Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini Tips and Tricks

Go to your browser bookmarks. Long press on a site and select Add shortcut to Home

In the Calendar App there is no Year view along the top of the App. You can however use pinch to zoom gestures to zoom in and out of Month and Year view however.

This is useful if you want to quickly jump backwards or forwards through a few months at a time.

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.

While in the contacts screen, start typing the name of the contact you want to dial. This will quickly filter the correct contact

There are two options to increase the font size on your phone:

The first is to simply install a new font that is larger than the default font. Font Changer and Type Fresh are two Apps that allow you to change Fonts on your phone (they do require Root access though).

The second option is to use dedicate Apps to change the font size, although they will normally only work for SMS and some Google Apps.

To enlarge the SMS font, go to the Android Market and download an App called ChompSMS. Among other things, the App allows you to increase the font size of your SMS messages.

For enlarge SMS and the standard Google Apps fonts, then download an App called SMS/Talk Text Enlarger.

After entering text a quick way to hide the keyboard is to press the Back key at the bottom of your screen. This saves having to hunt for the hide keyboard icon.

While in the Music Player, long press on the song title of the music and you can search Youtube for more music

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.

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 and choose Download offline speech recognition.

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

Face Unlock allows you to unlock your phone by holding it up to your face. It is highly recommended to use the Improve Face Unlock feature to make the recognition faster and more accurate.

First, ensure you have Face Unlock enabled. Go to Settings – Security – Screen lock. Then choose Face Unlock.

Once that is done go to Settings – Security – Improve face matching. You might have to do this a few times to improve the speed of recognition. It is also a good idea to position the phone at different angles to your head to improve the accuracy.

Note: this may not work on all phones. Check for a software update if it doesn’t work on yours.