Android For Beginners Revised Edition 2 - Govtedu

Android ™

All you need to get started with your Android device New for Ice Cream Sandwich and Google Play

All the essential apps Setting up your device Learn about Gmail & Maps Full guide to Google Play

Welcome to…

Android B

ringing you everything you need to know about the hottest platform on the planet, Android for Beginners is the perfect companion for anyone starting out on Android. Covering everything you need to get up and running and essential tutorials so you can get the most out of your device, you’ll find all the information you need within these pages. This updated version also covers Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of the Android operating system. With guides that are suitable for every Android handset no one will be left out, and with a comprehensive guide to the best apps available on Google Play and a detailed troubleshooting section, your complete guide to everything Android starts right here…

Android ™ Imagine Publishing Ltd Richmond House 33 Richmond Hill Bournemouth Dorset BH2 6EZ ☎ +44 (0) 1202 586200 Website: www.imagine-publishing.co.uk Twitter: @Books_Imagine Facebook: www.facebook.com/ImagineBookazines

Editor in Chief Dave Harfield Production Editor Jon White, Andy Betts Senior Art Editor Dani Dixon Design Vicky McFarlane Printed by William Gibbons, 26 Planetary Road, Willenhall, West Midlands, WV13 3XT Distributed in the UK & Eire by Imagine Publishing Ltd, www.imagineshop.co.uk. Tel 01202 586200 Distributed in Australia by Gordon & Gotch, Equinox Centre, 18 Rodborough Road, Frenchs Forest, NSW 2086. Tel + 61 2 9972 8800 Distributed in the Rest of the World by Marketforce, Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London, SE1 0SU Disclaimer The publisher cannot accept responsibility for any unsolicited material lost or damaged in the post. All text and layout is the copyright of Imagine Publishing Ltd. Nothing in this magazine may be reproduced in whole or part without the written permission of the publisher. All copyrights are recognised and used specifically for the purpose of criticism and review. Although the magazine has endeavoured to ensure all information is correct at time of print, prices and availability may change. This bookazine is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein. Android for Beginners Revised Edition © 2012 Imagine Publishing Ltd ISBN 978 1908955 074

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Contents 38

Set a face lock

58

Ultimate guide 8

Everything you need to know about Android

Setting up 24 26 28 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 40

6

Sync your Android phone Become familiar with your settings Getting the most from the Android keyboard Set up Wi-Fi Setting up 3G Change your ringtone How to set an alarm Change your wallpaper Add a live wallpaper Set a passcode Set a pattern lock Create a face lock Customise your home screen in ICS

Android for Beginners

114 Take

Widgets overview

photos

Getting started 44 46 48 50 51 52 52 54 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70

Add and share contacts Get to know the ICS People app Making and receiving calls Call a person in your contacts list Mute a call Composing and sending a message Managing your messages Widgets explained Keep updated via the Android notification bar Using widgets in ICS Organise your widgets Using the internet Working with bookmarks in the browser Using a different browser Using Google Search Control your phone by using your voice

72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86 88 90 92 94

Set up Gmail Configuring Mail Organise your Gmail emails Organise email in Mail Using attachments in Gmail Use attachments in Mail Setting up your Calendar Set Reminders in your Calendar Exploring YouTube Copy songs to your phone Set a song as your ringtone Creating a playlist

168 Boost battery

145

Learn with Android

The next step 98

60

Manage widgets

“No matter which phone you use, you’ll be able to use all the guides and tutorials in this book”

100 102 104 106 108 110 112 114 116 118 120 122 124

126 Navigating with Google Maps 128 Local search in Google Maps 130 View different map types in Google Maps 131 View traffic info in Google Maps 132 Discover how to use Twitter on Android 134 Using Facebook 136 Learn how to back up your phone

An overview of the Google Play Store Purchasing an app Refund an app Keep your Android apps updated Learn how to use Google Play Books Downloading an ebook from Google Play Overview of Google Play Movies Rent a Movie from Google Play Take your first photograph 138 Send a photo to a friend Upload your photos to Picasa Record videos on your phone Share your videos with your 164 friends Upload videos to YouTube

Essential apps A complete guide to the best apps on Google Play

Troubleshooting All your questions answered and an in-depth glossary Android for Beginners

7

Ultimate guide

An introduction to Android Android is the most popular mobile operating system in the world. It’s time to find out why

A

ndroid is an open-source mobile operating system that is developed by Google. The nature of open source means that any phone or tablet manufacturer can use the system as the main software for their products. This has led Samsung, HTC and a host of others to build Android phones in a variety of styles. Some have hardware keyboards, some are tiny and others pack in huge screens to deliver the ultimate in mobile entertainment. At the core though is Android and this means that no matter what phone you own, you will still be able to use every part of this book in relation to your device. Android is competing well against iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system, and now includes almost all of the best iOS features. Messaging, calendars, contacts and most of the core reasons for buying a smartphone are similar and work in the same way, as do most of the system settings. Despite these similarities, Android is different in lots of ways. It can be tweaked to make the experience much more personal and widgets, themes and many other third-party apps are available to truly make an Android phone unique to you. Because Google is pushing the platform this brings added benefits such as free satellite navigation and a tight integration with popular services like Gmail and Google Calendar. Android can be whatever you want it to be; a basic smartphone that you use for a handful of simple tasks or a powerhouse mobile communication tool that will change your life.

“Android can be tweaked to make your smartphone more personal” 8


5

things you need to know about Android

We round up some of the key attributes of this mobile operating system

1

2

3

4

A few Android phones come with hardware keyboards. Samsung and HTC are at the forefront of this development. Every Android phone has the same buttons with only minor differences between them. Use one, know them all.

Manufacturers tend to overlay the Android UI with their own software. It looks different, but works almost identically. Google services are built in by default and Android is designed to ensure tight integration with them all.

5

Android is also used in a growing number of tablets and all Android phone manufacturers are gradually releasing more.


9

Ultimate guide

READING

eBook reading is becoming more popular every month and the Android platform is perfect for such a task. There are many eBook apps available of which Kindle from Amazon is one of the most popular. The software works on multiple devices, not just Android, and will synchronise your owned books and your latest reading position across any device you own. All you have to do is download the app from the Google play store and create an account with Amazon. You can then download free books, preview new titles or make purchases all on the phone. The list of apps that will give you an enjoyable reading experience is never ending and there are also thousands of public domain (free) books and reference works available through apps such as Google Books. Whatever you want to read, you can do it on Android. There are options to clip long web articles for offline reading, you can carry reference works with you anywhere and you can also listen to audiobooks if you want to give your eyes a rest. As you start to explore, you will see that reading on a smartphone is not just about eBooks. You can carry a virtual library with you all of the time and you will never be short of reading material again.

BROWSING

The Android browser is recognised as one of the very best in the mobile world. Not only is it extremely quick, it is able to display complex webpages and can even play web video with the download of some extra software. No matter what size screen an Android phone has, the browser is capable of scaling to the dimensions available and making the most of the design of each website that you visit. Various tricks can be employed such as dialling or emailing directly from a website and you can even install virus protectors to be doubly sure that your mobile browsing is safe. Bookmarking, browsing history and myriad viewing options take the experience to desktop level in the palm of your hand. There are even apps that will synchronise your desktop bookmarks with an Android device to ensure that your browsing is as consistent as possible over all of your computing equipment. Alternative browsers from Opera, Dolphin and Chrome increase the options even further, but one main aspect remains the same: web browsing on an Android phone – any Android phone – is a pleasurable experience and one that you are likely to use more and more often as you get used to the system. Ensuring you have a data plan that will enable you to access the internet without it costing you the world is important, but with the option to browse with wi-fi or 3G will help. All of this means that wherever you are, you will have the whole internet available to you and that’s an asset that is certainly hard to ignore.

eBook reading feels close to reading a real book on an Android device

10


First How to turn an Android phone on Turning an Android phone on may sound simple, but there are some steps to go through to make it quick and smooth.

1

2

Press the power button and the screen will light up with a graphic. Note: some phones may use different mechanisms.

Next tap and hold the graphic and drag it off the screen. You should see your main home screen pop up immediately.

How to turn an Android phone off Turning an Android phone off can be done both manually or automatically; which method is used depends on how long the phone has been inactive.

1

If you are using the phone, simply press the power button to turn the phone off. This will put it in a standby state until you need it again. You can also set it to turn off automatically.

2

If you hold the power button for a couple of seconds you can completely power off the phone or restart it.

steps

Read these quick and easy tips to get to grips with the basics of your Android phone

Follow an Android on-screen tutorial

How to charge an Android phone

Android phones usually come with on-screen guides to get you started and a quick read will speed up your familiarity.

Knowing how to charge a smartphone can seriously preserve battery life and it will also help you get through a busy day.

1

1

Look for an app in the applications screen. It will usually be called Help or Learn more. Open it to be taken straight to the tutorial.

When you plug an Android smartphone into its charger, the battery icon at the top of the screen will indicate that it is now charging.

2

2

You will see a selection of topics. Just tap one to see a further list – each one will be clickable and will act as an online user manual.

You can charge via a socket or USB and frequent charging is advised for prolonged battery life on modern batteries.

Adjust the brightness

How to unlock a phone All Android phones offer some security by default and it’s a good idea to find the right balance between security and speed.

1

When you turn the phone on you’ll need to unlock it by sliding the graphic off the main screen. Your home screen will then appear.

