Android 4.1.1 (Jellybean) Tips and Tricks
If you want to remove an entire text message conversation (or thread), go into Messages and look for the thread. Then long press on it and select the Trash icon.
You can also select multiple threads. Before you press the Trash, you can highlight the threads you want deleted. Then press Trash.
If you want to resize your homescreen widgets, then press and hold on a widget for 2 seconds. If the widget is resizable, then an orange outline will appear around the widget. Simply drag the sides to resize the widget.
If the orange outline doesn’t appear, then the widget is a fixed sized widget.
Most Android phones only come with a fixed amount of homescreens. There is a way to add more however.
Go to Android Play Market and search for ‘launcher’. These are third-party user interfaces that allow you to customize your phone in many ways. Most of them allow multiple homescreens.
A very popular launcher which supports multiple homescreens is GoLauncher EX.
Face Unlock allows you to unlock your phone by holding it up to your face. It is highly recommended to use the Improve Face Unlock feature to make the recognition faster and more accurate.
First, ensure you have Face Unlock enabled. Go to Settings – Security – Screen lock. Then choose Face Unlock.
Once that is done go to Settings – Security – Improve face matching. You might have to do this a few times to improve the speed of recognition. It is also a good idea to position the phone at different angles to your head to improve the accuracy.
Note: this may not work on all phones. Check for a software update if it doesn’t work on yours.
To view your notifications, simply slide your finger down from the top of your device.
Then, from here, you can use two fingers to expand certain items. For example, this might show you the headers of your emails.
Moving your two fingers inwards contracts that item.
If you prefer a different voice when listening to the Google Maps voice navigation, you can select another language or accent.
From the Homescreen press Menu – Settings – Voice input and output – Text-to-speech settings. Then under the Default settings section, press Default engine.
To change the language, go through the same process, but instead of Default engine, select Language.
After entering text a quick way to hide the keyboard is to press the Back key at the bottom of your screen. This saves having to hunt for the hide keyboard icon.
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 – Power button ends call.
While in the Camera App, there are two ways to zoom in or out.
First, you can use Volume Up and Down keys.
Secondly, you can pinch your fingers on the screen to zoom in and out.
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