Samsung Galaxy A9 Tips and Tricks

Locking your phone is a great security feature, but when you’re at home it’s normally not necessary.

A featured called Trusted Places enables you to bypass the lock screen when you’re at specific geographic places.

To set it up go to Settings – Lock screen and security – Smart lock – Trusted places. You can also set up the bypass to work when your phone is connected to specific Bluetooth devices such as Smartwatches or Audio devices.

You can also override this (i.e. lock your screen when it is at the location). To override, just press and hold the padlock icon on the lockscreen.

This may not work on all phones, models or networks.

Instead of the simple swipe gesture to unlock your phone, you can set a custom one which can be extremely difficult for a thief to guess.

From your homescreen, go to Settings – Personal – Lock screen – and security – Screen lock type and choose Pattern.

It is also a good idea to untick Use visible pattern. Then if someone is watching over your shoulder while you entering your pattern, it will be harder for them to remember the pattern.

If you have forgotten your unlock pattern, then after 5 unsuccessful tries a button will appear saying ‘Forgot pattern’. Press this and you will be asked to enter your Gmail username/password. The phone will then ask for a new unlock pattern. If you don’t have a Gmail account, then you will have to either call your carrier or factory reset your phone.

You can speed up the page load speed on your browser by disabling JavaScript.

To do this, open your Browser, then press the Menu or More button and then Settings. Then select Advanced and change the Enable JavaScript
option.

Please note that this may affect the functionality of some sites.

If you want to setup new email accounts, like Yahoo or Hotmail, go to your list of Apps.

Find the Email icon and press on it. A setup wizard will then be launched.

Enter you email address and password into the fields. You can also change the settings after this step.

Once you’re happy with the settings, give your account a Name and you’re done.

Sometimes while typing long text or SMS messages you will get a message saying Converting to multimedia message. This won’t normally cause a problem, however some users do not want to send a MMS message.

There are a number of different settings to deal with this, however there isn’t really a way to prevent the phone from converting to an MMS. The reason for this is that any message over 480 characters cannot be sent as an SMS message. They must be sent as an MMS. The is a restriction of SMS messages in general, similar to the original limit of 160 characters.

What you can do however is ensure you get alerted when you have reached 480 characters. Then you can decide to send the message as an SMS and continue your conversation on a second message.

To check this setting is on, open your Message App and press More – Settings and More Settings – Multimedia messages. Then select Set restrictions and choose Warning. You will now be told when your message is being converted to MMS.

You can also change the settings for Creation mode which lets you restrict messages that go over a certain size. If you select Warning or Restricted, you should get further warnings when your message is really large and may not be handled by the network.

The following is a list of commands that can be used for the Google Now service. This can be accessed by using the Google Search widget on your homescreen. Simply press the little microphone icon and say the commands below:

General
Search for
Who invented
Show me the stocks for
Author of
How old is
How tall is

Time & Date
What time is it in
When is the in
When is the sunset in
What is the time zone of
Time at home

Weather
Show me the weather
Is it going to rain tomorrow?
Do I need an umbrella?
Do I need a jacket
What is the weather in
How is the weather on going to be?

Maps / Location
Map of
Show me the nearby on map
Where is situated?
in
Navigate to in car
I am hungry (shows all nearby food points on map)
How far is from

Calculations / Conversions
How much is times
What is percent of
Square root of
… equals
What is the numerical value of Pi
Convert into
Temperature of the sun

Sports
points table
Who won the last match between and
scorecard
Schedule of games

Websites
Go to
Open
Show me
Browse to

Entertainment
Listen to
Play
YouTube
When was the first episode of
movies
Who acted in
Who is the producer of
When was released
Runtime of

Notes / Reminders
Remind me to at
Wake me up in
at
Self note to
Set alarm for

Contacts / Communication
Call
Send to via text
(shows the contact card)
Call in
Send a text to
Email to , B C C , Subject , message

Flights
Flight Status of
Has landed/departed
When will land

Other
Do a barrel roll

If you have been browsing websites that you would prefer other people to not know about, then it’s relatively simply to clear your browsing history.

Open the browser and press the Menu or More button at the top. Then Privacy – Delete personal data.

From here you can select whether to clear the cache, cookies, passwords and more.

If you want to check how much RAM you have available, drag down your notifications screen and select Settings. Then under Device, select Applications and then Application Manager.

Then swipe from right to left so you see the Running Apps.

At the bottom it should say how much is used and how much is free.

If you want to access certain features of your device that are only available to developers, then you want the Developer options setting.

On most devices, this feature is hidden so you will need to pull down your notifications screen go into Settings. Then scroll down to About device.

Then you should see Build Number. This needs to be pressed a total of seven times. You should get a message at the fourth press. On the seventh, you’ll get another message saying that Developer Options are unlocked.

There is no need to be stuck with the standard Android keyboard, which isn’t always great for typing quickly.

Go to the Play Store and search for ‘Keyboard’ to see some great alternatives, many of which are more accurate and make typing much easier.

One of the very best is SwiftKey. They provide a free trial, but once the trial is over it is well worth the small amount of money they charge. It can increase your typing rates massively.

Another good one is GoKeyboard.

If you see a warning saying the keyboard will collect all information (including credit cards) just ignore this. This is just a security feature that Android shows for every third-party keyboard that you install.