2

A pattern lock or password can be set which you need to enter after you have followed step 1. It only takes a couple of seconds to complete.

There are many reasons why you might want to tweak the brightness on a phone, but you can let Android do it for you.

1

In Settings, choose Brightness. If you tick the Automatic brightness box, the screen will adjust to the ambient light.

2

If the tick is removed you can choose the exact brightness you require – useful if you want to save battery life.

Set the date and time Setting the correct date and time is vital for all aspects of smartphone use and it only takes a few seconds to set up.

1

In Settings find the Date & time option. If you select Automatic, the phone will use your mobile network to adjust the time.

2

You can also set the date and time manually if you wish by using the Set date and Set time functions on the same screen.

Change the volume Volume on a smartphone can mean many things because each function may need a different sound.

1

The easiest way to change the ringer volume is to use the hardware volume keys. Simply push up and down until you reach the desired level.

2

To change the volume for other parts of the phone, go to Settings and then choose Sound. Now tap Volume and you can tweak individual Media, Ringtone and Alarm volume levels.


11

Ultimate guide

Google Play FAQs How do I access the Google Play store?

All Android smartphones should come pre-loaded with the Google Play app. Search in the applications screen for an icon called Play Store. On some tablet devices the Google Play app is not included, but this is quite rare.

Why are so many apps free? Many free apps are so because they are supported by advertising. Be aware that the adverts will show when you are using the app or game and that often there are options to pay to remove the ads.

Are Android apps safe?

Almost all Android apps are perfectly safe, but when you download one it should state what access to your phone it requires to work. Check this to make sure it sounds relevant. For example, a game should not need access to your contacts data.

Can I trial apps?

Many apps are available in free and paid versions so you can try them out to see if they are worth buying. Remember that the functionality may be limited in the free versions, but rarely to the point that you cannot use them properly.

Are the user reviews worth reading?

The best way to gauge the usefulness of user reviews on the Google Play store is to read them all and try to work out the general feelings towards the app. More reviews means a greater likelihood that they are accurate.

12


Are the apps better on iOS?

Yes and no. Some are, but others are better on Android. The good news is that the majority of the most popular apps on both platforms are available and they work in very similar ways. The gap between Android and iOS for apps is minimal.

How many apps and games are available?

At the last count there were more than 100,000 so it’s safe to say that you should find anything you want. The only problem is trying to search through such a large library, but patience is the key to finding the best apps.

How do I update apps?

Newer versions of Android should highlight when an app has been updated and some even update in the background so it all happens automatically. You should not need to manually update apps and games any more, but if you do, there’s a guide in this book.

Do I need an account?

Yes. When you first open up the Google Play store you will be asked to sign in with a Google account you already have or you can set up a new account. The process is straightforward and the device will remember your account once it is set up.

COMMUNICATION

At the heart of Android is communication. Google offers email services, a web browser and other features, many of which can be used directly on Android phones. On top of this are the standard communication options and even here Android has many advantages. The phone app is integrated with all your contacts which can be synchronised online and text messaging also takes advantage of this built-in facility. Skype is available for instant messaging and cheaper internet calling and this brings

Is the Google Play store easy to use?

The Google Play interface has been tweaked many times and helps a lot when wading through thousands of apps. It is very quick and, once you spend some time with it, you should find it becomes very natural to use.

with it the possibility of completely free calling to other Skype users. As you might expect, social networking is also heavily integrated and expandable thanks to both built-in and third-party apps. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and the rest can be used in a variety of ways on any Android handset and many of these take advantage of the core Android feature-set by using photo albums, contacts and your calendar to make everything as seamless as possible. Throw in compatibility with almost every email provider on the planet and it’s guaranteed that you will not be short of communication options. An Android phone is capable of communicating in every way imaginable and the options are growing all of the time as each new service is released.

PHOTOS

Some Android smartphones are capable of taking good enough photos and video to replace a real camera. Even the budget Android handsets with lower rated cameras can take good enough photos to be useful in a variety of ways. The included Gallery app is a nice place for all of your photos to be stored and offers the ability to zoom in and out of your snaps and to let them play as a slideshow whenever you like. Most Android cameras include similar software which lets you take a picture by

tapping an on-screen button and play around with the various settings such as image adjustments and myriad other tweaks. If you have used a digital camera, you will no doubt be surprised by how many similar features are built in to the Android camera software. Add to this a huge selection of thirdparty photography software that lets you take your photos further than ever before. You can share photos directly through social networks, apply special effects to them and even make them look as if they were taken with a camera from the Fifties. Don’t forget that you can also use your photos to personalise your Android home screen. Smartphone photography is fun and ever-more sophisticated and Android handles this medium as well as any other.


13

Ultimate guide

HTC H

TC has been building smartphones for many years and has become a leading light in the Android world. It produces a large selection of Android handsets in varying styles that will appeal to most consumers and the HTC Hero was without doubt one of the devices that brought Android to the attention of the masses. HTC Sense is overlaid above the Android system to improve the interface and to make ease of use a priority. On top of this, many extra apps developed by HTC are included on all Android devices, making this manufacturer feel more universal than many other Android developers.

In the US, HTC has embraced the very latest network developments and released a range of 4G phones. The Inspire 4G and ThunderBolt are good examples of how the company is trying to push the boundaries of speed and power on a mobile device. Boundaries have also been pushed in the area of smartphone screens with some devices boasting 4.7-inch screens to offer a more satisfying entertainment experience. The screen technology used is sometimes not the latest available, but HTC’s reputation for building quality Android products is assured for a long time to come.

HTC’S TOP UNIQUE FEATURES HTC SENSE

HTC Sense offers a complete overlay for the Android operating system and not only makes it easier to use, but also adds lots of extra functionality.

DIGITAL TEXT

The HTC Flyer Android tablet was the first to offer enhanced handwritten digital input. It is the first Android tablet to look beyond the on-screen keyboard and the implementation has proved successful.

HTC APPS

HTC has gradually added more and more apps to the Android platform and now bundles a variety of apps that are specific to HTC phones. Some of these rival the standard Google apps for usefulness.

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SOCIAL NETWORKS

Social networks have been embraced by HTC with the release of phones with dedicated Facebook keys. This really does unite Android and Facebook for the socialnetworking addict.

FLIP TO SILENCE

HTC pioneered a small feature that comes in handy every single day. When the phone rings at an inconvenient time and you need to silence it, just turn the phone over and it will go quiet.

HOME SCREEN

HTC Sense changes the entire interface of Android and includes a variety of widgets which greatly speed up everyday use

FOOTPRINTS

Footprints is one example of an HTC-built app that has gained a popular following and which works very well

WEATHER

HTC has developed the Sense weather widget to a level not seen on other devices

MUSIC

Music on smartphones has reached a level where many people now only play music on their smartphones in place of any other device. The sound quality on most mid to high-end Android smartphones is excellent and there are a number of ways to improve the experience even further. The builtin Android music player is designed to offer an efficient way to navigate through a large library of music and some devices come with settings that let you tweak every aspect of the sound. You can create playlists of your favourite tracks directly on an Android phone which involves merely selecting the tracks you want in each playlist and you can even synchronise wirelessly with iTunes and gaming consoles using third-party solutions. The options for buying music are wide and varied, but Amazon is currently leading the way on the Android platform and offers a free Amazon MP3 app that lets you purchase and download music on your phone without the need for a desktop computer as a middleman. A standard Amazon account is required, but the pricing is very competitive and the choice rich with more than 16 million tracks currently available. Playing and managing music on an Android smartphone is as complete and entertaining an experience as you could hope for and is getting better all the time.

“You can create playlists of your top tracks”

OFFICE WORK

Office document handling is catered for by a variety of apps that offer the ability to create and edit spreadsheets, Word documents and presentations on the go. The built-in apps vary, but all offer enough features to enable working on the move with the caveat that the size of most Android devices is not ideal for complex document handling. Most documents will be received via email and the office apps will integrate themselves into the system, to the point that when you receive an attachment it will open directly in the relevant app. The process should be seamless and familiar to the one you employ on a desktop PC. Consideration should be given to the amount of time you expect to handle this type of document when making a purchasing decision because a hardware keyboarded device may save a lot of time when using Android for business. There are also many thirdparty apps available that allow wireless printing, online storage and more that are specific to specialised business areas. Most Android devices are not bought for business use, but as the solutions increase, working away from the office will become ever more easy.


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Ultimate guide

APPS

A carefully selected range of apps has been added to every Samsung Android smartphone and tablet device

TOUCHWIZ

Samsung has made a series of subtle changes to the look of Android via its TouchWiz interface

S

amsung produces a range of Android products which covers every price point and has started to gain market share in all areas of the Android ecosystem. It was the first to release a high-end Android tablet and has also focused on the high-end Android smartphone market. Smartphones like the Galaxy S II and Galaxy S III pack in extreme functionality yet somehow manage to stay within the realms of what most consider to be a reasonable size for a smartphone.

