Sony Xperia V Tips and Tricks

Most Android phones only come with a fixed amount of homescreens. There is a way to add more however.

Go to Android Play Market and search for ‘launcher’. These are third-party user interfaces that allow you to customize your phone in many ways. Most of them allow multiple homescreens.

A very popular launcher which supports multiple homescreens is GoLauncher EX.

To change keyboards (if you have additional keyboards installed), you can switch between them by pressing the small keyboard symbol in the top left of your screen. You will need to be in keyboard input mode (i.e. typing something) for this to work.

Note: you need to have more than one keyboard installed for this to work.

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.

Instead of finding your Settings App icon, a quicker way is to drag down your notification bar (from the top) and press the Settings icon. It should be next to the date.

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.

While in your Browser App, press and hold the Back button.

This will show your browser History and Bookmarks.

To put your phone into night mode, go to your Clock application and press the screen once which will dim the screen.

Then press and hold on the screen and the clock will turn blue. This is Night mode.

You can use the volume buttons to put the phone in silent mode.

Keep pressing the Down volume until it reaches 0%.

If you have ‘Vibration in Silent mode’ turned on, it will also put the phone into Vibrate mode. To change this, go to your homescreen. Press Menu – Settings – Sound – Vibration.

If you are not happy with your notification light, then you can change and tweak it. Go to the Android Market and download an App called Lightflow.

You might need to enable the notification light before the App works. Go to Settings – Display. Then check Pulse notification.

The phone has the ability to send quick response text messages if your phone is ringing but you can’t answer it.

To change these, go to your Dialer App – Settings – Quick responses. You can only have 4 of them and you may need to edit existing ones.