Motorola Moto Z2 Force Tips and Tricks

Android manages your applications so if the phone is running low on memory, it will close the oldest running App.

If you do need to manually close an application go to Settings – Apps.

Then select the application you want to stop and select Force Stop.

Android now comes with some great battery management built into the OS.

Pull down your notifications screen and select Settings – Device maintenance.

Then go to Battery and you will see some useful stats such as the time remaining.

There are also options to set up various Power Saving modes.

Select one of these to really make your phone last the distance.

Be warned that these can limit your device quite considerably as certain features will be disabled in order to conserve battery life.

By default, Android will should send you a message when a new version of the firmware is available, however this option may be turned off in the settings.

To manually check and update the firmware at any point, then follow these steps:

Pull down your notifications screen and go to Settings, then Software update.

From this screen you can also switch between Download updates automatically or manually.

You can also schedule updates to so that they occur at a certain time of the day (say, overnight). This saves you having to confirm every update yourself.

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 feature, go to Settings – Accessibility – Answering and ending calls.

Then under End calls by, select Pressing the Power key.

There are a number of ways to speed up your phone. The following list are tried and trusted techniques:

Firstly, uninstall apps that you don’t use. Over time your device can get cluttered as some Apps are designed to always run in the background. If you don’t use an App very often, then uninstall it to free up memory and CPU resource.

Use Static wallpapers instead of Live ones. Live wallpapers often consume processing power and memory. Unless you really need them, uninstall them.

Use home screen widgets sparingly. These often slow down the phone and use up memory and CPU resources. If you don’t really need the widget, then uninstall it.

Install a great App called DU Speed Booster and DU Battery Booster. These Apps are prefect to run when your phone starts to slow down, you’re running out of memory or you want your battery to last for a few more minutes or hours.

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.

Normally you can simply insert a SIM card and you will be able to browse the internet using 3G or 4G. Sometimes, this must be setup manually however.

Before you start, you will need to ask your carrier or Telco for your APN settings.

Once you have those, go to Settings – Connections – Mobile networks – Access Point Names.

From here press Add or the Plus sign at the top right and select New APN.

Then fill in the details your carrier gave you. Then press the menu button and press Save.

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 on the search bar at the top, press the Hamburger / Menu icon and select Offline maps.

Next, choose Select your own map.

Then zoom and pan around the required map area. The size of the offline map will be shown beneath the map area. When done, press the Download button.

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 should 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.

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.

If you find that apps are slowing down your device or consuming unnecessary memory or batter life, then try downloading an App called DU Battery Saver or DU Speed Boost which are great for optimising the Apps that are running.

Android has a useful feature called Talkback or Voice Assistant which is designed for blind and vision impaired users.

The feature provides voice feedback as you navigate your phone and will also tell you what you can interact with as you tap areas of the interface.

To enable this, go Settings – Accessibility – Vision – Voice Assistant. Change the setting to On.

Then your phone will give you an ongoing narration of its various functions.

If you are not happy with your notification light, then you can change and tweak it. Go to the Play Store and download an App called Light Flow.

You might need to enable the notification light before the App works. Go to Settings – Display – LED Indicator.