Motorola Droid Mini Tips and Tricks

To open a web page in a new tab, find a link on a web page. Then press on it and then choose to open the site in a new tab.

While typing emails or notes, you can simply tap the space key twice and the phone will insert a full stop / period

If you don’t want to have to unlock your screen every time you take your device out of standby then go to Settings – Lock screen – Screen lock and change the settings there.

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 press on the search bar and scroll right to the bottom and select Make this map area available offline. You may need to repeat this with multiple areas.

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 will 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.

Normally you don’t have the ability to create shortcuts to files or folders on your home screen.

There is a workaround however. Go to the Play Store and download an App called Linda File Manager.

Once installed, browse to a file or folder. Then press and hold on the file and select Create shortcut.

The shortcut will be created on your homescreen where you can hold and drag it elsewhere if you want.

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.

If you find the vibration of your phone a little too much, this can easily be reduced.

From the homescreen press Menu – Settings – Sound – Vibration intensity. Then slide the bars left or right to change the intensity for various features.

You can also turn off Haptic feedback if you really don’t want any feedback.

If you want to have quick access to some websites on your homescreen, then there are a couple of ways to do this.

First, browse to a site you want a shortcut created for. Then press the Menu button – Add shortcut. The shortcut will then be placed on your homescreen for you to move where you want.

Another way is to create a bookmark first. So go to the website, then press the Menu button – Add bookmark. Then press the Bookmarks icon (in the top right) and find the bookmark you have just created. Long press on it and select Add shortcut.

To quickly hide the on-screen keyboard, press the Back button

It can be very useful to see your battery life in percentage terms instead of just the icon.

To enable this, go to Settings – Display and tick Display battery percentage.