Sony Xperia XA1 Tips and Tricks

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

Depending on how your phone is set up, sometimes you will see lag when swiping between home screens or when generally using your phone. There are a number of things you can try to fix this, as follows:

First, try restarting your phone. This will fix many problems.

If that doesn’t work, then remove any Widgets that pull data to the phone, such as Twitter, Weather widgets etc.

If you have Live wallpapers turned on, then try turning them off long pressing on a blank area of the home screens and changing to a different Wallpaper.

Sometimes the problem can be with the phone or operators skin or launcher, so try going to the Play Store and downloading a third party launcher such as Nova launcher or Go LauncherEx. Note: you will need to re-create your home screen shortcuts, but they are both great launchers.

Another tip is to always press the Back key instead of the Home key when leaving Apps. The Back key will often close the App properly, while the Home key can leave it running in the background.

Lastly, there is a great app called DU Speed Booster which can help close Apps that are running in the background and optimise your phone’s memory.

To fix touchscreen sensitivity issues, follow these:

1. On your dialler, dial *#2663#. This will bring up a menu.

2. Bring up dialler and dial *#2663# to bring up a menu

3. On that menu, tap the button that says ?TSP FW update (general)?

4. Once you press that, a pop-up will appear saying ?Updating, do not turn off.? Just wait for it to finish updating.

5. A message saying ?update complete: pass? should appear once update is complete.

6. Exit the menu by pressing the back button and try out your device. It should be fixed now.

If you have used up all of your Quick Launch spaces, then there is a trick to provide you more.

First, press and drag an App from the home screen and move it over the top of an App in the Quick Launch area. Then release your finger.

This will create a folder containing the original App plus the new one.

This is a great way to have access to regularly used Apps.

If you want to move a widget from one home screen to another, simply press and hold on the widget.

Then drag it to the edge of the screen.

The next home screen will appear.

Then, just drag the item to where you would like.

While using the standard Android Video App, you can lock the your screen while watching videos by pressing the power button.

This will disable the touchscreen buttons while the video is playing, but it won’t turn the screen off like the lock key normally does.

Note, this will only work on video files that you are playing that are stored on your phone and using the native Video App. It won’t work for videos played within websites, such as YouTube videos or other Apps such as MX Player, which have their own lock screen settings.

If you are abroad and don’t want to pay high data roaming charges, then you can save Google Maps for offline viewing later. Here are two ways to do this:

The first method will depend whether your phone supports it.

First, open Google Maps and navigate to a section of the map that you want available offline.

Then on the search bar at the top, press the Hamburger / Menu icon and select Offline maps.

Next, choose Select your own map.

Then zoom and pan around the required map area. The size of the offline map will be shown beneath the map area. When done, press the Download button.

Alternatively, open Google Maps and zoom down to street level. Then scroll around area you’ll be travelling too. If you’re visiting a city for example, do this at street level and cover as much area as you think you’ve be visiting. If you’re travelling outside a city, then street level view might be too detailed, so zoom out and just cover the main roads, towns etc.

This will load all the segments into your phone’s cache. Then when have arrived at your destination and you have data turned off, you should see the areas you’ve stored on the phone’s memory.

Note: this won’t give you your GPS location because that normally needs a data connection to pinpoint your position.

If you would like to unmount your SD card for whatever reason, then drag down your notifications menu from the top of the screen and press the Settings icon.

Then go to Device management – Storage – SD card.

This will depend on your device, but you should then be able to select Unmount SD card.

The most recent version of Android now comes with a built in Flashlight / Torch App.

To find this, simply pull down to see your notifications. You may need to pull down twice to see the full list of shortcuts.

Then on the top bar (where you see your settings for WiFi, Bluetooth etc.), look for Torch option.

If you see the following error:
Unfortunately, the process android.process.acore has stopped

Then follow these steps:
1.First, go to your phone’s main Settings and select Apps.

2. Then, tap on the menu button usually at the top right left.

3. Select Reset App Preferences.

Alternatively, you can also disable all apps and enable them again one by one until you find the app that has been causing the error.

If none of the above works, you can do a Factory Reset or reboot, instead. Be warned you may lose all of your data when performing a Factory reset!