Huawei MediaPad 7 (tablet) Tips and Tricks

To gain access to features such as Airplane mode WiFi, Screen Lock Orientation, Brightness and so on, double tap on the Clock in the bottom right of the screen.

Your tablet comes with a handy widget which lets you kill all running tasks. This is great if you want to quickly free up some memory.

To use the widget, press and hold for 2 seconds on a blank part of any homescreen. Then find the Program monitor widget and drag it on to your homescreen. Once that is done, press the widget and it will show you all currently running Apps. Press End all to close all running Apps.

Android has a feature allowing you to update Applications automatically. This is turned off by default, but you can turn it on.

Open the Android market, then Menu – My Apps.

Then you need to open up each installed App and tick Allow Automatic Updating at the bottom. Unfortunately you do need to do this for each App.

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 default browser and press the Menu icon on the top-right corner. Then Settings – Privacy and security. Then select Clear history. You can also clear the Cache, but that will mean previously visited websites will have to load again, making your browsing slightly slower.

While in the Camera App you can view all current settings by pressing and holding the little Gear icon in the top right corner of the app.

While your notification bar can be handy to inform you of updates, downloads and other useful information, sometimes it can get cluttered.

There is now a way to turn this off for each application.

Go to Settings – Applications – Manage Applications. Then find Info and un-tick the box labelled Show Notifications.

If you don’t want the Tab bar at the top of the browser, then you can remove this which will use the whole screen while browsing.

Open the standard browser and press Menu – Settings – Labs. Then put a check mark under Quick controls.

To get access to the controls that are now invisible, there is now a neat hidden menu. Position your finger on the right side of your tablet, just off the screen. Then slide it onto the screen in a left-ward direction. A circular menu will appear with various options.

Normally you can simply insert a SIM card and you will be able to browse the internet using 3G. Sometimes, this must be setup manually however. Before you start, you will need to ask your carrier or telco for your APN settings.

Once you have those, from your homescreen press Menu – Settings – Wireless and networks – Mobile networks. Then tick Use packet data. Then select Access Point Name (APN).

Then press the menu icon in the top-right corner and select New APN. Then fill in the details your carrier gave you. Then press the menu icon again and press Save.

Downloading loads of Apps is great, but sometimes they can cause havoc with your phone and a boot into safe mode is necessary.

To do this, long press your Power button. Then long press on the Power off option. You will then be asked to reboot into safe mode.

When your phone restarts it will not load any Apps allowing you to disable any troublesome ones.

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.