Lenovo Z5s Tips and Tricks

Android 9 (Pie)
Phone: Lenovo Z5s
Factory OS: Android 9 (Pie)

If you have a frield, child, or family member who frequently borrows your phone, but you want to make sure that your personal settings and apps don’t get messed up, using Guest Mode on your Lenovo Z5s is the best solution.

Now not all phone models have a Guest Mode feature, but if your Lenovo Z5s model has this, just follow the steps below to activate it:

  1. On the home screen, swipe down using two fingers.
  2. Look for the User icon (usually located at the top-right portion of the screen).
  3. Tap “Add Guest.”
  4. Fill in the form and follow other instructions to set up the Guest Mode profile.
  5. You may also tweak the settings of each profile by tapping on the Guest or User profile. This includes access to contacts, making calls, sending messages, and even access to images and other files.
  6. Just tap on a Guest/User name to use that mode. If you want to exit Guest Mode, just tap on your main user profile or remove the guest account entirely.

This method generally works for Android phone users. However, certain brands may have different variations in setting up the Guest profile. For Huawei phone users, you can add up to 3 guest user accounts.

Just follow these steps:

  1. Go to Settings → Users & Accounts → Users
  2. Tap “Add User” then start setting up the User Profile.
  3. Alternatively, you can tap “Add Guest” instead. From there, you can also set up the Guest profile.

You can manually set up the settings and allowable activities per user or guest. Just tap on a guest/user profile and tick certain boxes of which they may be allowed to do. This includes making calls, sending messages, and sharing contact records.

If you get tired of receiving sales calls or want to block a particular number, then you can set up auto call rejects on your device.

Often you will get calls from unknown numbers. Depending on how cautious or curious you are, then normally it’s good practice to ignore such calls. If you don’t want to answer, but you’d still like to know who the call is from, then you can simply Google the number and there are a number of websites which lists phone numbers with details about the company of the caller. From these sites you can easily see if the call you received is from a dodgy company or not.

Once you have established that you want to block or reject the call in future, then open your normal Dialler App. Then go to Logs and find the number you want to block. Long press on the number and select Add to reject list.

From now on you will see that you received a missed call, however the phone will not ring and you won’t be bothered by the caller.

To manage or manually enter numbers on your reject list, then again open your Dialler App. Press your Menu key and select Call settings. Then Call rejection. Then select Auto reject list to see your reject number list. You can also manually add numbers from here

At the bottom of each homescreen is your favourites tray, which consists of 5 icons.

You can customise it by adding icons to the tray. If it’s full however, then press and drag an App from the homescreen and move it over the top of an App it will create folder containing the existing App and the new app, so no need to remove some from the tray.

To remove an icon, simply press and hold an icon. Then drag it to your desktop.

Then to add a new one, simply drag an icon from your homescreen to the favourites tray.?

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.

Depending on how your phone is set up, sometimes you will see lag when swiping between homescreens. There are a number of things you can try to fix this, as follows:

First, try restarting your phone. This will fix many problems.

If that doesn’t work, then remove any Widgets that pull data to the phone, such as Twitter, Weather widgets etc.

If you have Live wallpapers turned on, then try turning them off by going to Settings – Wallpaper, then changing to a different Wallpaper.

Go to Settings – System – Developer options – Window Animation Scale and Transition Animation Scale. Try changing these to 0.5x (or even 0). ? (you will need to unlock Developer options if you can’t find this. Use the search form on this site).

Sometimes the problem can be with the phone or operators skin or launcher, so try going to the Play Store and downloading a third party launcher such as Nova launcher or Go LauncherEx. Note: you will need to re-create your homescreen shortcuts, but they are both great launchers.

Another tip is to always press the Back key instead of the Home key when leaving Apps. The Back key will often close the App properly, while the Home key can leave it running in the background.?

To access the scientific calculator, simply open the calculator App and rotate the phone to landscape mode.

The calculator will automatically change to a scientific one.

If you are browsing a website and want to see the HTML source code behind the page, then Android doesn’t offer you the ability to do this by default.

There is however a handy App called View Web Source which can be installed. Whenever you want to view the HTML of a web page, you just press the Menu – Share – View Web Source.

You can then browse the code or copy the content into the clipboard.

Type a word that is not in the dictionary. The word will show up in the suggestion box to the left. Long press on the word and it will save to the dictionary.

Android now has a way to display your name, phone or email on your lock screen. Perfect if you have lost or misplaced your device.

To enable this go to Settings – Security & Location

Then tap on gear icon under Screen Lock- Lock Screen Message.

Here you can enter any information you want, such as your name or email address.

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.