Android 4.2 (Jellybean) Tips and Tricks

By default, the tablet will recognise swear words, but insert x’s instead of the word. To change this, go to Settings – Voice input & output – Voice recognition settings. Then untick Block offensive words.

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.

WARNING: Some of the following MAY delete your music library. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

There are a number of solutions to this error. Go through the following steps:

Go to Settings – Applications. Then swipe right to left to go to All (along the top). Then find the App called Media Storage. Click on that and select Force Close. Then select Clear Data. (WARNING: this may delete your music).

Next, go back to list of Apps and find Music Player. Again, press Force Close and then Clear Data.

Once that’s done, go to the Play Store and download an App called Re Scan Media and run it. Wait 5 minutes for the device to re-scan your media.

If you still cannot play your music, then try turning your phone off and removing your SDCard / memory card (if you have one). Then turn the phone on without the card. Then turn it off again and reinsert the card. Finally turn it on again with the card back in.

If you still can’t play music, then some users have said that there may be a conflict with the Twitter App. Try uninstalling this and see if the error persists.

If you don’t want to hear the shutter sound when you take photos, then there are a few things you can try.

Firstly, some countries have laws to force the phone to play these sounds. Assuming you’re not in one of these countries, then the first thing you can try is to go to the Camera App – Settings – Shutter Sound – Off.

If that doesn’t work, then you can try turning the volume of the phone down or put it in silent mode when taking photos.

The last option is to Root your phone. If you don’t know what that means, then it’s best not to attempt it unless you have thoroughly read about the process. Once Rooted, go to this folder on your phone: /system/media/audio/ui and rename the camerashutter and/or cameraclick OGG files to something else.

Alternatively, on a rooted phone you can use a Root Browser, to edit /system/csc/feature.xml and set the option to TRUE. Then you should be able to go to Camera App – Settings – Shutter Sound – Off.

Depending on how your phone is set up, sometimes you will see lag when swiping between homescreens. There are a number of things you can try to fix this, as follows:

First, try restarting your phone. This will fix many problems.

If that doesn’t work, then remove any Widgets that pull data to the phone, such as Twitter, Weather widgets etc

If you have Live wallpapers turned on, then try turning them off by going to Settings – Wallpapers, then changing to a different Wallpaper.

Go to Settings – Developer Options – Window Animation Scale and Transition Animation Scale. Try changing these to 0.5x (or even 0).

Sometimes the problem can be with the phone or operators skin or launcher, so try going to the Play Store and downloading a third party launcher such as Nova launcher or Go LauncherEx. Note: you will need to re-create your homescreen shortcuts, but they are both great launchers.

Another tip is to always press the Back key instead of the Home key when leaving Apps. The Back key will often close the App properly, while the Home key will leave it running in the background.

First open your Contacts App. Then press the phone’s Menu button and select Edit.

Then you should see a silhouette of a person. Press this, or a little + sign next to it and you will be given the option to take a photo or add one from the Gallery.

The brightness of the browser is set separately to the phone’s main brightness. If you find the screen dims or brightens when you go into your browser, then you can change this by opening the browser, pressing the Menu key and scrolling down until you see Brightness and colour. You can adjust it from here.

To adjust the phone’s main brightness, go to the Homescreen, press Menu – Settings – Display – Brightness.

An alternative is to use a third party browser like Dolphin, Firefox, Opera and so on. These all use the phone’s main brightness setting.

Lastly, sometimes Power Saving Mode affects the screen brightness. Go to Settings – Power Saving Mode and change the Background Colour Only mode in there. Power Saving Mode can be found by in the Notifications bar by swiping down from the top of the screen too.

If you want to receive calls during the night, but don’t want to be woken up by notifications like text messages, then you can turn notifications to silent.

Go to Settings – Sounds. Then change notifications to silent.

Another great option is to download an App called Profile Valet. This will help you switch profiles automatically based on the time of day or location. Perfect for when you have a regular work routine and don’t want to have to worry about switching profiles several times a day.

When entering text into Apps such as your Messaging App, Facebook App and so on, you can tap on the words to start selecting text. Normally, you would then drag the left and right sliders to select the word, or words you want to highlight.

If you double tap on a word however, it will quickly select that word. Very handy for quickly copying and one words, name or place.

First open your Contacts App and select a contact. Then press the phone’s Menu button and select Edit.

Then you should see a silhouette of a person. Press this, or a little + sign next to it and you will be given a number of options to create a photo or image for that contact.