Sony Xperia C Tips and Tricks

If you are browsing YouTube videos on your phone and they appear blurry, then this is usually because of your connection speed.

If you are using 3G / 4G and you’re in an area of low signal strength, then YouTube will sometimes automatically reduce the quality of the video. Unfortunately this can make the video very pixelated and of poor quality.

If you are using the standard Android browser, then when the video is in full screen, press the back button. Then press HQ and start playing it again.

If you are using another browser, then press the Settings icon on the bottom right of the YouTube video. Then change the quality.

This may improve the quality, but it may also lead to buffering issues.

Another solution is to use a WiFi connection, if one is available.

It is best to avoid task killers such as Advanced Task Killer. Android is designed to automatically pre-load certain applications, even if you don’t load them yourself. If it starts to run low on memory, it will smartly unload the oldest running apps automatically.

Manually killing tasks will only mean they get loaded in memory again. Task killers can make the phone slow, laggy, or drain battery life more quickly.

To bookmark a contact on your homescreen, long press on the home screen background and select Shortcuts. Then select Direct dial.

If you call someone regularly this can be useful as you will have a shortcut to them handily placed on your homescreen.

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.

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.

If you want to hide folders or files from being index or displayed, simple put a . (full top / period) before the file or folder name.

While the stock standard keyboard is fine, there are much better keyboards available. First, you need to go to the Android Market and download one. Try searching for the word ‘keyboard’ and you will see a number of options.

One of the best keyboards is a keyboard called Swiftkey, which is a top-rate App.

Download your chosen keyboard and go through any install steps that you are presented with.

Then, go to the App you want to type in. You should now see a little Keyboard icon on the row at the bottom of your screen, towards the bottom-right corner. Press that icon and you can switch between all of the keyboards you have installed.

If you want to go to settings, then normally you would go to your home screen, then press the Menu key and select Settings.

There is however a quicker way of getting to your Settings. Simply drag your notification bar down from the top of the screen and press the Gear icon. It should be the second right icon in the top right corner.

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 – Data usage. From here you can set a limit and set the usage cycle (eg 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).

First open your Contacts App and select a contact. Then press the phone’s Menu button and select Edit.

Then you should see a silhouette of a person. Press this, or a little + sign next to it and you will be given a number of options to create a photo or image for that contact.