Sony Xperia E4 Tips and Tricks

If you tend to run out of battery power quickly, then you can turn on Power saving mode.

Pull down the notification screen by swiping your finger from the top of the phone. Then select Power Saving. You may need to scroll along the available icons.

To change the settings, then pull down the notification screen again, press the Gear icon at the top. Then under System select Battery and then Power saving mode to change the options.

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 – Device – Applications – 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 hold and press on a contact. Then choose the All option at the top of the screen and select Delete. .

3) Go to Settings – Personal – Accounts and sync. Then press More at the top and choose Disable 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.

When entering text into Apps such as your Messaging App, Facebook App and so on, you can tap on the words to start selecting text. Normally, you would then drag the left and right sliders to select the word, or words you want to highlight.

If you double tap on a word however, it will quickly select that word. Very handy for quickly copying and one words, name or place.

If you want to move a widget from one homescreen to another, simply press and hold on the widget. Then drag it to the edge of the screen. The next homescreen will appear. Then, just drag the item to where you would like.

There is no need to be stuck with the standard Android keyboard, which isn’t always great for typing quickly.

Go to the Play Store and search for ‘Keyboard’ to see some great alternatives, many of which are more accurate and make typing much easier.

One of the very best is SwiftKey. They provide a free trial, but once the trial is over it is well worth the small amount of money they charge. It can increase your typing rates massively.

Another good one is GoKeyboard.

If you see a warning saying the keyboard will collect all information (including credit cards) just ignore this. This is just a security feature that Android shows for every third-party keyboard that you install.

Android has a feature allowing you to update Applications automatically. This is turned off by default, but you can turn it on.

Open the Play Store App and press the Menu icon in the top left of the App. Then select Settings and Auto-update apps.

From here you can chose to do this over WiFi only or using your Data connection.

To change the backlight screen timeout, drag down your notifications screen and press Settings. Then under System select Display. Then under Screen timeout you can set 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 – System – Developer Options. Then check Stay Awake.

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

When taking photos or videos, tap the screen where you want to focus on. The phone will automatically adjust the settings to improve the image or video

Most Android devices come with an alternative way of entering text called Swype. Many prefer this method and believe it is quicker.

When any text entry box appears, press and hold the box. Then select Input method: SWYPE. Once enabled, you simply drag your finger around the keyboard moving over the letters in the correct order to spell a word.

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 key or More at the top of the screen you will also see a number of features such as restrict background data usage (although this will prevent some Apps from working).