TOP TIPS FOR ANDROID DEVICES

 ANDROID TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS

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 Switch between 3G and 4G networks

By now, most Android phones have a 4G antenna -- but lots of 4G networks are spotty, and sucking down data at that speed can drain your battery or put you over your monthly data allowance pretty quickly. What's to be done? The easiest fix is to manually select between 3G and 4G networks -- for example, maybe you only want to turn on 4G when you're in an area that has good coverage, or maybe you want to force your phone onto 3G to avoid draining your battery. Look for the "Mobile networks" subsection of the Settings screen, then check "Network Mode." You can set it to CDMA only (3G), or LTE/CDMA (3G and 4G). This setting might vary depending on where you're living or what network you're on.



 Respond to a call with a text message

Sometimes, important calls come at inopportune times, like when you're in a meeting or deep in face-to-face conversation. What do you do when you can't pick up, but don't want to blow the caller off? Android has you covered.

If you have a device running Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich, or Jelly Bean, the “incoming call” screen will give you three response options: pick up, ignore, or "ignore with text." The way to select that option varies from phone to phone (on most Samsung phones, you slide the call icon up rather than left or right), but the result is a list of canned text messages like "Can't talk now. Call me back in five minutes?" You can even include custom messages on this list to send to your caller, presumably averting uncomfortable “Why didn't you pick up your phone?” discussions later on.

If you're running Froyo, check out the free “Incoming Call Plus (beta)” app. It'll give you the same feature, although you'll have to put up with a different-looking “Incoming Call” screen.



 Expand and contract notifications (Jelly Bean)

Android 4.1/4.2 "Jelly Bean" gives you a good amount of control over your notifications -- and in a lot of cases, you can deal with them without ever having to switch over to the appropriate app. If you've missed a call, you can return the call or respond with a text message, right from the notification “shade.” If you've got a new email, you can read the first few lines of it without launching the mail app (just slide two fingers outward to expand). You can even access your settings straight from the shade -- just tap those sliders up on the top of the window.



 Equalize your music

Android's built-in Music app is pretty capable -- and for Jelly Bean users (both 4.1 and 4.2), you'll find the ability to equalize your music has been baked right in. Once you're playing a song, hit the three dots in the upper-right corner and select "Equalizer." You'll be able to select from presets such as "Folk" and "Heavy Metal," and you can even drag the five sliders yourself to fine-tune based on what you're listening to at the moment. Down below are extra controls: drag to adjust the amount of bass boost applied. There’s also a "3-D effect," some software processing that makes the music sound a little deeper. Those options are only available when headphones are plugged in, since they wouldn't make much of a difference to the sound quality of your phone's built-in speaker.

If your device isn't running Jelly Bean, check out the free "Equalizer" app in the Google Play store -- it offers many of the same features.

Improve Google Now cards (Jelly Bean)

Google Now is pretty useful right out of the box -- the more you use it, the better it will get at serving up useful information in an appropriate way (like pulling traffic and calendar information to figure out how long it'll take you to drive to your next engagement, for example). But if you're finding Google Now's abilities a little limited, try enabling Web history to give it more data to pull from. Visit history.google.com and click "Turn Web history on.” Before too long you'll be able to use Google Now for things such as sports scores and flight information. The service learns pretty quickly, too. For example, you'll find it letting you know what time you need to leave your house in order to make a flight. If the notifications become too distracting, you can adjust the priority level of each one from the Google Now screen. Just tap the three dots on the right side of the card to set it as normal (the phone will alert you with updates), low priority (the information will show up on the Google Now screen, but won't otherwise announce itself), or off.

 Personalized voice recognition

It's not quite as robust as Siri on iOS, but Android’s built-in voice recognition software is surprisingly capable. Try it out: from a text input field, click the microphone button to the left of the space bar. You'll be able to dictate text messages, fill a field, or even search the Web without having to tap anything out with your thumbs. (To get that last function, Froyo and Gingerbread users might have to download Google's free Voice Search app.)

Of course, the text recognition engine sometimes delivers less-than-accurate, or downright comedic, results. If that's happening more often than you'd like, try turning on personalized voice recognition in your device’s Settings. Tap "Language and Input," then look for the "Text-to-speech output" option under the Speech section. Turning on Personalized Recognition on the following page will help give you more accurate speech synthesis over time. This tip requires a little patience – you might not notice much improvement in transcription accuracy at first, but over time your device will adjust to your personal inflections.

