Samsung Galaxy S6 Tips and Tricks

Locking your phone is a great security feature, but when you’re at home it’s normally not necessary.

A featured called Trusted Places enables you to bypass the lock screen when you’re at specific geographic places.

To set it up go to Settings – Lock screen and security – Smart lock – Trusted places. You can also set up the bypass to work when your phone is connected to specific Bluetooth devices such as Smartwatches or Audio devices.

You can also override this (i.e. lock your screen when it is at the location). To override, just press and hold the padlock icon on the lockscreen.

This may not work on all phones, models or networks.

Most Android devices come with an alternative way of entering text called Swype. Many prefer this method and believe it is quicker.

When any text entry box appears, press and hold the box. Then select Input method: SWYPE. Once enabled, you simply drag your finger around the keyboard moving over the letters in the correct order to spell a word.

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 along the available icons.

To change the settings, then pull down the notification screen again, press the Gear icon at the top. Then under System select Battery and then Power saving mode to change the options.

When browsing on your phone you may notice images are quite blurry. This is because your telecom provider is compressing the images before they are downloaded on to your phone.

There is no way to prevent this, but if you have a WiFi connection nearby, then you can turn that on. This will mean that all browser downloads come through the WiFi connection, rather than the carrier, and your images will appear normally.

At the bottom of each homescreen is your favourites tray, which consists of 5 icons. You can customise it by adding icons to the tray. If it’s full however, you will first need to remove some.

To remove an icon, simply press and hold an icon. Then drag it to your desktop.

Then to add a new one, simply drag an icon from your homescreen to the favourites tray.

If you want to go to settings, then you can go to your list of Apps and open the Settings App.

There is however a quicker way. Simply position your finger right at the top of the screen and drag it down. You may need to do this twice on some phones.

Your notification bar will appear and you can then press the small Gear icon at the top of the screen to go to the Settings.

The Do Not Disturb is a very useful feature if you are in a meeting or somewhere where you want to block incoming calls or messages.

To enabled Do Not Disturb, drag down your notifications and go into Settings – Sounds and notifications. Then under the Notifications section, press Do Not Disturb.

Once this is setup, you can allow exceptions for certain Apps. To set these up, press Allow Exceptions, then App notifications. You should now see a list of all of your Apps. Choose one and then select Set as priority.

Now, when notifications come in via this App and you have Do Not Disturb enabled, you should see the notifications.

The most recent version of Android now comes with a built in Flashlight / Torch App.

To find this, simply pull down to see your notifications. Then on the top bar (where you see your settings for WiFi, Bluetooth etc.), scroll across until you see Torch.

If you find yourself woken up by notifications, text messages or incoming calls, then there is a handy feature called Blocking mode.

To enable this go to Settings – Device – Sounds and notifications – Do not disturb.

From here you can set a From and To time in which to block these notifications.

You can also allow notifications through from certain contacts that you don’t mind bothering you.

If you are running low on phone memory, you can look for your largest applications to uninstall.

Go to Settings – Applications – Application manager. Then swipe from right to left and select Running.

From here you can see which applications are taking up the most memory and close them.