Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini Tips and Tricks

If you have decided to ditch your iPhone in favour of Android, then there is a simple way to take your iTunes music, playlists and album art with you.

Simply go the Android Marketplace and download a Free App called Easy Phone Tunes. You will also need the computer version of the software, so go to http://easyphonetunes.com and download it from there.

Then, when that is done, turn your phone into a USB storage device (this will vary from device to device, but instructions are on the website).

Once your device is connected to your computer, open the computer version of the software and select your device from the Easy Phone Tunes list. Then follow the instructions to Sync your media.

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.

To set your voicemail number which allows your phone to automatically input your voicemail password, then open your Dialler App.

Then press the Menu key and choose Call settings. Then scroll down to Voicemail settings and set a Voicemail number (you might need to check with your carrier for the correct number).

Depending on your carrier you may have to enter the series of steps required to go through the voicemail menu, for example: *86,,yourpassword# (a comma inserts a pause).

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 are browsing a website and want to see the HTML source code behind the page, then Android doesn’t offer you the ability to do this by default.

There is however a handy App called View Web Source which can be installed. Whenever you want to view the HTML of a web page, you just press the Menu – Share – View Web Source.

You can then browse the code or copy the content into the clipboard.

To speed up your phone, you can turn off screen animations. Go to Settings – Developer options.

Then scroll down to Window animation scale and select that. From here you can choose to turn Animations Off. This will make screen transitions faster.

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

If you want to setup new email accounts, like Yahoo or Hotmail, go to your list of Apps.

Find the Email icon and press on it. A setup wizard will then be launched.

Enter you email address and password into the fields. You can also change the settings after this step.

Once you’re happy with the settings, give your account a Name and you’re done.

With the recent versions of Android you can now take photos while recording video by simply pressing the screen.

This will save that particular frame to the gallery while continuing to record video.

Sometimes you will want to prevent your device fro, displaying or indexing folders on your Phone storage or USB storage.

To do this, simply rename the folder and place a . (full top / period) before the file or folder name.

This can be done through the Files App or by plugging your device in to your computer and renaming it there.

To show the Browser History, open your Android stock browser (the default browser). Then press the Menu key and select History.

To clear history, press the Menu key again and select Clear History.