WIDGETS

Widgets have for a long time been unique to Android but are so popular that other platforms are adopting them. They are in effect mini apps that sit on the home screen and deliver the information directly to the user. For example, the news can be displayed in a widget on a home screen and will update automatically, and the same happens with YouTube and any other dedicated content enabled widget. Whether you need to view your latest calendar entries, check the weather forecast

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Unlike most Android manufacturers, Samsung has tried to leave the core Android system as clean as possible and only packs a small selection of extra apps that it considers to be essential. Samsung has embraced 4G in the US and has released a large number of phones capable of using the emerging 4G network. The Infuse and Nexus S 4G models are prime examples of the type of smartphone that Samsung is leading the way with. The Galaxy Nexus is an official

or display a fancy clock there will be a variety of widgets – most of which are free – that can do this. Most Android devices come with a large range of widgets built in and the most popular uses are covered by these, but a quick look at the Google Play store brings up dedicated widgets for Facebook, Google Maps, Shazam and many, many others. Widgets will not only brighten up Android home screens, but can also save you a lot of time. Most information that you need will be available without opening apps and it is easy to undertake 90 per cent of your tasks through widgets alone. There is little doubt that widgets are one of the crowning glories of Android and that they will continue to grow in number and stature over time.

Google phone and comes with a completely untouched installation of Android, meaning that it should receive the latest operating system updates as soon as they are available. It’s all about hardware for Samsung – that and the never-ending strive for perfection, and with the recent release of the S III it really is pulling out all the stops to be a real contender to the iPhone, and expect to see mroe developments in the future.

ENTERTAINMENT

Android has not seen a dedicated portal for films and TV shows, but this has not stopped users from being able to watch films and TV shows on Android devices. Google has announced the Movies service which promises film and TV show rentals via the Google Play store and this should finally put it toe-to-toe with Apple’s iTunes service. There are many desktop applications that can rip DVDs that you own and convert to various files formats for use on an Android device. Android, by default, is able to play a

iPHONE BEATER?

The new Galaxy S III is a device that looks to give the iPhone a real run for its money…

SAMSUNG’S TOP UNIQUE FEATURES

MEDIA HUB

Media Hub is designed to offer Android users streaming music and video and works in selected countries. Some devices come with credits towards free content.

SUPERIOR SCREENS

Samsung pioneered the Super AMOLED screen technology which offers superior colour reproduction as well as lower power usage. It creates one of the best screens available on a mobile device.

TWEAKS

Samsung has built many usability tweaks into Android which leaves the original interface to shine through, but makes everything a little easier to use.

ALLSHARE

AllShare enables you to stream your music and videos with DLNA Certified devices. These products include a special wireless technology which is effectively an advanced form of Bluetooth.

SWYPE

SWYPE is included on Samsung Android products and offers a unique method of data entry. You can type without your finger ever leaving the screen and it really is quick.

multitude of video formats so conversion will often not be needed, but the process for capturing movies and TV shows from a DVD is quite straightforward. You can also find new films and TV shows to watch via third-party apps such as IMDb, which is free and details literally every film ever released. There are countless other entertainment apps that cover podcasts, TV guides and even some that offer free streaming of movies and TV episodes, but the latter does greatly vary in quality. Entertainment on Android is an evolving area and one which is set to grow as the publishing houses see the potential of the platform. At some point you will be able to rent and buy any media you want on your Android device.


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Ultimate guide

Motorola M otorola has taken a varied approach to Android development and released some devices that are unique. The Motorola Atrix is a prime example and effectively turns an Android smartphone into a laptop. It works by connecting the phone to a single unit keyboard and screen and is leading the way in converged mobile products which could catch on in the future. In the US the Atrix has been released in a

4G version and effectively brings a laptop solution combined with Wi-Fi speeds. The Motorola Defy is another example of inventiveness and is designed to be life-proof. Most tough phones cost a lot of money, but the Defy is priced in the mid-range of smartphone pricing and still manages to be water, dust and knock proof. Finally, the Droid has taken on universal status, particularly in the US, and the name is now as widely used as ‘iPhone’ when describing smartphones.

MOTOROLA’S TOP UNIQUE FEATURES MOTOBLUR

MOTOBLUR hides the Android interface more than any other competing system. It is unique in the way it works, but has not been universally praised.

SOCIAL NETWORK SYNCING

MOTOBLUR will synchronise your friends’ latest information from Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and your email account in one smooth operation.

BACKING UP

Your phone data will be continuously backed up which will enable you to retrieve your personal information immediately, should you happen to lose your phone.

ADDRESSES AND MAPPING

XOOM

Android has been reworked by Motorola for the XOOM tablet

DROID

MOTOBLUR

MOTOBLUR is great for social people, but can get busy when too many icons are active

PRODUCTIVITY

Android devices come pre-loaded with a huge number of apps and productivity is at the heart of the system. Communication is at the very top of the functionality included, but productivity is also covered from every possible angle. The

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The Droid home screen is a lesson in simplicity and contrasts greatly with MOTOBLUR

calendar application can synchronise online as can the contacts app and both offer basic and advanced functionality to suit all types of user. Even more obtuse areas are covered with a basic calculator and notes app and some manufacturers take this further by bundling a plethora of apps to meet every possible need. The USB connectivity within Android means that you can attach an Android device to a PC and use it as a storage facility. This enables you to transfer files between a computer and an Android

MOTOBLUR not only stores standard contact data, but will include Google mapping info automatically too.

LIFE-PROOF

The Motorola Defy is the first mass-market smartphone that can claim to be able to cope with the knocks life throws at it. It also manages to pack in some impressive specifications.

tablet or phone or to use it as a standalone storage device. The advantages are clear because you can now carry any number of files with you and you are only limited by the amount of memory on the device and the size of the expansion card. With so many productivity options built in, many other items can be disposed of. You will no longer need a separate diary, calculator or notepad because it is all thrown in for free and many third-party apps are available to cover more specialised productivity needs.

Sony Ericsson S ony Ericsson – now known solely as Sony – is the third biggest maker of Android phones and tablets. The Xperia PLAY is the first Android smartphone to combine a hardware gaming control system with official PlayStation games and effectively turns the device into an original PlayStation. The Xperia arc is one of the thinnest Android phones on the market and offers a superior blend of hardware and software. BRAVIA technology is used in some screens to produce a vibrant visual experience and the addition of carefully considered apps makes for a complete set up that is squarely aimed at as many potential Android users as possible.

MUSIC

The musical heritage shines through in the Android music software. It’s both clean and easy to use

HOME SCREEN

Sony focuses on leaving home screens sparse to aid usability

GAMES

Gaming is going to play a big part in the future Sony Android experience

SONY ERICSSON’S TOP UNIQUE FEATURES TIMESCAPE

Timescape is a unified solution that brings all your communication with a person to one place. It covers every possible form of networking.

MAPS

Almost all Android devices come with a GPS antenna built in so that the phone knows exactly where you are at any given time. This offers the ability for weather apps and other location-based services to interact with your Android unit,

ADVANCED TINY PHONES PHOTOGRAPHY The Xperia mini

Sony’s pedigree in the field of photography shows with the inclusion of features such as a face recognition tool and a number of other advanced camera options.

range of Android phones reaches the limit of size that can still be considered a smartphone. Ideal for small hands and those who love portability.

but of course the most useful GPS use is navigation and Android is, without a doubt, leading the way in this area. Google implemented Google Maps right from the start of Android and has now built Navigation into the system. It offers turn-by-turn satellite navigation for free and is comparable to many of the commercial offerings on the market. CoPilot is also available for a competitive price and offers a smarter interface and the option of traffic monitoring. Many other companies offer satellite-navigation software at a range

REALITY DISPLAY

The use of the BRAVIA engine to produce reality displays in Sony Ericsson Android devices takes photo and video viewing to a whole new level.

MUSIC

Sony Ericsson has used its Walkman history to good effect by creating one of the most pleasing music software experiences on Android to date.

of price points. On top of this an Android device can be used off-road via a variety of open-sourced maps and the GPS antenna can also be utilised on train journeys and for flight tracking too. The options are endless and on the whole cheap to purchase – and in many cases free. No matter how you want to travel or where you want to go there will be a solution available for Android that will help you. This is in addition to Android already having all the navigation tools that the majority will need built in as standard.


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Ultimate guide

KIDS

There was a time when children were kept as far away as possible from expensive mobile devices – and with good reason. In recent times this has changed though and there are some advantages to letting your children use an Android device to keep them busy. On a long car journey, in the doctor’s waiting room or anywhere else, mobile devices can now be used to amuse, educate and entertain children. The range of apps now aimed at youngsters is phenomenal and everything from books to games and educational titles are available. The ease of use built in to new products makes them accessible to the youngest children and it has been proved that children can learn a great deal from these devices. Well-known companies in the areas of education and kids’ entertainment also create a selection of apps and games so you can be assured of the titles’ suitability and quality. Besides dedicated apps and games, TV shows and films can be watched on an Android device and so can comics, eBooks and all manner of other media that they will enjoy. Children can easily get as much from an Android device as adults these days and the only cause for concern is how they look after it. For younger kids, a case and screen protector would be advisable! Android is for all ages – children most definitely included

LG

L

G was a slow starter in the Android world and then suddenly burst on to the scene in a big way. The Optimus Black proved that a highly specified smartphone could be extremely thin and then the Optimus 2X was the first smartphone in the world to include a dualcore processor. And then came the Optimus 3D which can deliver a 3D experience through the screen and even take 3D content via the video camera, all without glasses. Without much fanfare LG has created a range of Android smartphones to suit all users and some which include features the competition hasn’t even thought about. Indeed, LG is leading the way in Android hardware development in many areas.

PRADA

The recent LG Prada 3.0 phone is not only a great phone, it also includes a variety of new and specialised apps related to Prada themselves.

LG uses NOVA displays which are meant to be brighter and clearer than other mobile screens. Competition is catching up though.


