This holiday season, besides being an opportunity to spend time with friends and family, also enjoys the smell of new gifts and many of them may have received an awesome smart phone as a present from closed ones and some of them might have gifted themselves.
Whatever maybe the case, as a new smartphone user you may take some time to make yourself familiar with the android ecosystem, or even experienced users may get bored of just using their smartphones with those mandatory apps rather than bringing out the full potential of your phone.
So, I present you, the most useful tricks that will definitely change your perspective about your phone and make your smartphone actually smart, besides just messaging and calling.
Make your smartphone a second screen for your PC
Consider a situation where you are using your PC or Laptop and doing some important stuff like sending email or preparing a document that is due for the week and then suddenly you feel the urge to shift to another place as you were tired of the environment or just want to relax in your bed and still do the work. You cannot carry your PC everywhere, so what about your phone? You can take it anywhere right? Thats where apps like Team Viewer or the app from you PC’s manufacturer Microsoft Remote Desktop.
Using these Remote apps, you can control your PC or your Laptop from anywhere you feel comfortable, thus eliminating the need to sit at the same place for several hours. These apps allow you to do all those work that you perform on your PC like document editing, Organizing your tasks and similar tasks, All you need is a reliable connectivity and a smartphone and you are good to go.
You can also transfer files from your phone to your computer and the other way around, wirelessly using this technique and also view all of your files in a single place without any USB cable!
Use your smartphone as a remote control
If you have read my review about Unified Remote before, you will know what I am talking about.
Ever been in a situation that you may have to reduce the volume of your Computer or open a file or play a song but you were too lazy to get up and do that task? Or you are giving a presentation and you find it frustrating to reach your PC everytime to change the slide or open a file?
With unified remote, you can perform all these tasks and much, much more right from your phone without having to get up from your current place. All you need is to download and install the app and server of unified remote and you are all set to control your PC Completely from your phone.
You can find the link to the server and other instructions here.
If you have IR Blaster in your smartphone, you can perform much more useful tasks like controlling your TV, your AC or any other wireless speakers and similar electronic devices, right from your phone without any difficulty.
With Peel Smart Remote and dozen of other similar apps you can control anything right from your TV to your AC and all you need is just an IR blaster. You may just do about anything like changing the temperature or switching on or off your AC, changing the channels or skim through your TV guide using this app from your phone and the best part is all of these apps are completely free and no additional charges are incurred!
Tranfer Your Files Wirelessly
With your smartphone and a stable Internet connection, you may never have to worry about carrying those numerous cables with you for transferring files between your devices. All you need is an app to transfer files wirelessly among your devices and make it hassle free, forever.
With apps like WiFi PC File Explorer, there is just a one time process of setting up the server on your desired PC and then you view your complete PC hard drive on your phone and also open and play songs and your files on your phone wirelessly..You can also upload your files through this app to your computer and then delete and modify unnecessary files right from your phone.
You can use this app in various scenarios such that viewing what kind of songs or movies present in your computer from your phone, streaming audio, video and photos directly from your computer and also you can upload the files from your phone to your computer anywhere you chose through the upload here option in the menu.
Make the most out of your AMOLED screen
If you have a phone with an AMOLED screen then you can enjoy some of the extra benefits like saving your battery life and increasing the remaining time to charge your device. Basically, devices with AMOLED display tend to lighten up only the colored pixels, which means that if there are black colors on your smartphones screen, then the pixels at those positions are turned off to save the battery to a greater extent compared to other devices.
Therefore you can set a dark wallpaper or use the black themes and sometimes AMOLED themes if available in most of your apps resulting in a longer battery life. Popular apps like twitter and Reddit allow you to use the AMOLED theme to preserve the battery life.
So, don’t hesitate to search the internet for dark and black wallpapers to extend your battery life. You can also use apps like Always on AMOLED an in built feature in the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the S7 edge which keeps your dispaly always on ny showing only the black background, so you can avoid the battery drain which happens when you constantly check your phone for the time or notifications.
Surf the web using floating browsers
Most of us use our smartphone mainly for surfing through the web or skim through the social browsing about our favorite topics or interests. So, it seems likely we click on a link that we find interesting while scrolling through the web and it opens in a new tab on a separate browser application.
This while seems normal may sometime be annoying to a few to constantly switch between apps as interrupts their scrolling journey or they may miss out on several other constantly updating contents below before they finish reading the link they have just clicked and opened.
Though this may seem like a simple issue, android does not seem to handle it very well thus making constant shift between apps a pain, But as always a 3rd party developer with an app called Flynx Browser comes to the rescue to the android users. What this app does is a simple task which makes browsing a breeze and much smarter.
After installing this app, whenever you click a link anywhere on your phone, there will a bubble that silently opens minimized on the side of your smartphone and you can open as many links as you want and they will be silently loading at the side, while you continue to surf the web. Once you finish browsing you can click on the bubble and read those links you have opened and the most useful feature is that it blocks all those intrusive ads and also has a black theme.
Hide your apps from the main screen
Sometimes you may want to be more secure or just want to hide your apps from your kid or other people who you do not want to go through you private stuff. But sadly android does not support this feature by default. But we know that we can do anything with the open source awesomeness of android.
All you need is to install a custom launcher like GO Launcher or if you like a clean clutter free stock android feel you can purchase the nova prime launcher from the playstore. You can find the option to hide apps in the settings menu and once you select what apps to hide, they will immediately be hidden from your app list so that no one except you can access them,
If you are person who do not like to modify your Interface with any custom launchers, you can use the built in profile feature available from lollipop version to create a new profile, which only displays the default apps making the other apps in your phone inaccessible unless you use the password.
Using the Now On Tap Feature
This may seem like an obvious trick but it still remains as one of the most useful and easiest tricks on android since it comes baked right in your smartphone you need not install any additional apps or change any setting for it to work.
Now On Tap is a feature of the built in Google search app in your phone which works when you long press your home button on any screen in your phone. What it does is that, it scans the entire page when you press the button and then returns useful information based on the contents of the current page. You can use this feature in any app and it always returns relevant information like the artist of the song currently playing or the name of the actor in a picture.
You can also use it to visit directly to the social media profiles or the Youtube channel of any person or a thing without having to manually search for the term.
Protect your eyes using the blue light filer
This is one of my favorite tricks and I use it every night while I browse through my phone. You may also use your phone for a long time during the night hours or at a dark place but what you do not realize is that your phone may emit a blue light and constant exposure to it may affect your eyes causing strain and difficulty in sleeping.
Research suggests that continuous exposure to the blue light emitted from the display of your electronic devices may affect your natural circadian rhythm which in turn affects your ability to sleep peacefully. But you never need to worry if you make use of the blue light filter apps like Twilight which imposes a filter over your phones default blue light making it easy and comfortable for your eyes to view your smartphones screen at night.
You can setup the app to automatically impose the blue light filter based on your location or your desired timings and it will trigger based on the conditions. So you can get a peaceful night of sleep without having to worry about using your smartphone for longer periods.
If you have any questions regarding these tricks or if you got any new tricks that are not mentioned here, feel free to contact me or leave your comments below. Thanks!
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