Huawei P10 Tips and Tricks

Android 7 (Nougat)
Phone: Huawei P10
Factory OS: Android 7 (Nougat)

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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 on the search bar at the top, press the Hamburger / Menu icon and select Offline maps.

Next, choose Select your own map.

Then zoom and pan around the required map area. The size of the offline map will be shown beneath the map area. When done, press the Download button.

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 should 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.

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 Text Message (SMS) App and press the Menu or More button.

Then select Settings – Quick responses.

From here you can add or edit your reject messages.

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 Copy text.

Once that has been copied to your clipboard, go to your Contacts App and select the Create New Icon.

Enter the contact details, then select either email or phone and long press on the field. Then select Paste to paste the info from the original text message.

To delete or remove home screen widgets, simply press and hold. Then drag the widget to the top-right corner of the screen and into the Trash icon.

By default, Android will should send you a message when a new version of the firmware is available, however this option may be turned off in the settings.

To manually check and update the firmware at any point, then follow these steps:

Pull down your notifications screen and go to Settings, then Software update.

From this screen you can also switch between Download updates automatically or manually.

You can also schedule updates to so that they occur at a certain time of the day (say, overnight). This saves you having to confirm every update yourself.

While the stock standard keyboard is fine, there are much better keyboards available for the Huawei P10.

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-rated 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.

Some other notable keyboards that work on the Huawei P10 are GO Keyboard and Gboard (the Google Keyboard). Download and install your keyboard app of choice. Once that’s done, follow these steps to switch your current keyboard to that newly installed one:

  1. You can click on your newly installed keyboard app (icon).
  2. Most of them can assist you on how to switch your keyboard.
  3. Just follow the instructions from the new keyboard app.

How to Switch Your Phone’s Default Keyboard to A New One

You can follow the steps above because most keyboard apps can assist you when it comes to switching the default keyboard to theirs. However, you can also do it manually by going to your Phone Settings. Just follow these steps:

  1. Go to Settings and scroll down or look for the “System” sub-menu.
  2. Under “System,” tap “Language and Keyboard” or “Language and Input.”
  3. Tap “Default Keyboard” and select the new keyboard app.

Depending on your unit and model, this method could vary. For those who can’t find the “Default Keyboard” option, you can follow these steps:

  1. Under “Language and Input,” you need to look for Virtual Keyboards → Manage Keyboards.
  2. Tap your keyboard of choice to activate it.
  3. You will get a message of confirmation. Just tap “OK.”
  4. Open your keyboard. You can do this by trying to write a message, email or search.
  5. Then tap the keyboard icon.
  6. Choose the Input Method (tap on your preferred keyboard).

Done! You can change your Huawei P10 keyboard’s theme, predictive text, and other settings by opening its menu. You can do this by locating the keyboard icon on your home screen, or by tapping on the settings icon when you open the keyboard for typing.

Here’s how to pair your device with another Bluetooth device.

First you will need to turn Bluetooth on. To do this, drag your finger from the top of the screen down, to show your notifications menu. Then press Bluetooth so the icon is green.

Then press the Scan button and your device will start to scan for pairable devices.

Choose the desired device and press Accept. You may be asked to enter a PIN or Password.

To see which firmware version of Android you are using, use the pull-down menu by dragging your finger from the top of the phone.

Select Settings and under System, choose About Device or About Phone.

This should list your Device name and model Number.

Select Software info to show more information such as your Android Version, Kernel Version, Build Number and other technical information.

If you want to find your phone’s WiFi MAC address (for improved WiFi security), then go to Settings – About device or 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 are browsing a website and have zoomed in or out and the column you’re reading doesn’t fit the screen properly, you can pinch to zoom in.

Then double tap on the column.

The column will then be reformatted to fit the screen width.

This is useful for browsing sites that aren’t optimised for mobile friendliness.