FRIENDLY INTERFACE

LG has made efforts to give a more friendly face to Android via various interface tweaks

LG’S TOP UNIQUE FEATURES SOCIAL CONTACTS

NOVA

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3D

The 3D effect really does work within Android on the Optimus 3D

A NEW LOOK

LG tweaks many aspects of Android with its own overlay and most of its phones include redesigned keyboards and textmessaging apps.

HOME SCREENS

Facebook and Twitter are built in to the main contacts app which allows profile images and other personal info to be synchronised automatically.

The Optimus user interface allows for easy customisation of the home screens and rivals the iPhone for ease of use.

Other devices W

hile the main players mentioned previously have led the way when it comes to Android handsets, they haven’t completely dominated the marketplace. That’s the beauty of Android: its opensource nature means that any company can release a device running the Android platform and get themselves a share of the pie. So here we’re going to look at four other Android manufacturers that prove that the choice on offer really is huge.

ORANGE

Getting in on the action, Orange has an Android handset that can easily keep up with the big boys. The Orange San Francisco has received great reviews since its launch, and for a relatively cheap handset has provided a great option to many wanting to join the Android revolution. A few compromises have been made to meet the low price, but it shows much promise nonetheless.

GOOGLE

It would almost be silly for Google not to have its own Android handsets. With so many of its applications coming as standard on Android devices, the global giant has taken this integration and gone a step further by branding its own handsets. The huge success of the Nexus One has been followed by the Nexus S, a groundbreaking device that was the first to run Gingerbread, the fastest version of Android so far. Although the behindthe-scenes work is done by Samsung, as mentioned, this is officially a Google phone, and may pave the way for more.

HUAWEI

Huawei is not a well known name yet, but it has big plans to change that. The Chinese manufacturer has previously sold white label devices rebranded by other companies, but is now making devices under its own name. Products such as the Ascend D-Quad rank among the most powerful Android phones ever, and make Huawei a name to watch.

ZTE

ZTE is a Chinese telecommunications manufacturer. After expanding out of its home nation, the company has released a number of top Android devices, including the Racer and Blade. Its handsets are also a popular option on pay-as-you-go contracts, so you don’t have to be tied in to a long deal or break the bank buying the handset. Offering a respectable alternative to market leaders, there’s no doubt ZTE is here for the haul. long haul

GAMES

Mobile gaming on smartphones and tablets is eroding the traditional games console markets quicker than any other competitor and Android is quickly moving to the top of the pile. There are more Android users than on any other mobile platform and developers have reacted to this by releasing a succession of classic titles and breathtaking games that push the boundaries of what a mobile device can do. Because not all devices have the same hardware button configuration, almost all games are controlled purely via touch screens. This can make the experience feel slightly less tactile, but it does provide compatibility with all Android mobile devices. Titles like Angry Birds, Baseball Superstars and Airport Mania are good examples of games that are very well known and which have made the successful jump to the Android platform. There are thousands of free games available – of which Angry Birds is one – and you could potentially find an enthralling game in every genre and not spend a penny. As the larger games developers migrate to Android, the overall quality of games will increase and we are already seeing arcade-quality titles filling up the Google Play Store. Sony Ericsson is even bringing PlayStation One titles to the platform which underlines the true potential of Android.


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Setting up 24

Sync your Android phone Get your device up and running

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Become familiar with your settings See how you can tweak your phone

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Getting the most from the Android keyboard Easy ways to enter text

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Set up Wi-Fi Get online on the go

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Setting up 3G Turn your data connection on and off

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Change your phone’s ringtone Use a different default tune

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How to set an alarm Let your phone help you wake up in the morning

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Change your wallpaper Choose a different background image for your phone

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Add a live wallpaper Set a backdrop that doesn’t stay still!

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Set a passcode Protect your phone from intruders

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Set a pattern lock Use this great Android feature to lock your phone

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Create a Face Unlock Discover the new security feature

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Learn to organise your Android home screen Tidy up your phone using folders

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24

Sync your phone

Get to grips with the basics of your Android device

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Wallpaper options

37 Pattern locking

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Organise Android

“Creating folders is an easy task and it’ll only take a few minutes to start getting things in order” Android for Beginners

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Setting up Sync your Android phone Having a Google account is essential if you wish to make the most of your Android phone, and you can sync between the two

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here is no getting away from using a Google Mail account when you have an Android phone, but this is no bad thing. With so many services on offer, and flawless syncing between Google accounts and your Android phone, you will be glad of the very slight hassle entailed in setting one up or inputting your username and password. Android phones prompt you to sign in under Google when you first switch your phone on. While you can skip the whole procedure, you will miss out on a host of goodies, so follow this tutorial and you won’t regret it. After all, this way you can sync your contacts, calendar and much more. If you use Google Mail, you will even be able to sync your emails straight to your handset.

Settings

Configuring account sync

01 Turning the phone on

Upon turning on your phone for the first time, you will be prompted to set up a Google account. If you already have one, you simply sign in. You can skip the initial procedure, and set up an account later.

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When you think about the other services offered by Google, whether it is Maps, YouTube or Buzz, you will soon realise how important it is to go through this process, and why it is so convenient. You only need one account in order to get a better experience from your phone. The one thing it won’t do is sync with iTunes, but there is an option for that, if you wish to explore. Download doubleTwist, which is easy to use, and is available for both Mac and PC. By delving into the settings, you can configure the kind of data that is synchronised to avoid any unnecessary sharing. The good thing about Google Accounts is that they are two-way. You can use accounts associated with a specific application, but they will be one-way only.

02 Signing in

When you set up an account, Android will take you through the steps. For Google account holders, it’s a simple matter of typing your username and password, and you will be all set up and ready to go.

03 Communicating

Once you have signed in, the phone will communicate with the Google server. This will check what services you are using under your Google account. The most popular service will be Google Mail.

04 Set up location

05 All done

06 Settings app

07 Syncing information

08 Syncing icon

09 Auto syncing

You will be asked if you want to allow Google’s location service to collect anonymous location data. This is not fundamental to syncing, however, and it is up to you which option you choose.

With manual syncing, you can see which applications share data. If you email using Google Mail on your PC or Mac, it will appear on your phone. You can also sync your calendar, Picasa and contacts.

You can sync information between your phone and Google account. Simply tell the phone that you have finished the set up, and check Google Mail. If you use Google Mail, you will see messages there.

When something is syncing, the special swirling circle icon appears. If you don’t wish to sync with a particular account, you can remove it. Go to the Privacy settings, and reset your phone.

Tap on Settings, and go to Accounts & Sync. Tap the information to the right of the Google logo, and you can sync your accounts. You can also specify if you want background data syncing to be enabled.

You can also set your phone to auto-sync, allowing the handset to take data from your accounts and upload information from your phone. We advise keeping sync on, particularly when in a Wi-Fi zone.


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Setting up Become familiar with your settings It may be a boring aspect of using Android, but by delving into your settings you can ensure that your phone works for you

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our Android phone is a nifty piece of kit, but there will be times when it’ll do something you don’t want, or annoy you by not achieving what you want. Very often, the answer lies in the settings. Is your phone ringing when you don’t want it to? Are you eating up too much data? Do you need to set up Wi-Fi? Is your battery draining too fast? By delving into the settings, you can go some way to rectifying the problems. There are many customisation options not just for the operating system itself, but for the individual applications which run on it. Going into applications and clearing data or cache can free up storage space, particularly if you don’t use them very often. You can turn off GPS to

Settings

Discovering the Settings options

01 Wireless and network

One of the first things you should do is delve into the wireless and network settings. Rather than eat into your data, set your phone up for Wi-Fi use. Go to Wireless & Network, and press Wi-Fi.

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save power, or turn the brightness of the screen up or down to suit your preferences. It is within Settings that you can alter the ringtones, and change your USB settings (you can tell Android to disable USB charging, for instance, when you connect it to a PC or Mac). You can also check to see how much space is on your SD card, and you should also go into the Settings, under ‘SD card, USB mass storage & phone storage’ when taking your SD card out, because you will need to unmount it properly to avoid causing damage. In short, it is essential to familiarise yourself with the settings options in order to get the very most out of your phone, as well as make it operate in exactly the way you wish it to.

02 Call settings

The call settings may look scary at first glance, but nestled within there is the Call Barring Settings, which allow you to make some vital alterations, such as barring certain types of calls.

03 Sound and display

There are some fun settings to play around with here. You can set the phone to silent, change the ringer and media volume, and turn vibrate on or off. You can also alter the screen brightness.

04 Change ringtones

05 Location and security

06 Accounts and sync

07 Date and time

08 Privacy settings

09 Manage applications

One option under Sound & Display that you will want to head for is the Ringtones. Here, you can experiment with the many tunes on offer. All you have to do is tap the button beside the name, and hit OK.

This is quite self-explanatory, but under the Date and Time section, you are not only able to change the time zone, but also change the date and time formats to suit you, toggling between formats.

Not only does this section have vital settings for your wireless networks and allow you to set a pattern for unlocking, it also lets you turn off the GPS when not in use, which helps to save battery power.

You can turn your My Location settings off if you don’t want Google services to tap into where you are in the world. You can also back up your settings, and even erase all of the data on your phone.

It is under the Accounts & Sync tab that you can allow background data to be synced. You can also tell the phone to sync data automatically, and manage individual accounts.

All your applications are listed under the Manage Applications setting. You will be told how much space they take up, whether they should launch by default, and allowed to clear the data and cache.


