Samsung Galaxy Star 2 Tips and Tricks

If you regularly visit a website you can add a shortcut to your homescreen which can be quite useful, rather than entering the web address each time you want to visit the site.

You can either do this to an existing Bookmark, or simply a page you’re visiting:

1) Open your Browser App. Enter the website you want to bookmark. You may need to wait for the whole page to load first. Then press the phone’s menu button (bottom left of the phone) and select Add shortcut to home.

2) Open your Browser App. Find an existing Bookmark by pressing the symbol in the top the right of the screen. Choose the Bookmark. Then press and hold and select Add shortcut to home.

Instead of the simple swipe gesture to unlock your phone, you can set a custom one which can be extremely difficult for a thief to guess.

From your homescreen, go to Settings – My device – Lock screen – Screen lock and choose Pattern.

It is also a good idea to untick Use visible pattern. Then if someone is watching over your shoulder while you entering your pattern, it will be harder for them to remember the pattern.

If you have forgotten your unlock pattern, then after 5 unsuccessful tries a button will appear saying ‘Forgot pattern’. Press this and you will be asked to enter your Gmail username/password. The phone will then ask for a new unlock pattern. If you don’t have a Gmail account, then you will have to either call your carrier or factory reset your phone.

You can speed up the page load speed on your browser by disabling JavaScript.

To do this, open your Browser, then Menu – Settings – Content Settings. Scroll down and untick Enable JavaScript

Please note that this may affect the functionality of some sites.

To enable Face Unlock, go into Settings – My device – Lock screen – Screen lock.

Then select Face unlock. From here you will be required to look at the phone via the front facing camera. It is usually better to do this during the day when the lighting is better, although the phone will guide you through the process.

If you want to install Apps outside of the Play Store (called sideloading), then go to Settings – More – Security and select Unknown sources.

This setting will allow you to download Apps onto your device that would normally be blocked in the Play store.

Note: use at your own risk.

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

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

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 homescreens. A very popular launcher which supports multiple homescreens is GoLauncher EX. Simply go the Play Store and search for GoLauncher EX or another launcher.

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.

If you want to conserve battery life, you can turn off the WiFi while the phone is asleep.

Go to Settings – WiFi. Then press the Menu key and Advanced.

Then untick Keep WiFi on during sleep.

To quickly hide the on-screen keyboard, press the Back button

If you want to access certain features of your device that are only available to developers, then you want the Developer options setting.

Go to your Settings – More – Developer options and you will see the available features.

On some devices, the developer options have been hidden. To enable these, go to Settings – More – About device.

Then go to the bottom and you should see Build Number. This needs to be pressed a total of seven times. You should get a message at the fourth press. On the seventh, you’ll get another message saying that Developer Options are unlocked.