Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge Tips and Tricks

Android 6.0 (Marshmallow)
Phone: Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge
Factory OS: Android 6.0 (Marshmallow)

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At the bottom of each home screen 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 home screen to the favourites tray.

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 on the search bar at the top, press the Hamburger / Menu icon and select Offline areas.

Next, select Custom area. Then zoom and pan around the required map area. The size of the offline map will be shown beneath the map area. When done, press the Download button.

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 should 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.

There are a couple of ways to add new home screens to your device.

The simplest is to go to one of your existing home screens and simply pinch the screen. This will show all of your home screens in thumbnail view. Then just press the Plus symbol to add another. You can also press and hold, then drag a home screen to a different position. Or press the little Home icon to make one of them your default home screen.

Another option is to download a Launcher App. These are third-party user interfaces that allow you to customize your phone in many ways. Most of them allow multiple home screens. A very popular launcher which supports multiple home screens is GoLauncher EX.

Simply go the Play Store and search for GoLauncher EX or another launcher.

Depending on how your device is setup, sometimes when Apps are installed, a shortcut icon is automatically placed on your home screens.

This can be annoying for users who want to keep their home screens clutter-free.

To stop then, go to the Play Store and press the Hamburger / menu icon in the top left.

Then choose Settings and untick Add icon to Home Screen

The Play store contains thousands of great Apps, but sometimes you’ll want to restrict access, particularly if you have kids and are concerned about what they can access.

First, open the Android Play Store App. Then press the Hamburger / Settings icon and then scroll down to Settings.

Then select Parental controls and turn these on.

Create a PIN code and then confirm the PIN and press OK.

Then you’ll see a number of categories including Apps & games, Films, TV, Mags and Music.

You can select each of these individually and then choose an age rating that is appropriate for users of your devices.

To open a web page in a new tab, find a link on a web page. Then press on it and then choose to open the site in a new tab.

If you are not happy with your notification light, then you can change and tweak it. Go to the Play Store and download an App called Light Flow.

You might need to enable the notification light before the App works. Go to Settings – Device – Sounds and notifications – LED Indicator.

Android manages Apps very well and some Apps do not have the option to close them specifically. Normally the App will stay running in the background and only close when many other Apps have been opened.

If you do want to close or terminate an App, then press and hold the Multitasking key on your phone. On some devices you may need to long press the Home key.

Then you can swipe the Apps off the screen to close them.

If you find that apps are slowing down your device or consuming unecessary memory or batter life, then try downloading an App called DU Battery Saver or DU Speed Boost which are great for optimising the Apps that are running.

There is no need to be stuck with the standard Android keyboard, which isn’t always great for typing quickly.

Go to the Play Store and search for ‘Keyboard’ to see some great alternatives, many of which are more accurate and make typing much easier.

One of the very best is SwiftKey. They provide a free trial, but once the trial is over it is well worth the small amount of money they charge. It can increase your typing rates massively.

Another good one is GoKeyboard.

If you see a warning saying the keyboard will collect all information (including credit cards) just ignore this. This is just a security feature that Android shows for every third-party keyboard that you install.

The phone has the ability to send quick response text messages if your phone is ringing but you can’t answer it.

To change these, go to your Dialler App and press the Menu or More button.

Then select Settings – Call blocking – Call-reject messages.

From here you can add or edit your reject messages.