power Saving Mode and change the Background Colour Only mode in there. Power Saving Mode can be found by in the Notifications bar by swiping down from the top of the screen too.

If you find yourself regularly switching profiles when you get to work, get home, go to bed and so on, then there is a great way to have your phone do this automatically.

Simply go to the Google Play store and download an App called Profile Valet.

This will automatically switch profiles for you based on the time of day or your location.

Normally when Apps are installed, an icon is automatically placed on your homescreens.

This can be annoying for users who want to keep their homescreens clutter-free.

To stop then, go to Google Play – Settings. Then untick Auto-add Shortcuts.

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.

First you need to enable the Screen Lock from Settings – Security. Then go to Owner Info and set your info there.

To quickly hide the on-screen keyboard, press the Back button

To bookmark a contact on your homescreen, long press on the home screen background and select Shortcuts. Then select Direct dial.

If you call someone regularly this can be useful as you will have a shortcut to them handily placed on your homescreen.

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

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 press on the search bar and scroll right to the bottom and select Make this map area available offline. You may need to repeat this with multiple areas.

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 will 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.