Sony Xperia U Tips and Tricks

Face Unlock allows you to unlock your phone by holding it up to your face. It is highly recommended to use the Improve Face Unlock feature to make the recognition faster and more accurate.

First, ensure you have Face Unlock enabled. Go to Settings – Security – Screen lock. Then choose Face Unlock.

Once that is done go to Settings – Security – Improve face matching. You might have to do this a few times to improve the speed of recognition. It is also a good idea to position the phone at different angles to your head to improve the accuracy.

Note: this may not work on all phones. Check for a software update if it doesn’t work on yours.

If you are browsing and have zoomed in or out and the column you’re reading doesn’t fit the screen properly, you can pinch to zoom in. Then double tap on the column. The column will then be reformatted to fit the screen width.

To enable / disable your notification light, go to Settings – Display.

Then check/uncheck Pulse notification.

If you want to type non-English letters (eg those with an accent), long-press on the relevant letter. A list of options will appear for you to select.

Warning: This will remove ALL data on the phone (but not the MicroSD card).

To perform a hard reset, or factory reset, then there are a number of methods to try:

1) From the home screen, press Menu – Backup and reset – Factory data reset – Reset phone. It may ask for a password. Then select Erase everything

If the phone is totally unresponsive, even after a reboot, then try the following methods.

2) While the phone is turned off, press and hold the Volume Up and Volume Down buttons together. Then, while holding these, press and release the Power button (keep holding the volume buttons). The phone should turn on and a menu will appear. Press the Volume down button to navigate to the Recovery option. Press the Volume Up to select (if that doesn’t work, use the Power button to select). A yellow triangle and an Android logo will appear. Press the Volume Down and Volume Up button together and a recovery menu should appear. Use the Volume buttons to move to the Wipe data/Factory reset option and then press Power to select. Again, use the Volume Down key to choose Yes and press the Power button again to select.

3) While the phone is turned off, press and hold the Volume Down button. Then, while holding, press and release the Power button. A menu should appear. Use the Volume down key to go to Clear Storage. Use the Power button to select the option. Then when asked to confirm, press Volume Up for Yes.

4) While the phone is off, press and hold down Volume Up + Home + Power buttons at the same time. Then release the buttons when you see the Logo. Use the Volume Down button to go down and the Home or Power key to select. Choose the Wipe data/Factory reset option. Then Select Yes to delete all user data. Then choose to reboot the phone.

5) A final method is to enter the code into your phone’s dialer: *2767*3855# This method will not give you an option to reverse the process, so be careful! This method will only work if you can boot into your phone.

When your phone is ringing you have three options: Press the Answer, Hang up or Send a text message.

To send a text message, press and hold inside the round circle you see on the screen. Then drag your finger to the message icon at the top. You will then be presented with a few default responses that you can send via text message.

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

Open the Android market, then Menu – My Apps.

Then you need to open up each installed App and tick Allow Automatic Updating at the bottom. Unfortunately you do need to do this for each App.

If you want to conserve battery life, you can turn off the WiFi while the phone is asleep.

Go to Settings – WiFi – Advanced – Keep WiFi on during sleep.

To open a web page in a new tab, find a link on a web page. Then press on it and then choose to open the site in a new tab.

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.