Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2 Tips and Tricks

Android 4.2 (Jellybean)
Phone: Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2
Factory OS: Android 4.2 (Jellybean)

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Then view tips for the most recent OS version(s): Android 9 (Pie) & Android 8 (Oreo)
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To find out information about Signal Strength, Network Information, Remaining Battery Time and Battery Usage (by Application), go to your Homescreen – Menu – Settings – About Device – Status.

To add a widget, simply long press on a blank part of one of your homescreens. Then select Widget. Scroll through the list of available widgets and choose one. It will be placed on your homescreen and you can move it around as you desire.

From the Homescreen press Menu – Settings – Display – Brightness. Then choose the desired brightness setting. You can also select Automatic brightness to let the phone decide for you.

If you want to hide folders or files from being index or displayed, simple put a . (full top / period) before the file or folder name.

Jelly Bean has improved the facial unlock feature by creating a setting whereby you must blink when unlocking your phone. This prevents fraudsters using a photo of yourself and holding it up to the phone.

To activate this feature go to Settings – Lock screen – Screen lock – Face unlock. Then setup your facial unlocking.

Then once that is done, go to Face unlock again and tick Presence check.

To stop the Photo App or the Music player from indexing your files, place a blank text file called .nomedia in the folder containing your photos or music

While the stock standard keyboard is fine, there are much better keyboards available. First, you need to go to the Android Market and download one. Try searching for the word ‘keyboard’ and you will see a number of options.

One of the best keyboards is a keyboard called Swiftkey, which is a top-rate App.

Download your chosen keyboard and go through any install steps that you are presented with.

Then, go to the App you want to type in. You should now see a little Keyboard icon on the row at the bottom of your screen, towards the bottom-right corner. Press that icon and you can switch between all of the keyboards you have installed.

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 – Call – Call rejection. From here you can manage your rejection list of numbers.

If you are abroad and don’t want to pay high data roaming charges, then you can save Google Maps for offline viewing later. Here are two ways to do this:

The first method will depend whether your phone supports it. First, open Google Maps and navigate to a section of the map that you want available offline. Then press on the search bar and scroll right to the bottom and select Make this map area available offline. You may need to repeat this with multiple areas.

Alternatively, open Google Maps and zoom down to street level. Then scroll around area you’ll be travelling too. If you’re visiting a city for example, do this at street level and cover as much area as you think you’ve be visiting. If you’re travelling outside a city, then street level view might be too detailed, so zoom out and just cover the main roads, towns etc.

This will load all the segments into your phone’s cache. Then when have arrived at your destination and you have data turned off, you will see the areas you’ve stored on the phone’s memory.

Note: this won’t give you your GPS location because that normally needs a data connection to pinpoint your position.

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.