Enter gallery view (Jelly Bean)

Most Android phones and tablets have pretty good cameras, and Jelly Bean makes it easier to review all the shots you've taken on your device. From the Camera app, you can tap in the lower-right corner to see the most recent shot you've taken. You can swipe left and right to review other shots, but if you want an even quicker way to see what's on the camera roll you can pinch inward to see your shots lined up in order -- just like a film strip. Bonus: you can simply swipe up to delete any shots you don't want to keep.

 Load Flash content on demand

One of the great things about having an Android phone is that you can view Flash content, including videos, that the iPhone can't render (at least, not right in the browser). But if all that rich web content is slowing down your browsing – or you're bumping against the limit on a metered data plan – you might not want to load all the Flash content on a page automatically. No problem.

On the Settings page of the stock Android browser, tap “Advanced.” On the next page, change “Enable plug-ins” from “Always” to “On demand” and restart the browser. Now when you get to a Flash video on a page, you’ll see an arrow icon where the content would be. Tap it to load that bit of Flash. Simple as that.

 Customize your lock screen

Android gives you a few solid options for keeping other people from getting access to your phone. Of course, there's the trusty four-digit PIN. But you can also set up a regular password like you'd use on your computer. Or you can get into your phone by dragging your finger to connect a series of dots in a unique shape. If you're running Ice Cream Sandwich of Jelly Bean, you can also give "Face Unlock" a try. Your phone will use its front camera to detect who's holding the phone, unlocking only for the real owner.

This isn't a particularly secure option in Ice Cream Sandwich, where it can be defeated using a picture of the owner, but Jelly Bean makes the feature a little more usable. Once you've set up Face Unlock, you can improve its reliability by taking multiple pictures of yourself in the "Improve face matching" section of the Security tab in the Settings app. (That way you won't lock yourself out of your phone if you decide to get a haircut, or if you switch from glasses to contacts.) You can also implement a "Liveness check" from the same area of Settings, which makes the phone look for blinks and facial movements when unlocking.

If you're less worried about security and just want a simple slide, you also have the option to quickly access the camera or Google Now from the lock screen. Just slide the lock to the left over the camera icon, or up to get to Google Now. And if you want to trick out your lock screen even further, you can use WidgetLocker's LockScreen app ($2.99) to get music controls and customized sliders for particular apps.

Google Sky Map

This is undoubtedly one of the coolest free apps you can download. Just launch Sky Map, and point your phone to the heavens (or any direction at all, really). For the most mind-blowing results, you'll want to be outside at night, but it'll work during the day, too. You'll see a map of the constellations, planets, and Messier objects that currently occupy the portion of space at which your phone is currently pointing. The app will even point out meteor showers while they're happening.

(Did we mention it's Android-only? iOS has a few less interesting and more expensive options.)

Oh, and it does time-travel, too. Star Maps can show you what the sky will look like in the future, or what it looked like in the past, as far back as 1900. Ever wonder what the sky looked like the night of the Apollo 11 moon landing? Now you can find out, in more detail than you probably wanted to know.

 Put your information on the lock screen (Jelly Bean)

If you've ever found someone’s lost phone, you know that it can be a hassle to try to get it back to him or her. Most times, you just have to scroll through their address book for a hint of how to contact them (or one of their family members). Android 4.1 and 4.2 users have the option to make things a little bit easier for potential do-gooders. They let you post your contact information on the phone's lock screen. From the Settings app, tap "Security" and look under the "Screen security" section for "Owner info." Tap that, and you'll be able to enter a name, email address, phone number, or any other appropriate info that will show up on the phone's lock screen.

Control your computer with your phone (or tablet)

This nifty app lets you control your computer with your phone. It's really two programs: a client that runs on your laptop or desktop, and a lightweight remote app for your phone or tablet. Once you've got everything up and running, you can create customized remotes to control just about everything on your computer. Out of the box you get mouse and keyboard support, volume and media control, and the ability to bend programs like Spotify and Windows Media Player to your will. Upgrade to the premium version ($4), and you can control just about everything – including your browser and media player of choice.