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Setting up Getting the most from the Android keyboard We run through the basics of the Android keyboard, from entering numbers and symbols to using predictive text

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s Android has evolved and upgraded over the years so has the keyboard that is bundled with each new version of the software. Each upgrade has brought a number of tweaks and additions that made the Android keyboard the excellent typing tool it is today. What was once a clunky and inaccurate affair is now a practical and useful interface for entering text into a variety of apps. Beyond typing text there are numerous functions and settings that can help assist the user with personalising the on-screen keyboard. The keyboard itself is a traditional QWERTY keyboard that should be familiar to anyone who regularly uses a computer. It features the standard Shift and Delete keyboard features

Keyboard

01 Entering text

Using the Android keyboard

Open the app you wish to type in and tap on an empty text box. The keyboard cursor will appear in that location while the keyboard itself pops up at the bottom of the display.

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along with a button that toggles to a second keyboard consisting of numbers and symbols. The Android keyboard is also home to the predictive text function. While the user types out words on the keyboard Android will attempt to guess the word being entered. With time Android can adjust to the types of words used by an individual. Thanks to the intuitive interface it’s also possible to teach Android new words while typing, it’s definitely a time-saving feature. The end result is a quick and easy typing experience that can be tailored to the individual user. Over the next few steps we’ll look at the basics of using the Android keyboard along with some tips on text prediction that can improve the experience even further.

02 Using predictive text

Android will try to predict words and update any guesses as you enter new letters. Suggested words can be selected from the bar that runs across the top of the keyboard.

03 Entering numbers

Entering numbers is simple and can be done by either holding one of the keys along the top row of the keyboard or by pressing the symbol key in the bottom left of the keyboard.

Android’s predictive text functionality

Android’s guess attempts While words are being typed out Android will try to predict what the user is typing. Its most likely guess is listed in a bold font

Easily increase your message writing speed

Select a word With each guess attempt Android will list many potential words. They can’t all fit on the display, so simply scroll across the screen to see more entries

Personalise while typing It’s also possible to add words while typing. Unrecognised words will appear in white in the predictive bar. Tap them twice to add them to the dictionary

Access Keyboard Settings Should the need arise to access the keyboard settings a shortcut key is provided next to the space bar (depending on device). Hold it down to access the settings menu

04 Symbols and shortcuts

A useful shortcut for common symbols is to hold down the full stop key. Further symbols can also be found by pressing the symbol key in the bottom left followed by the Alt key.

05 Full stop shortcut

When entering text it’s possible to add a full stop without having to use the full stop key itself. Simply pressing the space key twice will add a full stop to your text quickly and easily.

06 Remove the keyboard

If the keyboard is obscuring the on-screen text it can be hidden by pressing the ‘back’ key on the handset. If you want to bring it back, simply tap the text box again.


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Setting up Set up Wi-Fi Relying on your phone connection might serve you well, but Wi-Fi can turn out to be the better option in some instances. Plus, sometimes it might be your only option…

F

ail to prepare, and you prepare to fail, someone wise once said. Probably not in reference to Android phones, but the saying still might as well apply. While you have various options at your disposal, it makes sense to know how to use them all, even if you think they won’t be necessary. One of the most important options is Wi-Fi, so on this page we’ll talk you through about how find Wi-Fi hotspots that you’ve either set up yourself at home, or are available publicly when out and about, and tell you how to connect. Why bother using Wi-Fi at all? Well, it can either prove to be a more efficient way of running apps, a huge cost-killer, or a brilliant back-up plan for when your signal fails. It’s an incredibly handy

Wi-Fi

Setting up wireless connection

01 Setting up

Call up your All Apps menu by tapping down-left on your phone. Scroll through to the Settings option, and select that. You’ll find a Wireless & Networks option. Choose that, and tap the Wi-Fi option.

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option to have, and will likely bail you out of trouble at least once. Your contract might have limited internet minutes, or perhaps no internet minutes at all, so using Wi-Fi is a good way around that, especially as it tends to be publicly available at coffee shops, pubs, etc. It’s also a good way to get around roaming costs when abroad without missing out on apps such as Facebook, Twitter and so on. You might also find that using Wi-Fi proves to be a much faster way of using and downloading apps than relying on your signal, which might not be as strong. There’s going to be no excuse for not having confidence in your Wi-Fi hunting abilities after reading this, and before long you’ll wonder how you ever went without it…


02 Choosing your network

When the box next to Wi-Fi is ticked, pick Wi-Fi Settings, and a list of Wi-Fi networks will appear. If you’re using your own router, you may find the password printed on the reverse of its box.

03 Now you’re connected!

The cone symbol shows the Wi-Fi signal strength. If you’re out, make sure you tick the Network notification box, so you can use free public Wi-Fi whenever you’re in range and if it is available.

Setting up 3G Learn how to toggle your phone’s mobile data connection, which is useful if you’re going abroad, or on a limited data tariff

M

obile phones are now much more than just devices to make calls on. They are cameras, internet browsers, email clients, camcorders, MP3 players, gaming devices, book readers, and much, much more. One of the key elements of the success of all these, however, is the connectivity to the internet that smartphones have the capacity to offer when on the move. Not being tied to a WiFi connection like a laptop, they allow you to go online virtually anywhere. When away from your home Wi-Fi network, the phone will switch to a mobile data connection using the same mobile phone masts that the voice calls use. Early data connections were commonly referred to as 2G (2nd Generation), and were centred around dial-up speeds, but the more recent standard known as 3G allows for near broadband speeds,

3G

with future upgrades allowing for even faster connections. Similar to phone signal strength, your data speed can depend on how far away from the antenna you are, and what obstructions are in the way. You can get a rough idea of your signal strength according to the icon in the top right of the home screen. A G (short for GPRS) is the slowest, E (EDGE) is next, followed by 3G, and the fastest is H (HSDPA). Due to the ‘always on’ nature of Android, it is probably best to leave your mobile internet turned on, as lots of the phone’s features require it to sync online in order to work properly. Alternatively, there are times when it might be useful to turn it off, such as when travelling abroad so as to avoid costly roaming charges, or when you really need to conserve battery life. This guide will show you how easy doing this is.

Turn mobile data off

01 Open application list

Unlocking your phone takes you to your home screen. Open the application list by clicking on the icon. You will then see a list of your installed apps.

02 Network settings

Scroll down until you see settings, and select it. This opens your phone’s settings. Scroll down until you see ‘Wireless and Networks’, and select this option.

03 Turn off 3G

In the menu, scroll and click ‘Mobile Networks’. Click on the ‘data enabled’ button, and the green tick will disappear. You have successfully turned off 3G!


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Setting up Change your phone’s ringtone

A custom ringtone is one of the first things most of us like to set on our phones. Find out how in this easy-to-follow tutorial

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n the early days of mobile phones, the choice of ringtones was very limited, and it was all too common in a crowded bus or train when a phone starting ringing to see everyone reaching into their pockets to make sure it wasn’t them. Luckily, it then became possible for users to add and choose their own tones. Back then, they tended to be bleepy affairs, usually a roughly translated rendition of a classical piece or pop ditty, although quite often it would be practically impossible to tell what was playing. As phone technology advanced and allowed better quality audio output, it wasn’t long until some bright spark realised that there was money to be made selling popular songs to people to

Ringtone

Set your ringtone

01 Open application List

Press the Applications button on the home screen. This will bring up a list of all the applications that you have installed on the phone.

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use. This started with top ten chart hits and in 2005 we ended up with the full-blown aural assault that was the Crazy Frog. Thankfully, those days seem to have passed, but we still get the option to choose our own ringtone. Once you become more comfortable using your phone, you can copy your own MP3 files onto the SD card and use those as ringtones. You can even set different tones for different contacts , but for now we will start by showing you how to listen to the tones built into your phone. After you have found one that you like, we will show you how to choose and enable it so that when someone rings you, you will know it’s your phone going off. No more embarrassing experiences on public transport!

02 Open Settings

Scroll down until you see the Settings application. Click on it, and you will see the settings options. Scroll down until you see Sound, and then click on it.

03 Set the ringtone

Scroll down until you see the ‘Phone Ringtone’ option. Clicking on it will bring up a list of all installed ringtones. Click on one, and you’ll get a preview.

How to set an alarm

These days, our phones are always with us, and fill many roles that we used to need other devices for. One of the most common is as an alarm clock

W

e all love a good lie-in at the weekend, but during the week most of us need a little helping hand when getting up for work or for school. Step in the trusty alarm clock, used and abused for generations, and often bashed by a swift punch from under the covers or thrown across the room to make the loud alert stop. It’s the appliance that we all love to hate, but undoubtedly a necessary evil. The venerable alarm clock’s days may be numbered, though, as more and more of us start to use the electronic multi-tool we all carry in our pockets to raise us from our slumber. Setting up the phone alarm is a quick task, requiring only a few presses of the screen to get an alert set up, which is a godsend for those

Alarm

days when you come in late, and just want to get some sleep. There are lots of alarm clock apps available to purchase in the Android Market, with various more advanced features, but in this guide we will show you how to set up an alarm on your Android phone using its built in alarm function. Just try and make sure not to throw it across the room when it goes off.

“More and more of us are starting to use the electronic multi-tool we carry around in our pocket to raise us from our slumber”

Set a wake-up alarm

01 Open the clock

Find the Clock program on the home screen. Alternatively, on some versions of Android you can click the clock widget on the home screen.

