Samsung Galaxy Alpha Tips and Tricks

To change the backlight screen timeout, go to your Home Screen and press the menu key (bottom right). Choose Settings – My Device – Display – Screen timeout. Then choose the screen time out duration.

You can also tell the phone screen to always stay lit when it is plugged in via USB. Go to Settings – More – Developer Options. Then check Stay Awake.

Note: Developer Options is not always enabled by default. To enable, go to Settings – More – About Device. Then tap on Build number 7 times.

It can be very useful to see your battery life in percentage terms instead of just the icon.

To enable this, go to Settings – My device – Display and tick Display battery percentage.

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.

Sometimes those Lock Screen widgets are great, sometimes they are a pain.

To disable them completely, go to Settings – More – Security

Smartphones that are always connected to the internet are great, but if you have a data plan that is capped each month, then you will want to keep an eye on how much data you are downloading. Fortunately there is a built in feature to monitor this.

Go to Settings – Connections – Data usage. From here you can set a limit and set the usage cycle (e.g. a from and to date).

If you press the Menu button on this screen you will also see a number of features such as restrict background data usage (although this will prevent some Apps from working).

At the bottom of each homescreen is your favourites tray, which consists of 5 icons. You can customise it by adding icons to the tray. If it’s full however, you will first need to remove some.

To remove an icon, simply press and hold an icon. Then drag it to your desktop.

Then to add a new one, simply drag an icon from your homescreen to the favourites tray.

Normally you can simply insert a SIM card and you will be able to browse the internet using 3G. Sometimes, this must be setup manually however. Before you start, you will need to ask your carrier or Telco for your APN settings.

Once you have those, go to Settings – Connections – More networks – Mobile networks – Access Point Names.

From here press the Plus sign at the top right and select New APN. Then fill in the details your carrier gave you. Then press the menu button and press Save.

If you find yourself being stalked or receiving unwanted calls nuisance calls from people or companies then you should use the Call rejection mode.

Simply go to Settings – My device – Call – Call rejection. From here you can manage your rejection list of numbers.

If you find yourself woken up by notifications, text messages or incoming calls, then there is a handy feature called Blocking mode.

To enable this go to Settings – My device – Blocking mode.

From here you can set a From and To time in which to block these notifications.

You can also allow notifications through from certain contacts that you don’t mind bothering you.

If you’re worried about your sensitive data falling into the wrong hands then Android has a great new encryption feature that scrambles every pieces of content on your device.

Go to Settings – More – Security – Encrypt device or Encrypt external SD card.