Huawei Mate 8 Tips and Tricks

If you don’t want to have to unlock your screen every time you take your device out of standby then go to Settings – Personal – Lock screen and security.

Then select Screen lock type and select None.

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.

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 key or More at the top of the screen you will also see a number of features such as restrict background data usage (although this will prevent some Apps from working).

If you don’t like the default A-Z way of viewing your contacts you can change this.

First, go to your Contacts App and press the Menu key or More at the top of the screen.

Then select Settings.

Then choose Sort by.

To remove numbers from the call log that you don’t want anyone seeing, then open your Call Log.

This will normally be found on your Apps list or you can also go to your Dialler and find Logs or Call Logs.

Then press and hold on the contact you want to remove. When the Menu appears, press Delete.

Android now has privacy or incognito mode built into the stock browser.

Open your Browser App and press the Tabs icon at the bottom. Then press the Menu or More button at the top. Then select New secret tab, or Secret mode security.

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. You may need to check this is enabled in the Dolphin settings.

If you want to install Apps outside of the Play Store (called sideloading), then go to Settings – Lock screen and security and select Unknown sources.

This setting will allow you to download Apps onto your device that would normally be blocked in the Play store.

Note: use at your own risk.

Here are the top 5 tips to make your phone run faster:

1) Use only essential widgets on your home screen – each widget consumes memory and processing power which can slow your down your phone.

2) Uninstall apps that you don’t use – after a while your phone can get cluttered as some Apps are designed to always run in the background. If you rarely use an App, then uninstall it to free up memory and CPU resource.

3) Install Apps to your phone memory – if you have an SDCard, always install Apps to the phone memory, which can be accessed faster. If you have Apps on the SDCard, then move them back to the phone memory with an App called Move2SD available from the Play Market.

4) Use Static rather than Live wallpapers – Live wallpapers consume processing power and memory. Unless you really must have them, uninstall them.

5) Kill tasks occasionally – Some Apps will run in the background indefinitely unless you kill them. Most of them won’t cause a problem, but it pays to check your running tasks from time to time. Hold down your Home key and check the Task Manager. You can use Apps such as DU Speed Booster for this.

Sometimes while typing long text or SMS messages you will get a message saying Converting to multimedia message. This won’t normally cause a problem, however some users do not want to send a MMS message.

There are a number of different settings to deal with this, however there isn’t really a way to prevent the phone from converting to an MMS. The reason for this is that any message over 480 characters cannot be sent as an SMS message. They must be sent as an MMS. The is a restriction of SMS messages in general, similar to the original limit of 160 characters.

What you can do however is ensure you get alerted when you have reached 480 characters. Then you can decide to send the message as an SMS and continue your conversation on a second message.

To check this setting is on, open your Message App and press More – Settings and More Settings – Multimedia messages. Then select Set restrictions and choose Warning. You will now be told when your message is being converted to MMS.

You can also change the settings for Creation mode which lets you restrict messages that go over a certain size. If you select Warning or Restricted, you should get further warnings when your message is really large and may not be handled by the network.

To change the home screen or lock screen wallpaper, press on a blank part of the home screen. Next, choose Wallpapers.

From here you can use any image in your Gallery as your Wallpaper.