Sony Xperia Z Tips and Tricks

Android 4.1.1 (Jellybean)
Phone: Sony Xperia Z
Factory OS: Android 4.1.1 (Jellybean)

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Then view tips for the most recent OS version(s): Android 9 (Pie) & Android 8 (Oreo)
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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

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.

By default, the phone will recognise swear words, but insert x’s instead of the word. To change this, go to Settings – Voice input & output – Voice recognition settings. Then untick Block offensive words.

Android manages Apps very well and some Apps do not have the option to close them specifically. Normally the App will stay running in the background and only close when many other Apps have been opened.

If you do want to close or terminate an App, then press and hold the Home key on your phone. Then you can swipe the Apps off the screen to close them.

If you are running low on phone memory, you can look for your largest applications to uninstall. Go to Settings – Applications – Manage Applications and press Menu. This will then filter your apps by memory use

To quickly close Apps, press the multi-task button (on the bottom right). This will display your currently running Apps. From here you can simply swipe the Apps off the screen by dragging your finger left or right. This is a very quick way to free up some memory.

Your phone comes with a handy widget which lets you kill all running tasks. This is great if you want to quickly free up some memory.

To use the widget, press and hold for 2 seconds on a blank part of any homescreen. Then find the Program monitor widget and drag it on to your homescreen. Once that is done, press the widget and it will show you all currently running Apps. Press End all to close all running Apps.

If you use the Face Unlock feature but you’re in a dark room or wearing a hat and scarf, you can bypass the unlock just once.

Simply press the Lock icon on your screen and you can then enter your PIN instead.

Removing Apps is very simple. From the homescreen press the Apps icon in the top-right of the screen. Then press and hold the App you want to remove and drag it to the Remove / Trash icon in the top-right of the screen.

You can also drag it to the i icon which will show you information about the App. You can press Uninstall from here.

In the Calendar App there is no Year view along the top of the App. You can however use pinch to zoom gestures to zoom in and out of Month and Year view however.

This is useful if you want to quickly jump backwards or forwards through a few months at a time.