Sony Xperia 1 Tips and Tricks

Previously Android version had options to add any number of home screen as desired.

Some versions of Android 9 only come with three home screens, meaning you cannot add multiple home screens manually.

But there is another way to add more than three screens:

For that 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.

Android now comes with a sound Equaliser so you can adjust your bass and treble.

Simply open a music file using the Music Player App.

Then go to Settings – Scroll down for Equalizer.

Then simply drag the sliders up and down to adjust the bass and treble.

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, then press and drag an App from the homescreen and move it over the top of an App it will create folder containing the existing App and the new app, so no need to remove some from the tray.

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.?

To quickly close Apps, press the Multitasking key

This will display your currently running Apps. From here you can simply swipe the Apps off the screen by dragging your finger Bottom to top. This is a very quick way to free up some memory.

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.

Rather than having to locate the hang up icon on the screen after each call, you can quickly end a call by pressing the Power button.

To enable this feature, go to Settings – Personal – Accessibility – Answering/ending calls. Then tick The power button ends calls.

To lock your screen while you are watching videos, simply press the power button.

This will disable the touchscreen buttons while the video is playing, but it won’t turn the screen off like the lock key normally does.

Note, this will only work on video files that you are playing that are stored on your phone. It won’t work for videos played within websites, such as YouTube videos.?

Normally you can simply insert a SIM card and you will be able to browse the internet using 3G. Sometimes, this must be setup manually however. Before you start, you will need to ask your carrier or Telco for your APN settings.

Once you have those, go to Settings – Connections – Mobile networks – Access Point Names.

From here press the Plus sign at the top right and select New APN. Then fill in the details your carrier gave you. Then press the menu button and press Save.

If you already have an Android phone, then simply ensure each of your old Contacts are stored on Google (rather than the Phone memory). This means your contacts are stored on Google’s servers under your Google/Gmail login. Then once you get the new phone, log in with your Gmail account and your Contacts will be automatically synced.

If you do not have an Android device, you need to find a way to Export your old contacts to a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file and save this to a PC. You may need to install the correct software for your phone first in order to do the export.

Then, if you don’t have a Gmail account, sign up for one.

Once that’s done, open Gmail. Go to Contacts, then press More – Settings – Import/Export Contacts. Then import the CSV to your Gmail contacts.

Then on your phone, go to Settings ?- Accounts – Google and then select ?Auto Sync to pull the contacts from Gmail to your phone.

Another method which is most helpful is to move all number from your old phone memory to your network Sim. Now insert this sim in new phone, and move all your contacts form SIM memory to Phone memory.

Android cleverly uses Picasa to sync photos between your account and your phone. Sometimes however, this means that you will get duplicates appearing in your Gallery when they’re not actually on your phone.

To stop this from happening, and so you only see photos on the Phone or SD card, then follow these steps:

Drag down your notification menu from the top and click on the Gear icon to bring up your Settings. Then select Accounts and Google. Then select your Gmail account.

You should see a list of options that are ticked. Scroll down to the one that refers to Picasa and untick that.

Now that’s done we want to remove the thumbnails from your Gallery, so we need to refresh the Gallery. To do that, swipe down and go to Settings again. Then select More – Application Manager. Swipe across to show ALL Apps. Then find the Gallery App and press Clear Data.

This will erase the thumbnails in your Gallery, so don’t panic that your photos have disappeared. Just wait for the Gallery to re-build its index which could take awhile.

But the good news is that your Picasa Albums shouldn’t be there anymore.