02 Open the alarm

Open the Clock app. This will show all the clock settings, and enlarge the time, making it ideal as a bedside reminder. In the Clock app, click on the alarm icon.

03 Set the alarm

You’ll see a list of your current alarms. Click ‘add alarm’, and then press the + or – icons to set the correct time you want for the alarm. Then click Set.


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Setting up Change your wallpaper Bored of your background image? Here are three quick steps to change your wallpaper and breathe new life into your phone…

T

here’s nothing worse than seeing a fellow Android phone that has the default wallpaper. Of course we don’t want to offend anyone who does still use the default background, but it can be slightly depressing to see your fellow man’s refusal to change his background image from the standard one to something more… interesting. Something different. Something that says something about you. The good news is that it’s really simple to do. In fact, if you’re a brand new Android owner, it should be the first thing you do, as the different wallpapers also offer different app layouts without you having to get your hands dirty. All it’s really doing is picking different default widgets for certain themed wallpapers but it’s an easy enough starting point for the fresh Android owner. And some of the options on offer are

Wallpaper

01 Get started


“All it’s really doing is picking different default widgets for certain themed wallpapers but it’s an easy starting point for the fresh Android owner”

How to change wallpaper

Press down on an empty space on your screen and it’ll bring up a new screen that you can access wallpapers from with another tap. You can also access the option from the settings menu.

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actually quite appealing, and there’s nothing to be scared about when you step away from the background that comes loaded on your phone in the first place. One thing to remember is that you want clarity as much as anything else. Some of the wallpapers might look nice until you realise the apps themselves are lost among the explosion of colour on your phone, so the best thing to do is experiment, try different wallpapers out and see which ones work.

02 Three choices

You can now choose from Wallpapers, Live wallpapers and Gallery. Wallpapers will be static images, while live wallpapers have interactive elements. Gallery includes pictures you’ve taken yourself.

03 And you’re done

Now just choose the one you want. There are plenty of wallpapers installed to choose from but if you want more, take your own pictures or head to the Play Store to download free wallpapers.

Add a live wallpaper Learn how to replace your phone background with a colourful funky interactive live wallpaper

O

ne of the great things about Android is that it allows for a huge level of customisation; users can change the look and feel of their phone to reflect their personality and requirements. Similar to the clothes we wear and our hairstyles, what we have on our phones is a reflection of our own unique outlook, and one of the easiest ways to display that is with a custom background on your home screen. Mobile phones have long offered the ability to add a background to the home screen, and Android is no different, but version 2.1 of the operating system introduced the live wallpaper. This feature allows developers to go wild and create beautiful backgrounds. Rather than just having a static photo, it means backgrounds can be animated, play sound effects, and even

Wallpapers

react to the phone’s orientation, the ambient sound and your touch. Others allow you to play games in the background, overlay Google Maps, and when listening to music display the current song’s album artwork. One thing to bear in mind is that some of the more action-packed live wallpapers can use up the processor on your phone, so if you are on a lower-end phone, it might be better to pick a simple wallpaper. With increased processor use also comes increased battery use, and if you find your battery running out too quickly, the more intense wallpapers might not be for you. There are thousands of live wallpapers to choose from in the Play Store, some free and some paid for. In this tutorial, we will show you how to download a free live wallpaper, set it, and customise its look.

Add a live wallpaper

01 Download the wallpaper Go to your application list by clicking on the central button on the home screen. Scroll down until you see the Play Store. Click on this with your finger to open it.

02 Choose the wallpaper

Press the ‘apps’ category in the Store, scroll down to live wallpapers, and choose one. Click on the app, and install. Press the Home button on your phone.

03 Set the wallpaper

In an empty space, press and hold until the menu pops up. Choose ‘wallpapers’ then ‘Live wallpaper’. Scroll down until you see one you like, and click it.


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Setting up Set a passcode Setting a passcode is vital for any smartphone user and here we will show you how to do it and why it is so important

I

nputting a passcode every time you turn on your phone can slow you down if you need to access information quickly, but it’s worth considering what would happen if you lost your phone. Over time, a smartphone gradually builds up a database of your life, especially on Android phones, and everything from bank account details, private contact numbers to secure passwords can be held within it. A smartphone has so many uses that to make the most of it requires having personal information handy all of the time. There is no way to avoid storing sensitive information if you want to use a phone to the best of its ability. The passcode process is designed to be as near to the perfect compromise between ease of use and security as is possible, but also offers you the opportunity to decide exactly

System

Set up a passcode

01 Find the options

Navigate to the Settings icon, and a list will appear. Choose Security, and then select ‘Set up screen lock’. On the next screen, choose the ‘PIN method’.

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how secure you want your passcode to be. If you do not use your smartphone too often, a longer passcode will offer extra security and not slow you down too much, but those who are constantly using their phones may prefer to use as short a passcode as possible. Remember that a four digit passcode will offer 1,000 combinations, while a five-digit passcode takes that all the way up to 10,000. No matter what level of passcode you use, it should be enough to stop someone who comes into possession of your phone from seeing your personal information. A smartphone is expensive, but the costs involved if someone else has access to your information could far outweigh the cost of replacing the phone. It takes a few seconds to set up a passcode, and little time to use it afterwards, so there really is no excuse not to have one set up.

02 Input your passcode

Once you have input the code you need, tap the Continue key at the bottom of the screen. This will take you to the final stage of the process.

03 Confirm your passcode

If you input a different code, the phone will ask you to type it again. Once complete, tap OK, and choose the ‘Lock phone after’ option.

Set a pattern lock A pattern lock is effectively a password, but there are unexpected advantages to using this extra security…

S

martphone security is, of course, very important, but the process of inputting a PIN or a password every time you turn your phone on can become increasingly tiresome. Fortunately, Android phones have a few options built into the device that effectively let you choose exactly how you want to unlock your phone. Of these, the pattern lock is one of the most natural to use. If you think about security on a phone, then the obvious option is to input a simple four-digit PIN number, just like you do in a cash machine. The problem is that most people tend to use the same PIN for multiple uses, meaning that as a result it can easily become compromised. One solution is to input a longer code that is more secure, but that means taking more time

System

to unlock the phone, which can greatly affect usability. The pattern lock feature is completely different, and adds this extra layer of security while retaining the ease of access you want when starting your phone up. By default, the pattern lock has nine dots which you draw on, and this translates to a staggering 389,122 potential combinations. The beauty of this security method is that it takes just a second to draw the pattern, yet offers so much security. We have to offer one word of warning though; if you leave a finger smudge on your screen showing the pattern, that may well end up giving the game away, so make sure that you wipe the screen as often as you can in order to remain as secure as possible. All that’s left is for you to learn how to set up the pattern, and in the process make your device a whole lot safer.

Set up a pattern lock

01 The settings

Tap the Settings icon on your home screen, and navigate to the Security option. Tap ‘Set up screen lock’, and then choose Pattern on the next screen.

02 Choose your pattern

Make your pattern as complex as possible, but ensure you will remember it. Even the trickiest patterns only take a second to input.

03 Confirm your pattern

The pattern is set, but it is advisable to choose ‘Lock phone after’, and set it for Immediately. This will ensure your information is as secure as it can be.


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Setting up Set up a Face Unlock Keep your phone private with this cool security update as part of Ice Cream Sandwich

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dvances in smartphone technology mean that you can now organise your entire life via your mobile phone. While this is a fantastic advantage when it comes to time-saving and making life easier, it does mean that a lot of sensitive information is being stored in just one place, especially if you bank and email from your phone. There are new ways to protect all of your important data, and with the release of Android’s latest OS update, Ice Cream Sandwich, comes Face Unlock, a feature that allows you to use your own face as a means of unlocking your phone. Using your phone’s front-facing camera, you can utilise your own features as a pin combination, as well as set up a secondary

Settings

01 Settings

Make your phone recognise you

To change your security setup and utilise Face Unlock, go to the Settings section of your smartphone. You may have a home screen widget for it, but if not, open your menu and swipe to it.

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level of security such as a pin code or drawn pattern to help ensure that the private details on your device stay just that. You don’t even have to capture an image; just hold up the phone to your face, and it will use facial recognition technology based on the face you captured when setting up the security. So should your phone ever be lost or stolen, you’ll know that you’ve put up at least two walls against any would-be hackers, one of which is considerably difficult to get past considering that your face is needed to do so. Face Unlock is an impressively simple process to set up considering the ingenuity of the technology, so here is a walkthrough on how to do it and what to expect along the way…

02 Security

Once you’ve tapped the icon and entered your Settings, look for the Security heading, which is found under the Personal sub-section. Tap it, then Screen Lock, and select Face Unlock from the list.

03 Intro

This will start a short introduction, giving you some advice and tips. It’s worth a read, and only last for two screens. Take note of the second screen, as it highlights how to get the best image.

Your Face Unlock home screen

Camera view At the centre of the screen, the view from your camera will appear, with the edges shaded to show you where to place your face within the image

Making sense of your updated lock screen

Not recognised If your phone doesn’t recognise your face, you will be transferred to the pattern or pin screen for a second chance of unlocking your phone

Emergency call You can access your phone’s dial pad to make emergency calls by tapping the related icon that appears at the bottom of the lock screen

Pattern At the bottom of the view screen a padlock may appear. This allows you to skip to your secondary security check – which can be a pin code or a pattern, if you don’t want to use Face Unlock

Pattern Lock

When you set up a pattern as a secondary security measure, you must make it at least four dots long. It’s also advisable to wipe your screen after entering your pattern to stop anyone from discerning it from the marks on your screen.

