LG G Pad 8.3 V500 (tablet) Tips and Tricks

The Speech to Text feature is a great tool for dictating speech on to your phone, but has normally only been possible when your phone is connected to the internet.

Now this is possible in Offline mode too. Simply go to Settings – Language & input – Voice Search. Then choose Download offline speech recognition.

You can now use this feature without needing an internet connection.

To change the backlight screen timeout, go to Settings – Display – Screen timeout. Then choose the screen time out duration.

You can also tell the phone screen to always stay lit when it is plugged in via USB. Go to Settings – Developer Options. Then check Stay Awake.

Note: Developer Options is not enabled by default. To enable, go to Settings – About Device. Then tap on Build number 7 times.

Android has a feature allowing you to update Applications automatically. This is turned off by default, but you can turn it on.

Open the Android market, then Menu – My Apps.

Then you need to open up each installed App, then press the Menu key again and tick or untick Auto-update

Unfortunately you do need to do this for each App.

From the homescreen, press Menu – Settings – Bluetooth. .

Check that Bluetooth is enabled and it will start to Scan devices. Choose the desired device and press Accept. You may be asked to enter a PIN or Password.

A handy feature of Android is to quickly clear your notifications.

Simply pull down your notifications bar by swiping your finger from the top of your phone downwards.

Then when you see each individual notification, swipe your finger left or right to clear each one. You can do this with your Apps too – press and hold the home button. Then swipe left or right to close Apps.

While in your email App, a handy trick is to pinch and zoom out to see a ‘day view’ of your emails. This is handy if you have a lot of emails and want to quickly sort them by recency.

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.

Rather than having to locate the hang up icon on the screen after each call, you can quickly end a call by pressing the Power button.

To enable this, go to Settings – Accessibility – Answering/ending calls. Then tick The power button ends calls.

If you want to move a widget from one homescreen to another, simply press and hold on the widget. Then drag it to the edge of the screen. The next homescreen will appear. Then, just drag the item to where you would like.

To change the homescreen or lock screen wallpaper, press on a blank part of the homescreen. Next, choose Wallpapers. Then choose Live (animated / moving wallpapers) or standard wallpapers (images) and choose whether you want the wallpaper on the homescreen or the lock screen. Then crop the wallpaper and press Ok in the top-right corner.

You can also use images Gallery images taken with the phone’s camera for your wallpaper.