Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Tips and Tricks

To quickly close Apps, press the Home key

This will display your currently running Apps. From here you can simply swipe the Apps off the screen by dragging your finger left or right. This is a very quick way to free up some memory.

To change the homescreen or lock screen wallpaper, press on a blank part of the homescreen. Next, choose Wallpapers. Then choose Live (animated / moving wallpapers) or standard wallpapers (images) and choose whether you want the wallpaper on the homescreen or the lock screen. Then crop the wallpaper and press Ok in the top-right corner.

You can also use images Gallery images taken with the phone’s camera for your wallpaper.

There are a number of ways, as below. The first two of these may be disabled on some networks/carriers or Android versions however.

1) Go to Settings – Applications – Manage Applications. Then chose All at the top. Then scroll down to Contacts Storage – Clear Data.

2) Go to Contacts. Then press Menu – Delete. Then press Select all (at the top) and then Delete again.

3) Go to Settings – Accounts and sync. Then untick Background data and Auto-sync. Then go to Gmail (or an account that your phone syncs with) and delete all of your Contacts from there. Then re-sync your phone.

4) Download an App called ‘Delete All Contacts’ and use that as a last resort.

These methods above will delete contacts from the phone only, not the SIM card.

If you are not happy with your notification light, then you can change and tweak it. Go to the Android Market and download an App called Lightflow.

You might need to enable the notification light before the App works. Go to Settings – Display. Then check Pulse notification.

If you use the Face Unlock feature but you’re in a dark room or wearing a hat and scarf, you can bypass the unlock just once.

Simply press the Lock icon on your screen and you can then enter your PIN instead.

If you would to see a preview of text messages appear on your homescreen or lock screen as they come in, then to into the standard Messaging App. Then go to Settings – Notification settings – Preview message

If you want to remove an entire text message thread, go into Messages and look for the thread. Then long press on it and select Delete thread

To change the backlight screen timeout, go to Settings – 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 – Developer Options. Then check Stay Awake.

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

The Speech to Text feature is a great tool for dictating speech on to your phone, but has normally only been possible when your phone is connected to the internet.

Now this is possible in Offline mode too. Simply go to Settings – Language & input – Voice Search. Then choose Download offline speech recognition.

You can now use this feature without needing an internet connection.

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