Huawei MediaPad M5 lite Tips and Tricks

Android 8 (Oreo)
Phone: Huawei MediaPad M5 lite
Factory OS: Android 8 (Oreo)

Have you updated your Operating System?
Then view tips for the most recent OS version(s): Android 9 (Pie)
Or view tips for all Android versions

To quickly hide the on-screen keyboard, press the Back button or simply tap on any empty space on screen.

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.

If you are abroad and don’t want to pay high data roaming charges or travelling to an area with no network coverage, 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.

If you want to remove the Google Search bar, simply tap and hold the bar and a remove button will appear at top of the screen, drag the bar to that remove button, and the bar will disappear.

If this is not working, go to Settings – Applications – Application manager. Then swipe from right to left so you are on the All screen. Scroll to Google search and press Disable.

If you like your Apps neatly sorted into folders, then there is a simple way to accomplish this.

First find the first App you would like in a folder. Then choose a second App. Press and hold on the second App and drag it over the top of the first App. They will both combine into a folder.

You can repeat this process to add more.

Once you have done this grouping, you can give specific name to that folder. For that just open the folder (containing different apps), and tap on Unnamed Folder tab and add your desired name.

If you would prefer to correct your own mistakes, then go to Settings – System – Language and input.

Then select the keyboard you are using and press the Settings icon again.

You should be able to find a predictive text option on this screen.

The most recent version of Android now comes with a built in Flashlight / Torch App.

To find this, simply pull down to see your notifications. Then on the top bar (where you see your settings for WiFi, Bluetooth etc.), scroll across until you see Torch.

While viewing your list of Contacts you can swipe from Right to Left to send a text message to the selected contact.

This might not work on all models.

If you see an insufficient storage available error, or find that you’re running low on your phone memory (not to be confused with your SD Card memory), then there are a number of ways to fix this.

This error can be very frustrating as it often means you cannot install new Apps, and some Apps may not even function properly because of this. We hope this guide is as comprehensive as possible, but if you find other methods, then please suggest them in the comments below.

The first step is to determine exactly what is eating up your phone’s storage memory. To do this pull down your notifications menu and select Settings and find Storage. It may take a while to calculate so be patient. From here you can see whether it is your Applications, Pictures, Audio or otherwise, that is causing the problem. Obviously, if it is photos or music, then the first step is to remove some of these (ensuring you do actually want them deleted of course!).

If it is your Apps taking up space, then you have a few options, as follows:

Uninstall Apps – Go to Settings – Applications – Application Manager and swipe to the ALL tab at the top. Then look at the top of the screen which shows how much free space you have. Often you will have very little Free memory, which is the cause of the error. From here, press your Menu button and select Sort by size. This will show you which Apps take up the most space and which will make the most impact by removing. Obviously don’t delete things like Gallery (which will remove your photos!), Internet (which is your browser), key Google Apps and so on. However if you have Apps you don’t use anymore, then uninstall them to free up space.

Clear App Cache (with an App) – For this method, you will need to download an App called Clear App Cache. However, this will only work if you can uninstalled enough Apps to free up enough space to install the App itself. Once installed however you can quickly clear the cache of all of your Apps, which should free up some space.

Create Cloud Storage Backup – You can also select to create back-up in Google drive. For that Go to Settings – Backup & Reset and turn Back up data ?ON? and add your back-up account (Preferably the same account from which you signed in on Play Store). Then open Google Account icon and from there you can select folders for which you want to create back-up, you can also set frequency of creating back-up e.g. daily, monthly or weekly etc. Now you can delete data from folders for which you have opted to create back, but before that please make sure that back up has been created. You can access these files by signing in to Google drive using you Gmail email and Password.

Clear App Cache (manually) – Apps such as Gallery, can sometimes generate a large cache (image thumbnails in this case) which can be cleared to free up memory. First, go to Settings – Applications – Application Manager. Then swipe from right to left until you’re on the ALL screen. Then press the Menu key and Sort by size. Then choose the largest App by pressing on it. Then select Clear Cache. Do this until you’ve cleared as much space as you can. ?

Dump your log files – This will only work on some devices, however it doesn’t cause any data loss. It simply cleans up your App log files. Go to your phone dialler App and press: *#9900# ? Then Select delete dumpstate/ logcat and hit OK.

Move Apps to SD Card (if you have one) – Settings – Applications – Application Manager. Flick from right to left until you get to SD Card. Then simply tick which Apps you’d like to move from Phone memory to SD Card memory.

Clear Browser Thumbnails – This one seems to be a bug in some versions of Android and/or some phones, but is a very quick and effective fix. Simply open your stock Android Browser, which is usually found by opening the Internet App. Then at the top right check if you have multiple tabs open. If you do, then swipe them off the screen one by one until you have none left. This can clear up hundreds of cached thumbnails which never clear unless this process is carried out. It has been known to clear several gigabytes of space for users that don’t close their tabs often. ?

Check folder/file sizes – The last method is great and involves installing an App called DiskUsage from the Play store. Once you install this it will show you which folders are the largest. You can then drill down to find out exactly what is consuming your precious space before deciding to remove the files or folders. You can also integrate the App with File Explorer Apps to easily manage your files. When it comes to removing files and folders it’s sometimes easier to do that by plugging your device into a PC and browsing the folders that way.

A useful feature of Android Lollipop is what’s called Screen Pinning. This allows you to lock your phone to one App. Perfect if you have a young child that you don’t want messing with your phone. Or if you want to lend your phone to someone to make a call, but make the call only.

To enable this go to Settings – Security – Screen pinning. Then go to the App you want to Pin and press the Multitask key. Then look at the most recent app and press the blue thumb tack icon in the bottom right corner.

To un-pin an App just press the Multitask key and the back key together.