Sony Xperia C3 Tips and Tricks

WARNING: Making your volume or music louder can damage your hearing.

Most phones have their volumes limited by local laws to protect your hearing. There is a way to boost your volume however.

Go to the Play Store and download an App called Volume Booster or Volume+ FREE.

You may need to root your phone for this App to work, but read the instructions in the App’s description.

While viewing your list of Contacts you can swipe from Right to Left to send a text message to the selected contact.

This might not work on all models.

If you use the Face Unlock feature but you’re in a dark room or wearing a hat and scarf, you can bypass the unlock just once.

Simply press the Lock icon on your screen and you can then enter your PIN instead.

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.

To change the backlight screen timeout, go to your Home Screen and press the menu key (bottom right). Choose Settings – My Device – Display – Screen timeout. Then choose the screen time out duration.

You can also tell the phone screen to always stay lit when it is plugged in via USB. Go to Settings – More – Developer Options. Then check Stay Awake.

Note: Developer Options is not always enabled by default. To enable, go to Settings – More – About Device. Then tap on Build number 7 times.

The Speech to Text feature is a great tool for dictating speech on to your phone, but has normally only been possible when your phone is connected to the internet.

Now this is possible in Offline mode too. Simply go to Settings – My device – Language & input – Voice Search. Then choose Download offline speech recognition.

You can now use this feature without needing an internet connection.

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.

There are a couple of ways to bring up one of your contacts.

First, while in your Contacts App, simply start typing in the search bar at the top of the screen.

Or else a quicker method is to use the Google Search widget (installed by long pressing on a vacant part of your homescreen and installing the widget) and start typing the name of the contact you want to dial. This will quickly filter the correct contact.

A handy feature of Android is to quickly clear your notifications.

Simply pull down your notifications bar by swiping your finger from the top of your phone downwards.

Then when you see each individual notification, swipe your finger left or right to clear each one. You can do this with your Apps too – press and hold the home button. Then swipe left or right to close Apps.

While in the Camera App, there are two ways to zoom in or out.

First, you can use Volume Up and Down keys.

Secondly, you can pinch your fingers on the screen to zoom in and out.