ZTE Blade A5 (2019) Tips and Tricks

Most Android devices come with an alternative way of entering text called Swype. Many prefer this method and believe it is quicker.

When any text entry box appears, press and hold the box. Then select Input method: SWYPE. Once enabled, you simply drag your finger around the keyboard moving over the letters in the correct order to spell a word.

If you want to go to settings, then you can go to your list of Apps and open the Settings App.

There is however a quicker way. Simply position your finger right at the top of the screen and drag it down. You may need to do this twice on some phones.

Your notification bar will appear and you can then press the small Gear icon at the top of the screen to go to the Settings.

The Play store contains thousands of great Apps, but there are time that you want to restrict access to these Apps for whatever reasons. This can easily be done.

First, open the Play Store App and swipe from left to right to see the settings. Then press Settings and scroll for Parental controls.

From here you can chose settings for Low/Medium/High maturity levels. Great for preventing access for young people.

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.

When browsing on your phone you may notice images are quite blurry. This is because your telecom provider is compressing the images before they are downloaded on to your phone.

There is no way to prevent this, but if you have a WiFi connection nearby, then you can turn that on. This will mean that all browser downloads come through the WiFi connection, rather than the carrier, and your images will appear normally.?

This also depends on your service provider and data package.

A useful feature of Android Pie is what’s called Screen Pinning. This allows you to lock your phone to one App. Perfect if you have a young child that you don’t want messing with your phone. Or if you want to lend your phone to someone to make a call, but make the call only.

To enable this go to Settings – Security & location – Screen pinning. Then go to the App you want to Pin and press the Multitask key. Then look at the most recent and tap on app icon -pop appears then select Pin.

To un-pin an App just press the Multitask key and the back key together.

To quickly close Apps, press the Multitasking key

This will display your currently running Apps. From here you can simply swipe the Apps off the screen by dragging your finger Bottom to top. This is a very quick way to free up some memory.

Android has an interesting new feature called Talkback which is designed for blind and low vision users.

The feature is an interesting way to navigate your phone however.

Simply go to Settings – Accessibility – Talkback to activate it.

Then your phone will give you an ongoing narration of its various functions.

To take a screen shot, hold down the Volume Down and Power Buttons together (i.e. exactly the same time).

Press and hold the power button to open the power menu- then tap on the ‘Screen Shot’. This may depend on the model you are using.

This will save the current screen to your phone’s memory card. They will be stored in the folder /Device Storage/Pictures/Screenshots. You can get to this folder by going to your Files App.

First open your Contacts App and select a contact. Then press Edit at the top of the screen. You should then see some options to either take a photo or select a photo from your Gallery. To enable this feature, make sure the contact is saved in the Phone memory.?