Edit your photos -- or grab them from a video

It won't replace Photoshop anytime soon, but your Android device is capable of doing some basic photo editing that can make your shots look a lot better. From the photo gallery, just tap "Edit" in the dropdown menu. You can adjust a shot's exposure, add effects like "Fisheye" and "Film grain," crop, take out red-eye, and even adjust saturation and tint. Send the results to the social network of your choice, or choose to have them auto-uploaded to a photo service like Picasa – or to Dropbox, using the previous tip.

Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean offers another cool picture trick: taking a still frame from a video. While you're shooting, just tap the frame to take a snapshot. It'll be automatically added to your camera roll. If you're still running Gingerbread or lower, don't worry. The $2.99 Frame Grabber app will give you the same ability, albeit after the video is taken.



Give Google Chrome a try

If you're one of the lucky few users who has the latest version of Jelly Bean (Android 4.2), you'll already have Google Chrome installed as your default browser. But everyone else can download it for free from the Google Play store. Chrome offers a number of improvements over the stock Android browser, including faster performance (though your mileage may vary), better syncing with your Google account, and the ability to sync bookmarks and open tabs from the desktop version of Chrome. Chrome also enables you to switch quickly between open tabs by swiping inward from the right or left side of the screen.




Inverted rendering

We know we just suggested installing the Chrome browser, but if you find the stock browser more to your taste, here's a tip that could save you some battery life and eye fatigue. From the browser's Settings page, tap "Accessibility," then hit "Inverted rendering." That options switches the colors so black becomes white and vice versa -- in theory, that makes the screen darker overall so the battery isn't working to pump out so much light. It's easy on the eyes, too, especially when you're reading at night. Once you've inverted the rendering you can drag the contrast slider up and down to get things looking just right.



Browser "quick controls"

If you're a Gmail user, you're probably familiar with Labs, nifty experimental features that extend the program's functionality. This model extends to the stock web browser on 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and 3.1 Honeycomb, as well. From the browser's settings page, click "Labs," then enable “Quick Controls” on the following screen. The URL and status bars will disappear from the phone's top edge, giving you a little more screen real estate. If you want to open a new page, access settings, or do a web search, just put your thumb on the far left or right edge of the screen – a circular menu will open up giving you navigation options.



Download a map (Jelly Bean)

Google Maps integration is undoubtedly one of the best parts of owning an Android device. The service is every bit as reliable as its desktop counterpart, and offers accurate turn-by-turn directions to boot. But obtaining all that map data requires a data connection, and sometimes that's a dicey proposition when you're in an area with spotty coverage -- or when you're nearing the upper edge of a capped data plan. For those situations, Jelly Bean lets you download maps ahead of time so you can consult them offline. When you're on a Wi-Fi network (or in an area with a good data network), click the three dots in the lower-right of Google Maps and select "Make available offline." You'll be able to select the area you want to save, and Google will download the map for you to pore over later at your leisure.

Take a screenshot (Ice Cream Sandwich/Jelly Bean)

For a long time, the only way to take a screenshot on an Android phone involved rooting the device (a process similar to jailbreaking an iPhone) and installing specialized software. Thankfully, that's no longer the case in Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean. Just press the power and volume-down buttons simultaneously. The screen will flash and a screenshot will be saved in your phone's photo gallery.

If you're on Froyo, Gingerbread, or Honeycomb, you might still be able to take a screenshot without special software -- sometimes manufacturers build screenshot shortcuts into handsets and tablets. If your device doesn't have this ability and you don't want to root it, try No Root Screenshot It -- you'll have to connect your phone to a computer to enable screenshots each time you restart the phone, but the app does exactly what its name promises.

Keep tabs on your data

Lots of Android users are on unmetered data plans – for example, the Sprint and Verizon networks in the US have unlimited plans (though the latter, only if you've been grandfathered in). But the rest of us has to live with only a certain amount of data each month, and the overage charges can be pretty punitive.

Fortunately, it's fairly easy to make sure you're living within your means, data-wise. Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean give you a built-in way to keep tabs on your data. Just head over to the "Data usage" section of settings. In addition to showing you how much mobile data each app has used, it'll also let you set a warning when your data usage approaches a certain limit and a hard stop when it reaches a particular threshold. Let's say you're on a standard 2GB/month plan. You could set a warning when you reach 1.5GB, and a limit on data when you get to 1.9GB.

