Sony Xperia Tipo Tips and Tricks

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.

We produce a great list of the best mobile phone accessories and if you have purchased a smartphone, one of the first things you will want to do is accessorise it. Our guide shows you the best accessories and the best places to buy them from.

Simply go to the menu at the top of this page and select: Phone Guides – Best Cell Phone Accessories (for US users) or Best Mobile Phone Accessories (for UK users).

Here are the top 5 tips to make your phone run faster:

1) Use only essential widgets on your homescreen – each widget consumes memory and processing power which can slow your down your phone.

2) Uninstall apps that you don’t use – after awhile your phone can get cluttered as some Apps are designed to always run in the background. If you rarely use an App, then uninstall it to free up memory and CPU resource.

3) Install Apps to your phone memory – if you have an SDCard, always install Apps to the phone memory, which can be accessed faster. If you have Apps on the SDCard, then move them back to the phone memory with an App called Move2SD available from the Play Market.

4) Use Static rather than Live wallpapers – Live wallpapers consume processing power and memory. Unless you really must have them, uninstall them.

5) Kill tasks occasionally – Some Apps will run in the background indefinitely unless you kill them. Most of them won’t cause a problem, but it pays to check your running tasks from time to time. Hold down your Home key and check the Task Manager.

One last thing: Don’t use Task Killers. Android manages tasks very well and Task Killers just make your phone unstable and can slow it down further.

To enable Face Unlock, go into Settings – Security.

Then select Screen lock.

To change the screen brightness, start from the Homescreen and press Menu – Settings – Display – Brightness.

Then choose the desired brightness setting. You can also select Automatic brightness to let the phone decide for you.

If you have auto-brightness enabled, you can also press, hold and slide the top notification bar left and right. The brightness will increase and decrease accordingly.

From the Contact list or the Messaging list, swipe from Left to Right to call a Contact.

This might not work on all models.

When you download a new App, the Play Market will add a shortcut to the App on your homescreen. Sometimes this can get annoying.

To disable this, go to Market – Settings. Then uncheck Auto-add Shortcuts.

To bookmark a website on your homescreen, go into your browser and find the bookmark of the page you want to create a shortcut for.

Then long press on the bookmark and select Add Shortcut to Home.

If you regularly visit certain websites, this can be handy as you will have a shortcut to the site on your homescreen.

To change your default font, you need to download a third-party app because Android does not have a built-in way of changing fonts

There are two good Apps that allow you to change fonts:

Font Changer – There is a free version and a paid version. The paid version allows you to change the screen density and allows you to preview the font. You can also change a few other options.

Type Fresh – With this App you can load any TrueType font and also backup your default fonts to your SDCard. Be aware that you might need to reboot your phone after installing Type Fresh.

Also, if you use GoLauncher, then try downloading GoLauncher Fonts.

Note: most, if not all, font changing Apps require you to Root your device

To take a screen shot, hold down the Volume Down and Power Buttons together. This will save the current screen to your phone’s memory card.