04 Capture

Using the front-facing camera, a dotted outline appears showing where to position your face. Once the camera has captured your visage, a tick will appear along with a ‘Face Captured’ message.

05 Backup

You will then be asked to set up a backup security setting should Face Unlock fail to recognise you. You have the option of either drawing a line pattern or entering a pin.

06 Set pattern or pin

Once you’ve chosen, you’ll have to create and enter your selection twice to confirm it. Once you’ve done this, a message will confirm you’ve finished setting it up. Now, your Android phone will recognise you.


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Setting up Customise your home screen in ICS The easiest ways to edit and manage your home screen, so all your important apps and features are closer than ever

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our home screen is arguably the most important area of your Android smartphone, as not only is it the first thing you see when you turn on and unlock your phone, but it can also act as a vital storage space. It is possible to add shortcuts to all your most used apps, for example your email and calendar, so you don’t have to search through the menu list for them every time you want to access them. Luckily, it is quick and easy to customise your home screen to best suit and represent you. You can add a shortcut to any app by tapping and holding on the app in question and then selecting the screen you’d like to add it to from the pop-up menu.

Home screen

01 Widgets

Customise your home screen

Tap the Menu button, then the Widgets tab. You’ll be given a list of all available widgets. Tap and hold any of the options to place them on your home screen.

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Once you’ve settled on the apps and widgets you would like on your device’s home screen, it is simple to then manage and place these however and wherever you like. In this tutorial we will show you the basics of how to tweak the different aspects of your home screen in Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest Android OS. First we’ll teach you to add apps and widgets to your home screen. Once you’ve customised your home screen with these additions we’ll help you get organised. When everything’s in order we’ll introduce you to Android’s excellent new feature – Live Wallpapers. This allows users to personalise their home screens with animated wallpapers that react to touch. Ideal for showing off to friends.

02 Add apps

Now return to the main menu screen and simply tap and hold on any of the apps in your menu to add them to your Android’s home screen.

03 Organise

Tap and hold on any of the apps and widgets to see the grid layout appear; from here you can adjust the position of them to suit you.

Your Android home screen

Widgets Widgets are the shortcuts to different programs on your phone. You can add any app from your menu to the home screen by holding down on the icon

Where to look to make changes

Manage You can manage all the widgets and apps on your home screen by holding down on the app in question and moving it around your screen, or drag it to the trash icon if you want to remove it

Wallpaper This can be one of the Android stock images or a photo from your gallery. Tap and hold on the screen to bring up the wallpaper menu

Interacting with live wallpapers

For a bit of extra entertainment, or even a wow factor if you’re showing off your Android device, the live wallpapers react to your touch. Some generate new colours or new animations depending on where you tap them, but it is nonetheless an impressive touch.

04 Wallpapers

Press and hold on a blank area of your home screen. This opens the wallpaper window; choose from the built-in options or your own image.

Apps menu This will take you to the screen housing all your apps, as well as providing you another route to managing your home screen, via the Settings icon

05 Live wallpapers

The release of Ice Cream Sandwich has seen new live wallpapers appear on devices, which are constantly animated and react to your touch.

06 Multiple placements

You can place app shortcuts and widgets in more than one place on your home screen, so you can access them no matter which screen you’re on.


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Getting started 44

Adding and sharing contact details

Pass on numbers to other people

46

Get to know the ICS People app

68

Using Google Search

88

70

Control your phone by using your voice

90

48

How to make a phone call

Set up Gmail

92

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Call a person in your contacts list

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Learn your phone’s ultimate purpose

Choose to phone a friend

74 76

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Mute a call

52

Composing and sending a message

78

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Managing your messages

80

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Keep updated via the Android notification bar

60

62

82

64

Working with bookmarks

66

Choosing and using a different browser

Quickly access your favourite websites in a flash

Step away from Android’s in-built default browser 42

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Manage your favourite music on your Android phone

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Make a call

Using attachments in Gmail Use email attachments in Android Mail

Getting to know your Calendar Remember where you’re supposed to be!

Install, remove and organise these handy fellas…

Browse the internet on your device

Creating a playlist

Add documents to email accounts without using Gmail

Organise your widgets

Using the web

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Send pictures and more using Gmail

Find out what’s going on

An overview of Android’s USP

Organise email in Mail Tidy up either your POP3 or IMAP accounts

Keep track of your correspondence

Android widgets explained

Organise your Gmail emails

Set a song as your ringtone Hear your favourite song when you receive a call

Configuring Mail

Store your emails in a neat fashion

Pause a call with a person

Send a text to a contact

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Get started with Gmail

Using non-Gmail email

Copy songs to your phone Transfer music to your device

Speak, don’t touch!

Work with your contacts

Exploring YouTube Watch funny cat videos and more on your Android

Search your phone and the web

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Make a date on your Calendar Never miss an appointment again

“Widgets are fully selfcontained, drawing data from the full app without them being opened”

Everything you need to get up and running

62

Using the web

80

Using Gmail

84

Using Calendar


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Getting started Adding and sharing contact details

For all the versatility of the Android, they’re still phones – and phones need numbers to call. That’s where contacts come in…

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ne of the benefits of owning a smartphone – or any mobile phone, for that matter – is its ability to store hundreds (or thousands) of names and numbers. Gone are the days of lugging around bulky contacts books or relying on the deskbased Rolodex – everything fits neatly inside the smartphone in your hand. It is therefore imperative for every Android user to know the process behind adding a contact to their device, saving it for future use and sharing numbers with friends, family or anybody else. It’s another feature that is both simple, and very, very useful to have at hand. It isn’t too daunting to start adding the names and numbers of all those you know or need

to know into your Android device, but it never hurts to get a few pointers on what you’re doing. The same can be said for sharing the numbers stored on your phone – it isn’t actually hard to spread the word, but a few handy hints can make sure you know exactly what you’re sharing, and exactly who you’re sharing it with. It never hurts to brush up, just to avoid potential ‘number to the wrong person’ mishaps. The following steps offer a quick and simple guide to both adding a contact to your phone, and then sharing it with others. While it isn’t too complex, close attention should be paid so there are no mishaps involving lost details at a later date – though at the same time there’s little to worry about here.

Contacts Add/share contacts

01 Load it up

Either on your home screen or in your menu, you’ll find the People or Contacts app. Tap it to load up the program, and you will be taken where you need to be.

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02 Choosing to add

On the main screen, press the Menu button. When the menu pops up, tap the top-left option of ‘add contact’ to take you to the next screen in the sequence.

03 Name them

The flashing cursor will be at the top of the screen, where it says ‘Name’. Type in whatever you want your contact to be known as.

Managing contacts

Updates If you have Facebook or Twitter accounts linked to your phone, you will see updates from your contacts just below their names

An overview of the screen

View their name

Narrow down

The contacts stored in your phone show up as the name of the person – simply tap on them to see their details in full

Selecting this option allows you to narrow down what contacts you are seeing, whether they are phone, internet, Twitter, Facebook or whatever else

The menu

Multiple numbers

Pressing Menu brings up a number of options, all of which can be used to customise your contacts book, delete old numbers and other handy things

You don’t have to make multiple entries for the same person/ business if they have multiple numbers – they can all be stored under a single name in your Contacts app, saving both screen space and a bit of confusion.

04 Choose phone type

Under the Phone section is a button that says Mobile. If you want to type a nonmobile number, tap the box, and select the type of number you want.

05 Enter the number

Tap Phone, and enter the number you want to save. Make sure to enter the number in full, with dialling code and/or country code as necessary.

06 Save it

Once the number is entered in full, press Save, and the number will be stored on your phone. You are now able to access the number whenever you need to.


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Getting started Get to know the ICS People app

Searching

Profile

The search bar at the top of the app lets you hunt for a specific contact in your list. Once opened the stock ICS keyboard will appear and you can begin typing away. The app only picks up full names however, so don’t input nicknames!

Your own contact profile is listed at the top of your contacts screen. As well as the other contacts listed through the app, you can edit and change the details of your own profile and import a picture directly from Facebook

The Ice Cream Sandwich update has a new hub for your contacts: here’s what you need to know

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he Ice Cream Sandwich update implemented a lot of new changes to not only the way the OS looks, but also to how we use it. One of the biggest changes was the inclusion of the People app. This acts as a hub for all your contacts, and is the starting point if you’re looking for a specific person, or interested in adding a new one. Through the People app, you can also navigate to any specific contact’s page, send them a message, or even call them directly through the app. All of these may seem like standard assets, but the inclusion of being able to access them all through one application is pretty unique. Despite it being a relatively simple app to navigate through, there’s plenty of features to get your head around. A lot of these will enable you to create a comprehensive contacts list, and one that’s tailored to your needs. Read on, Android fan, and follow our guide as we show you around Ice Cream Sandwich’s new People app.

Sorting All your contacts are listed in alphabetical order, although you can change this through the settings. If you have several contacts under one letter, then you can split them into different groups, as explained later in this article

Images One of the clever things associated with the ICS People app is being able to import pictures directly from Facebook. This is a great way of identifying your contacts quickly, and makes the whole application look a little less bland

“Despite it being a simple app to navigate through, there’s plenty of features to get your head around” Working with the People app Contacts

01 Open the app

When you open People up for the first time, you’ll be greeted with the group section of the app. This is the home screen and is where you should start.

