Lenovo Z5 Tips and Tricks

Checking Available RAM and CPU utilization on your Lenovo Z5 is very helpful if you are thinking about removing more Apps.

Looking at which Apps drain your RAM, CPU time, and battery will help you decide which of them should be removed from your phone.

To do this, just follow the simple steps below:

1. Go to your phone settings. You can do this by swiping down the home screen to reveal the notification bar. From there, tap on the gear icon to open Settings.
2. Look for Device Maintenance → Memory
3. Alternately, you can also tap on “Data Usage,” then scroll down to see which apps are taking up CPU power.
4. You may also look for “Smart Manager.” You will see the status of your RAM and Storage in this area. If you tap RAM, you will see a list of apps that are taking up much of your RAM.
5. For Huawei users, you can look for “Storage” under Settings.

All methods from 2 to 4 can be accessed on the Phone Settings alone. There are certain variations, depending on your phone or unit.

This section should also show what is taking up valuable CPU time. Useful if you think some Apps are draining your battery.

When using your Calendar App, you will normally be in Month view. To quickly switch to Year view, you can pinch the screen to zoom out.

This is useful if you want to quickly jump backwards or forwards through a few months at a time.

To go from Year to Month, you can do a reverse pinch.

There are a number of ways, as below. The first two of these may be disabled on some networks/carriers or Android versions however.

1) Go to Settings – Device – Applications – Application Manager. Then swipe from right to left until you are on the All screen (at the top). Then scroll down to Contacts Storage – Clear Data.

2) Go to Contacts. Then hold and press on a contact. Then choose the All option at the top of the screen and select Delete. .

3) Go to Settings – Personal – Accounts and sync. Then press More at the top and choose Disable auto sync. Then go to Gmail (or an account that your phone syncs with) and delete all of your Contacts from there. Then re-sync your phone.

4) Download an App called ‘Delete All Contacts’ and use that as a last resort.

The methods above will delete contacts from the Phone only, not the SIM card.

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.

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

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

2) Uninstall apps that you don’t use – after awhile 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.

One last thing: Don’t use Task Killers. Android manages tasks very well and Task Killers just make your phone unstable and can slow it down further.

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

To enable or disable the vibrate function when you receive text messages go to the standard Messaging App and press More. Then Settings and then Notifications. Then select Vibrate.

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.

The most common and effective way to copy photos to your PC (from your Lenovo Z5) is to do it via a USB cable. Just plug your phone to a PC using a USB cable and wait for a notification to pop up on your phone.

This notification usually tells you that your device is charging. For some phones, it prompts the user to choose from several options. Just swipe down the notification and choose either “Transfer Photos” or “Transfer Files.”

For smartphone users who don’t see such notification, you may go to Settings → Developer Options → Networking → USB Configuration then tap on MTP (Media Transfer Protocol).

After that, check “This PC” on your desktop and see if there is a removable drive for your phone. The drive would be named as a Removable Device or it would bear the name of your brand or phone model.

Click on the drive and find the “DCIM” folder. This is where all photos and videos from your camera are stored. You can use the search bar function of the folder to find it quickly.

Using Google Photos to transfer photos on your Lenovo Z5
Alternatively, you can use Google Photos to copy photos from your phone to PC. This can be done when you sync and back up all your photos and videos on Google Photos. To do this, just follow these steps:

1. Make sure you have set up your Google Account on your smartphone.
2. Open the Google Photos app on your phone.
3. Then go to its Menu (you can find this at the top).
4. Find Settings then look for Back-up & Sync
5. Tap / check to turn on back-up and sync.

When you do this, all your photos and videos will be saved simultaneously to your Google Photos account (via WiFi). To retrieve these photos on PC, just turn on your PC and go to photos.google.com.

Then sign in with your Google Account, and you will gain access to all your backed-up photos and videos right away! You can click on any photo and download it to save it on your PC. Just click on “More Options” on the upper right corner of the photo, and you will see a download option.

Using Hi Suite to transfer photos
For Huawei phone users, you can use the HI Suite. This program is exclusive for Huawei users, and it provides an easy way to transfer different files from your phone to PC (and other devices). It also functions as a backup device for all data and settings on your phone, and it can be used to retrieve and copy photos to your PC. Just follow the steps below:

1. Connect your Huawei and PC with the use of a USB cable.
2. Go to your phone’s Settings and search for “HDB” on the top search bar.
3. Tap on “Allow HI Suite to use HDB.”
4. You have to agree on certain terms and policies to make use of the function.
5. To backup your photos and videos, tap on Backup and select the “DCIM” or “Camera” folder where your images are saved.

You can access all these backed-up files (including photos) on your PC through HI Suite. Just don’t forget to install HI Suite on your PC too!

Transfer Specific Photos Using Google Drive on the Lenovo Z5

1. Since you are using a Google phone you can transfer your photos first to Google Drive. To do this, tap on the GOOGLE DRIVE app on your phone to open it.
2. Tap on the plus (+) icon from the homepage of GOOGLE DRIVE
3. From here, you can start uploading the photos you want by selecting them from your storage device.
4. To download your photos to GOOGLE DRIVE, open GOOGLE DRIVE on your computer and log in to your account. Choose which photos you want and then from the given options, select to download them into your PC.

Transfer Photos from Google Pixel to a Computer using a third party application

There are also different programs you can use to transfer photos from your Google Pixel phone to a computer. These include Mobile Trans – Backup, Free Syncios Mobile Manager, ApowerManager, and Droid Transfer.

Transfer Photos using MobileTrans

1. Connect your Pixel phone to your computer using your USB cable.
2. Open the MobileTrans app on your computer and choose BACKUP.
3. Once your phone is detected, the snapshot will be shown on the screen.
4. Enable the PHOTOS option from the list of selected data types.
5. Finally, click on START and your photos will be moved to your computer.

Transfer Photos using Free Syncios Mobile Manager

1. Install and launch the Free Syncios Mobile Manager app on your computer. Choose BACKUP mode from the list of choices.
2. The program should turn to the GOOGLE PIXEL to computer transfer window.
3. Use your USB cable to connect your phone to the PC. There is a chance that you mey have to enable USB debugging mode on your phone to allow Syncios to connect.
4. Wait for the selected files to be fully transferred to your PC.

Transfer Photos Using ApowerManager

1. Download and open the ApowerManager on your PC and phone.
2. Connect your phone to the PC via the USB cable.
3. On the desktop version, choose MANAGE found on the top and go to the PHOTOS tab.
4. Choose the photos you want to transfer then click on EXPORT.
5. Wait for the photos to be transferred and remove the USB cable.

Transfer Photos Using Droid Transfer

1. Install the DROID TRANSFER app on your PC and phone.
2. Connect both devices by scanning the QR CODE found on the app’s interface using the TRANSFER COMPANION app on the phone.
3. Once both devices are connected, proceed to the PHOTOS tab.
4. Choose the photos you want to transfer and click COPY PHOTOS.
5. Wait for the photos to be completely transferred to your computer and remove the USB device.

An almost essential setting is the ability to lock your screen by pressing the power key once. It will save plenty of time in the long run.

If this isn’t enabled, then go to Settings – Accessibility – Answering and ending calls.

Then select Pressing the power key.