Sony Xperia XA1 Tips and Tricks

While in your email App, a handy trick is to pinch and zoom out to see a ‘day view’ of your emails. This is handy if you have a lot of emails and want to quickly sort them by recency.

Android has a way to display your owner info (i.e. name, phone, email or a personalised message) on your lock screen. Perfect if you have lost or misplaced your device.

To enable this go to Settings – Lock screen and security – Information and FaceWidgets – Contact information.

Here you can enter any information you want, such as your name, email address or phone number. It’s obviously recommended to use a number other than your mobile if it has been lost!

Hopefully if your phone is lost, then the finder can use this information to get in contact with you.

Type a word that is not in the dictionary. The word will show up in the suggestion box to the left. Long press on the word and it will save to the dictionary.

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 Hamburger / Menu icon in the top left of the App, on the search bar.

Then select Settings and Auto-update apps.

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

Checking Available RAM and CPU utilization on your Sony Xperia Xa1 is very helpful if you are thinking about removing more Apps.

Looking at which Apps drain your RAM, CPU time, and battery will help you decide which of them should be removed from your phone.

To do this, just follow the simple steps below:

1. Go to your phone settings. You can do this by swiping down the home screen to reveal the notification bar. From there, tap on the gear icon to open Settings.
2. Look for Device Maintenance → Memory
3. Alternately, you can also tap on “Data Usage,” then scroll down to see which apps are taking up CPU power.
4. You may also look for “Smart Manager.” You will see the status of your RAM and Storage in this area. If you tap RAM, you will see a list of apps that are taking up much of your RAM.
5. For Huawei users, you can look for “Storage” under Settings.

All methods from 2 to 4 can be accessed on the Phone Settings alone. There are certain variations, depending on your phone or unit.

This section should also show what is taking up valuable CPU time. Useful if you think some Apps are draining your battery.

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.

There is a hidden Android Easter egg on the phone that Google has built into your device.

Go to Settings. Then scroll down to About device or About phone.

Then select Software info and find Android version.

Press this 5 times.

Once you see something on the screen, you can then rub the screen with your finger to produce another surprise. If rubbing doesn’t work then try tapping with your finger. A combination of the above should work. If not, then try different things. That’s the fun of the Easter egg.

By the way don’t expect to see an actual Easter Egg. That is just the name given to things hidden inside software or operating systems.

If you don’t want to hear the shutter sound when you take photos, then there are a few things you can try.

Firstly, some countries have laws to force the phone to play these sounds. Assuming you’re not in one of these countries, then the first thing you can try is to go to the Camera App – Settings – Shutter Sound – Off.

If that doesn’t work, then you can try turning the volume of the phone down or put it in silent mode when taking photos.

The last option is to Root your phone. If you don’t know what that means, then it’s best not to attempt it unless you have thoroughly read about the process. Once Rooted, go to this folder on your phone: /system/media/audio/ui and rename the camerashutter and/or cameraclick OGG files to something else.

Alternatively, on a rooted phone you can use a Root Browser, to edit /system/csc/feature.xml and set the option to TRUE. Then you should be able to go to Camera App – Settings – Shutter Sound – Off.

First open your Contacts App and select a contact. Then press Edit at the top of the screen.

Then should then see a photo icon. Press that and you will then see some options to either take a photo or select a photo from your Gallery.

Select the icon depending on your requirements.

Android now has privacy or incognito mode built into the stock browser.

Open your Browser App and press the Tabs icon at the bottom. Then press the Menu or More button at the top. Then select New secret tab or New incognito tab or Secret mode security.

Another option is to use the popular Dolphin browser whenever you want to browse privately. Then each time you exit, Dolphin asks you whether you want to delete your Cache or History. You may need to enable this if it isn’t set up by default.

If you select yes, then your activity will be untraceable. You may need to check this is enabled in the Dolphin settings.