Lenovo Z5s Tips and Tricks

Android cleverly uses Picasa to sync photos between your account and your phone. Sometimes however, this means that you will get duplicates appearing in your Gallery when they’re not actually on your phone.

To stop this from happening, and so you only see photos on the Phone or SD card, then follow these steps:

Drag down your notification menu from the top and click on the Gear icon to bring up your Settings. Then select Accounts and Google. Then select your Gmail account.

You should see a list of options that are ticked. Scroll down to the one that refers to Picasa and untick that.

Now that’s done we want to remove the thumbnails from your Gallery, so we need to refresh the Gallery. To do that, swipe down and go to Settings again. Then select More – Application Manager. Swipe across to show ALL Apps. Then find the Gallery App and press Clear Data.

This will erase the thumbnails in your Gallery, so don’t panic that your photos have disappeared. Just wait for the Gallery to re-build its index which could take awhile.

But the good news is that your Picasa Albums shouldn’t be there anymore.

Your phone 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 Active Apps Manager widget and install it.

Once that is done, press the widget and it will show you all currently running Apps. Press End all to close all running Apps.

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.

If you like to use vibration mode but you don’t want to disrupt a whole room due to the Lenovo Z5s vibration intensity, you can adjust or reduce that accordingly. Just follow the steps below on your phone:

1. From your home screen, swipe down to open the notifications menu.
2. Tap on the Settings icon (usually a gear-shaped one at the top-right portion).
3. Scroll to Device then tap “Sound” or “Sounds and notifications” or “Sound & Vibration.”
4. Under Sound, tap “Vibrations” or “Vibration Intensity.”
5. A bar will appear where you can slide left or right to adjust the intensity of your phone’s vibration. On some phones, users can select from either Light, Medium, or Strong.
6. Tap “OK.” This will automatically save your preference.

This generally works for the Lenovo Z5s and most Android phones.

For Huawei users, you may need to follow a slightly different method. If you use a Huawei unit, follow the instructions below instead:

1. From the home screen, tap up to locate Settings.
2. Then tap Settings → Strength
3. Swipe up or down to adjust the vibration intensity. That’s from Strong, Soft, or None.
4. Tap “OK.”
5. You will be automatically reverted to the home screen. Don’t worry, your preferred vibration intensity is saved at this point.

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.

Note: This availability of this feature depends on your device.

If you want to access your quick settings more quickly, then instead of swiping down with one finger, then use two.

This should take you straight to the quick settings, however it may not work on all phones and models.

Locking your phone is a great security feature, but when you’re at home it’s normally not necessary.

A featured called Trusted Places enables you to bypass the lock screen when you’re at specific geographic places.

To set it up go to Settings – Lock screen and security – Smart lock – Trusted places. You can also set up the bypass to work when your phone is connected to specific Bluetooth devices such as Smart watches or Audio devices.

You can also override this (i.e. lock your screen when it is at the location). To override, just press and hold the padlock icon on the lock screen.

This may not work on all phones, models or networks.

To stop the Photo App or the Music player from indexing your files, place a blank text file called .nomedia in the folder containing your photos or music.

The best way to do this is to connect your device to a PC and then navigate to the relevant folder via your PC.

Android manages Apps very well and some Apps do not have the option to close them specifically. Normally the App will stay running in the background and only close when many other Apps have been opened.

If you do want to close or terminate an App, then press and hold the Multitasking key on your phone. On some devices you may need to long press the Home key. Then you can swipe the Apps off the screen to close them.

Even after doing that, there may be some apps still running in the background.

To close these apps, go to Settings and open Application icon, from here you can open applications list and tap on any app you want to close.

From here simply tap on force stop and application will stop working in background.

If you have forgotten your custom unlock pattern, then don’t panic.

After 5 unsuccessful tries a button should appear saying ‘Forgot pattern’. Press this and you will be asked to enter your Gmail username/password.

The phone will then ask for a new unlock pattern. If you don’t have a Gmail account, then you might have to either call your carrier or factory reset your phone.