Samsung Galaxy J5 Tips and Tricks

Android 6.0 (Marshmallow)
Phone: Samsung Galaxy J5
Factory OS: Android 6.0 (Marshmallow)

Have you updated your Operating System?
Then view tips for the most recent OS version(s): Android 9 (Pie) & Android 8 (Oreo)
Or view tips for all Android versions

To add an email or phone number to your contacts from a text message, you can long-press on the email / phone number. Then select Copy text.

Once that has been copied to your clipboard, go to your Contacts App and select the Create New Icon.

Enter the contact details, then select either email or phone and long press on the field. Then select Paste to paste the info from the original text message.

There are a number of ways to speed up your phone. The following list are tried and trusted techniques:

Firstly, uninstall apps that you don’t use. Over time your device can get cluttered as some Apps are designed to always run in the background. If you don’t use an App very often, then uninstall it to free up memory and CPU resource.

Use Static wallpapers instead of Live ones. Live wallpapers often consume processing power and memory. Unless you really need them, uninstall them.

Use home screen widgets sparingly. These often slow down the phone and use up memory and CPU resources. If you don’t really need the widget, then uninstall it.

Install a great App called DU Speed Booster and DU Battery Booster. These Apps are prefect to run when your phone starts to slow down, you’re running out of memory or you want your battery to last for a few more minutes or hours.

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.

If you are browsing YouTube videos on your phone and they appear blurry, then this is usually because of your connection speed.

If you are using 3G / 4G and you’re in an area of low signal strength, then YouTube will sometimes automatically reduce the quality of the video. Unfortunately this can make the video very pixelated and of poor quality.

If you are using the standard Android browser, then when the video is in full screen, press the back button. Then press HQ and start playing it again.

If you are using another browser, then press the Settings icon on the bottom right of the YouTube video. Then change the quality.

This may improve the quality, but it may also lead to buffering issues.

Another solution is to use a WiFi connection, if one is available.

If you tend to run out of battery power quickly, then you can turn on Power saving mode.

Pull down the notification screen by swiping your finger from the top of the phone.

Then select Power Saving. You may need to scroll left to right along the available icons.

To change the settings, then pull down the notification screen again, press the Settings / Gear icon at the top.

Then under System select Battery and then Power saving mode to change the options.

Depending on how your device is setup, sometimes when Apps are installed, a shortcut icon is automatically placed on your home screens.

This can be annoying for users who want to keep their home screens clutter-free.

To stop then, go to the Play Store and press the Hamburger / menu icon in the top left.

Then choose Settings and untick Add icon to Home Screen

There are a couple of ways to bring up one of your contacts.

First, while in your Contacts App, simply start typing in the search bar at the top of the screen.

Or else a quicker method is to use the Google Search widget (installed by long pressing on a vacant part of your home screen and installing the widget) and start typing the name of the contact you want to dial. This will quickly filter the correct contact.

Android has a way to display your owner info (i.e. name, phone, email or a personalised message) on your lock screen. Perfect if you have lost or misplaced your device.

To enable this go to Settings – Personal – Lock screen and security – Info and app shortcuts – Owner information.

Here you can enter any information you want, such as your name or email address.

Hopefully if your phone is lost, then the finder can use this information to get in contact with you.

Type a word that is not in the dictionary. The word will show up in the suggestion box to the left. Long press on the word and it will save to the dictionary.

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.

While in your email App, a handy trick is to pinch and zoom out to see a ‘day view’ of your emails. This is handy if you have a lot of emails and want to quickly sort them by recency.