Samsung Tab Pro 8.4 (tablet) Tips and Tricks

If you want to resize your homescreen widgets, then press and hold on a widget for 2 seconds. If the widget is resizable, then an outline will appear around the widget. Simply drag the sides to resize the widget.

If the outline doesn’t appear or you can’t drag the lines, then the widget is a fixed sized widget.

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.

There are a number of ways, as below. The first two of these may be disabled on some networks/carriers or Android versions however.

1) Go to Settings – More – Application Manager. Then swipe from right to left until you are on the All screen (at the top). Then scroll down to Contacts Storage – Clear Data.

2) Go to Contacts. Then press Menu – Delete. Then press Select all (at the top) and then Delete again.

3) Go to Settings – Accounts and sync. Then untick Background data and Auto-sync. Then go to Gmail (or an account that your phone syncs with) and delete all of your Contacts from there. Then re-sync your phone.

4) Download an App called ‘Delete All Contacts’ and use that as a last resort.

The methods above will delete contacts from the phone only, not the SIM card.

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.

Smartphones that are always connected to the internet are great, but if you have a data plan that is capped each month, then you will want to keep an eye on how much data you are downloading. Fortunately there is a built in feature to monitor this.

Go to Settings – Connections – Data usage. From here you can set a limit and set the usage cycle (e.g. a from and to date).

If you press the Menu button on this screen you will also see a number of features such as restrict background data usage (although this will prevent some Apps from working).

If you don’t want to hear the shutter sound when you take photos, then there are a few things you can try.

Firstly, some countries have laws to force the phone to play these sounds. Assuming you’re not in one of these countries, then the first thing you can try is to go to the Camera App – Settings – Shutter Sound – Off.

If that doesn’t work, then you can try turning the volume of the phone down or put it in silent mode when taking photos.

The last option is to Root your phone. If you don’t know what that means, then it’s best not to attempt it unless you have thoroughly read about the process. Once Rooted, go to this folder on your phone: /system/media/audio/ui and rename the camerashutter and/or cameraclick OGG files to something else.

Alternatively, on a rooted phone you can use a Root Browser, to edit /system/csc/feature.xml and set the option to TRUE. Then you should be able to go to Camera App – Settings – Shutter Sound – Off.

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.

To remove numbers from the call log that you don’t want anyone seeing, then open your Call Log.

This will normally be found on your Apps list or you can also go to your Dialler and find Logs or Call Logs.

Then press and hold on the contact you want to remove. When the Menu appears, press Delete.

To change keyboards (if you have additional keyboards installed), you can switch between them by pressing the small keyboard symbol in the top left of your screen. You will need to be in keyboard input mode (i.e. typing something) for this to work.

Note: you need to have more than one keyboard installed for this to work.

Android has an interesting new feature called Talkback which is designed for blind and low vision users.

The feature is an interesting way to navigate your phone however.

Simply go to Settings – My devices – Accessibility – Talkback to activate it.

Then your phone will give you an ongoing narration of its various functions.