For Froyo, Gingerbread, and Honeycomb, try the free Onavo app. It actually has a few more features than Ice Cream Sandwich's data monitor, including the ability to set limits for individual apps and/or restrict them to Wi-Fi only.



Offline voice typing (Jelly Bean)

One of the big improvements in Jelly Bean was the ability to let your phone or tablet convert your speech to text. Phones have done that for a while now, but it generally meant sending your input over the air, doing the decoding in the cloud, and showing the result on your device. Android can now do the text generation itself -- which makes it a speedier process, and possible even without an Internet connection. Head over to "Language and Input" in the Settings app, then choose "Download offline speech recognition" under the "Voice Search" heading. You'll be prompted to download a language pack for each language you want Android to recognize; once that's done you'll be able to dictate text even if Google's servers go down or you've got poor reception.


 Google Voice integration

One of the best things about Android is its tight integration with the Google Apps suite. The Gmail client, for example, is leaps and bounds ahead of its iOS counterpart, giving you the ability to tag, filter, switch accounts, and do just about everything you can do on the desktop version. Maybe the most versatile member of the Google Apps squad, though, is Google Voice.

Voice gives you a new phone number (or you can carry over your existing mobile number) that is tied to your Google account. You can do all sorts of nifty things with this number, like setting different voicemail greetings for different callers, forwarding the number to a separate line (or two), and having voicemails automatically transcribed to text so you can read them like regular messages. If you're moving to a new city, you might also consider signing up for a Google Voice number with a local area code – that way you can hang on to your original number, but also get the benefits of local calling rates.

With the proper setup, you can also use Google Voice to get free texts – even if your phone plan doesn't include texting. Your Google Voice number can both send and receive texts for free, and your Android phone will give you the option to use that Voice number as the default. Alternatively, you can tell it to forward texts as emails (you'll be able to respond to incoming texts by email, as well). As long as you keep the data portion of your phone plan, you can pretty safely drop the messaging part.


Widgets on the homescreen

Android does a pretty good job of letting you use your homescreen real estate in whatever way is most useful to you. You can opt for the straight-up grid of applications, of course, but you can also get all sorts of information at a glance from that space. By default, Android lets you put up a big analog or digital clock, weather info (updated based on your location), a Google search bar, a quick overview of your calendar, and all kinds of other information. And a lot of the apps that you download (like Dropbox, which we'll dive into in just a moment) will give you other widget options. Just select the "widgets" tab from the list of applications and drag whatever you like onto your home screens. If you're running Ice Cream Sandwich, you can even resize these widgets at will.

Wirelessly syncing music

You may have heard about Google Play, a recently-released online store for music, movies, books, and games. You can buy lots of cool stuff through Play, but for this tip we'll focus on something you can do for free: access your music anywhere. Similar to the iCloud service on iOS platforms, Google Play lets you upload your music (up to 20,000 songs) to the cloud to be enjoyed wherever, for free. So you don't need to worry about syncing your phone with your laptop every time you buy or rip a new album. Just be careful about network streaming if you're on a metered data plan (to avoid overage charges, you can always set Google Play to stream only over Wi-Fi).

If you don't want to get too tied up in the Google ecosystem, there's another elegant way to accomplish pretty much the same thing: DoubleTwist Airsync. The program has two parts: the first is an iTunes-like desktop client that functions as a multimedia player. The second is a mobile client application that lets you stream to and from the computer. So if you download an album on your computer, it'll automatically sync to your phone, and vice

Type using emoji

Android already had pretty good support for basic emoticons -- the smiley face, the winky face, and so forth. But now Jelly Bean users (Android 4.1 and 4.2) can make their texts even more expressive with the addition of better emoticons (or emoji, as some call it). To enable emoji, go to the "Language and Input" section of the Settings app. Click the settings icons next to the "Android keyboard" option, then select "Add-on dictionaries." Add "Emoji for English words," and you'll be able to add emoji for certain words like "snowflake," "sailboat," and a whole bunch of others (complete list here).


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