Nokia Lumia 1020 Tips and Tricks

Before you can pay for goods, your phone must first support NFC and this should be enabled.

To enable, go to Settings – Tap+Share. You will then need to enter your payment details within the Wallet App. You can do this by pressing the + symbol inside this App. You will also need to do this step if you ever want to pay for an App or Song/

Once they have been setup, then check with the shopkeeper that they support NFC. If they do, then simply swipe the phone over their terminal and your bank or Paypal account will be charged. Great to avoid getting out your credit card and mucking around with PINs.

If you would like to join your email inboxes so that all messages appear in the same space, then you can Link them.

First go to one email account you want to link and press the symbol that looks like three full stops. Then select Link inboxes and choose two inboxes you want to link together.

To pair your phone with Bluetooth speakers or a headset via Bluetooth, then start from the homescreen and scroll to the right.

Then choose Settings – Bluetooth. Then slide the Bluetooth to On. The phone will then scan for nearby Bluetooth devices. It may ask for a password for the device. Try entering 0000 or 1234.

Please note that this may not work for all devices.

You can use your smartphone as an Xbox controller.

First, download and install the Xbox SmartGlass App (formerly known as My Xbox Live). Once this is installed go to Xbox hub and make sure your Xbox is turned on and connected to your WiFi router. Then make sure the phone is connected to the same WiFi network.

If that is all setup, then the App will sign you in and you can start controlling your Xbox with the phone.

To turn off Geo-tagging for photos, go to Settings – Applications – Pictures & Camera.

Then change ‘include location (GPS) information in pictures you take’

To disable the mobile version of websites, go to Settings – Applications – Internet Explorer and change it there.

This is useful if you get annoyed by websites automatically serving you mobile versions of their site. By following the steps above, you can tell the phone browser to act as a standard browser for each website that you browse.

OneNote is a great App for taking notes and syncs them on the Cloud and across all devices that you have OneNote setup for.

To set this up, go to your App Drawer and load OneNote. From here you can make, edit or share notes. To search for specific notes you can use the magnifying glass and press the + key to add a new note.

When browsing on your phone you may notice images can be quite blurry or distorted. This is because your network provider is compressing the images before they are downloaded on to your device.

Unfortunately there is no way to override this, but if you have a WiFi connection nearby, then you can turn that on. This will mean that all image downloads come through the WiFi connection, rather than your carrier, and the images should appear normally.

To disable caller ID, go to Settings – Applications – Phone.

Then change Show my Caller ID to either Everyone, No one or My contacts.

This is useful if you don’t want people to see your phone number when you call them.

Windows Phone 7 comes with a handy service whereby you can remotely lock or erase your phone should it be stolen. You can also use it to call your phone if you have misplaced it around the house. You can also find your phone on a map. Go to windowsphone.live.com to set this service up