Android 4.1.1 (Jellybean) Tips and Tricks

Google Books is a great App allowing you to read many titles on your phone, however you do require an internet connection. Fortunately there is a way to read these books offline.

Open the Google Books app and find the Book that you would like to read offline. Then simply press and hold on the book’s cover. Then choose ‘Make available offline’. You can then choose other books to make available offline by press the thumbtacks beneath each book. Then press Done in the bottom-right corner.

If you tend to run out of battery power quickly, then you can turn on power saving mode. Go to Menu – Settings – Power. Then check Enable power saver. You can then adjust when the power saving mode turns on.

Jelly Bean has an interesting new feature called Talkback which is designed for blind and low vision users.

The feature is an interesting way to navigate your phone however.

Simply go to Settings – Accessibility – Talkback to activate it. Then your phone will give you an ongoing narration of its various functions.

Here are the top 5 tips to make your phone run faster:

1) Use only essential widgets on your homescreen – each widget consumes memory and processing power which can slow your down your phone.

2) Uninstall apps that you don’t use – after awhile your phone can get cluttered as some Apps are designed to always run in the background. If you rarely use an App, then uninstall it to free up memory and CPU resource.

3) Install Apps to your phone memory – if you have an SDCard, always install Apps to the phone memory, which can be accessed faster. If you have Apps on the SDCard, then move them back to the phone memory with an App called Move2SD available from the Play Market.

4) Use Static rather than Live wallpapers – Live wallpapers consume processing power and memory. Unless you really must have them, uninstall them.

5) 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.

One last thing: Don’t use Task Killers. Android manages tasks very well and Task Killers just make your phone unstable and can slow it down further.

Jelly Bean has improved the facial unlcock feature by creating a setting whereby you must blink when unlocking your phone. This prevents fraudsters using a photo of yourself and holding it up to the phone.

To activate this feature go to Settings – Security – Screen Security and tick Liveness check

There a couple of ways to find your IMEI address depending on your device. The first is to look in the phone’s settings by going to Settings – About Phone – Status.

Then scroll down until you see IMEI Address.

The other method is to open your battery cover and remove the battery. Find your phone’s serial number plate and your IMEI number should be shown there.

If you regularly visit a website you can add a shortcut to your homescreen. To do this, go into your browser and find the bookmark of the page you want to create a shortcut for. Long press on the bookmark and select Add Shortcut to Home

To share or upload a video to services like Facebook or Youtube, start from your Gallery App and long press on a video.

From here you will be given options to share the video with various services.

From the homescreen, press Menu – Settings – Wireless & networks – Bluetooth Settings. Check that Bluetooth is enabled and press Scan devices. Choose the desired device and press Accept. You may be asked to enter a PIN or Password.

To stop the Photo App or the Music player from indexing your files, place a blank text file called .nomedia in the folder containing your photos or music