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02 Regular contacts

Press the ‘star’ icon to the right of the three tabs. This will show your most frequently used contacts. The app shows how many times you interact with them.

03 Find a contact

With your contact list loaded, press the search bar at the top of the UI. This will load the keyboard and you’ll be able to start searching for a specific person.

Can I choose the Facebook contacts that are synced to my contacts list within the People app?

04 Making contact

While on the home screen, press the ‘+’ symbol at the bottom of the page. Here you can add a new contact to your list. Press on each section in order to enter text in to it, and add a picture.

05 The importance of groups Before pressing Done, make sure to allocate them a group. Assigning contacts into groups helps you to stay organised and makes things much more manageable when searching.

Unfortunately not. When you set your People app to sync with your Facebook account, all your Facebook friends are going to be automatically imported in to your contacts list. To remove them, you’ll need to manually go through each of them and delete the ones you don’t want.

Is there a widget for the People app that I can add to my home screen? Yes. If you go to the widgets section on your Ice Cream Sandwich app drawer you’ll find several widgets relating to the People app. These include a Direct Dial widget, Direct Message widget and a Contact widget. All these take up just one square on your Android device’s home screen, so you can add as many or as few as you like.

06 Favourites

07 Syncing accounts

08 Alter your display

09 Import and export

You can also manually add a person to your favourites tab, by tapping the ‘star’ option. You can then view starred contacts and contact them quickly and easily.

The ICS People app also lets you make a few customisations to its interface to tailor it to taste. Press the options button in the bottom-right of the app and select the Settings menu.

Press the options menu in the bottomright of the app and select the Accounts page. You’ll now be able to add and remove any accounts that you’re currently syncing with your contacts list.

The Import/Export menu is where you can share contacts with others, or import contacts from an external device. To access this menu, hit the options button and select Import/Export contacts.

“You can edit your own profile and import a picture from Facebook”

10 Export your contacts

If you invest in a new device, but you want to take your list of contacts with you, then choose the Share Visible Contacts option from the Import/Export contacts menu.


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Getting started Making and receiving calls with your Android How to handle phone calls while using the touch screen interface of an Android handset

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ver the last few years the traditional ‘telephone keyboard’ appearance of mobile phones has quietly disappeared in the wake of touch screen devices. For less tech-savvy users this can be daunting; where a traditional keypad can offer a familiar interface, a touch screen can appear to be something of an intimidating blank slate. To make matters worse for newcomers it’s very easy to get distracted by the endless array of features that are available to the user. Beyond all the media streaming, social networking and gaming opportunities there is also the matter of actually making phone calls. Thankfully the bread and butter functionality of making and receiving calls has not been

Phone Dialler

01 Access the dialler

Handling calls with Android

Many Android devices place a link to the dialler at the bottom of the home screen (typically a Phone icon). Tap on it to open the main interface of the phone dialler.

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overlooked during the Android development process. The phone pad interface is easy to access and is intuitive to use thanks to its familiar appearance. Depending on your Android model it’s also possible to have your contacts interact with the interface in a way that makes them easy to find. On HTC handsets, for example, you can use the keypad to type the name of a contact much like texting on a traditional mobile phone. With each entered letter a list of contacts will appear that correspond to that letter. When it comes to receiving calls Android excels with a clear display of who’s calling plus a simple two button interface where calls can be answered or dismissed to voicemail. In this tutorial we’ll look at how these features work.

02 A familiar setting

The dialling interface varies in appearance and functionality between devices, however, most will feature the standard 12 key layout along with a call button.

03 Dialling a number

Tap any number to start making a call. Depending on your model of Android device it may also suggest any matching contacts as each number is entered.

How Android displays incoming phone calls

See your caller If the caller already exists in your contacts their picture may appear on the dialling screen. This also works for contacts that are synced from Facebook.

Get to grips with the dialling screen Answering the call

Caller ID

The appearance may differ from one device to the next but answering the call is usually done by swiping the answer button across to the right.

The incoming call screen is very simple to use. When a call comes in the details of the person calling will appear to illustrate who is trying to contact you.

Manage your favourite contacts

Reject the call If you’d rather not talk simply drag the red button across to the left. The phone will either hang up or go to voicemail (depending on your settings).

Depending on your handset model the dialling screen also provides some useful tabs. In the top right is the favourites tab, which offers a list of regularly called contacts. This is a very handy tool and is much quicker than dialling manually.

04 Correct any mistakes

Some versions of the Android dialler have a delete button in the bottom right of the screen. This is useful for correcting any mis-dialled numbers.

05 Make the call

Once you have fully entered your chosen phone number press the phone icon. The display will switch to the call screen and display who the call is going out to.

06 Add a contact

It’s also possible to add numbers to your contacts. Some devices have a button for this while others may require pressing menu before selecting Add to Contacts.


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Getting started Call a person in your contacts list A basic guide on how to locate a person from within your phone book and then make a call

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aking a call from your contact list is a simple task, but one that you will use over and over again. It’s obviously possible to just keep typing in phone numbers manually using the dialler, but this is time consuming, and most of us would struggle to remember all our friends and work numbers off the top of our heads! Thankfully, your phone has an in-built phonebook. Once you have all your contacts imported to your phone, they will be stored in alphabetical order in the Contacts or People app. This makes it nice and easy to swipe down the list until you reach the person you wish to call. Your contacts list contains not only phone numbers, but also

their email address, home address, website and more. It can even be linked to your Facebook or Twitter account. In fact, it can store so much information you can probably throw away that old Filofax! As part of Android’s integration with the internet – often refereed to as the ‘cloud’ – your contacts are automatically synced to your Google Contacts account. This is useful if you need to find a phone number and you’re not near your mobile, or if you upgrade your phone. All your numbers will be available to you when you sign in via Gmail. This guide will show you how easy it is to find a person from within your contact list, open up the details, and make a call.

Contacts Phone a contact

01 Open up Contacts

Unlock your phone, then open your applications list by clicking on the icon at the bottom of the screen. Scroll down the applications until you see ‘Contacts’.

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02 Find your person

Tap on the Contacts icon, and you will see your phonebook entries in alphabetical order. Scroll to a name, and press on the screen to open it.

03 Dial the number

You will see the person’s phone numbers and contact details underneath their name. Choose the number you wish to call, and press the green phone icon.

Mute a call

Muting a call or putting it on loudspeaker can have many benefits, some of which we show you here

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here are many reasons why you may need to mute a call, and learning how to do so quickly will ensure that you don’t embarrass yourself the next time you need to do it. Conference calls are a popular means of communication, but on occasion you may only want to speak to one person and have a separate dialogue with another without the caller hearing what you are saying – this can help greatly with negotiations or even when you are talking to friends. There are also times when you may want to put your call on loudspeaker. This is ideal when you want other people to hear the other end of the conversation, or when you need to be hands-free, for example if you need to write down some information the caller is reading out to you. It’s an important function, but one that’s very easy to use

Phone

In this guide we will show you how to mute a call and put it on loudspeaker. Android helps the process because the design of the phone interface is particularly straightforward and there is no reason why muting and putting on loudspeaker shouldn’t become second nature within a few days of ownership. These may not be features you use particularly often, but they may prove extremely useful when you need them and a little bit of knowledge will go a long way in all sorts of situations in the future.

“Being on loudspeaker is ideal when you want other people to hear the other end of the conversation, or when you need to be hands-free”

Muting during a call

01 In-call features

When you make or receive a call you will see a sparse set of buttons on the main phone screen. These pop up when you remove the phone away from your face.

02 Mute the call

If you need to talk to someone else or check something it is good to use the mute facility. Tap the mute button and it will change colour or be highlighted.

03 Loudspeaker

If you want your conversation to be heard by more than yourself, tapping the speaker button will put the call on loudspeaker. Tap it again to turn it off.


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Getting started Composing and sending a message

One of the most useful features of any phone is also the most simple, so learning how to send messages is a necessary skill

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t’s not always the prudent decision to make an actual phone call. After all, people could be busy, you might not be in a place you can talk, or you simply may not be entirely comfortable with the prospect of making a phone call at that particular moment in time – the reasons are endless. Fortunately, the vast majority of mobile phones released over the last decade-plus have possessed the in-built ability to send SMS messages, and as you no doubt are already fully aware, Android-enabled handsets are no different. There are obvious benefits to sending a message rather than calling – the ease with which important information can be conveyed quickly and succinctly, the privacy it offers, and

Messages

Send an SMS

01 Select Messages

On the home screen, you should see an icon that looks like a speech bubble with the word ‘Messages’ underneath. Select it, and the application will load itself up.

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the fact that you don’t have to talk in case you’re in a situation where you cannot – so it’s probably handy to know exactly how to go about getting your messages typed up, ready and sent (and sent to the right person, naturally). This guide walks you through all the simple and appropriate steps, from entering the number or choosing the correct contact, through to writing the message, and on to the actual sending process. It’s a process that’s reassuringly very easy to learn, but nevertheless, it never hurts to make sure you’re doing it in the right way in the first place. Soon enough you’ll be texting like the pros, and using up your sizeable free messaging allowance with gusto.

02 Enter the number

If you know the number of the person you are sending your message to, tap the white bar at the top of the screen where it says ‘To’, and enter the number in full.

03 Choose a recipient

If you have the number stored, tap the icon to the right of the bar. When your contacts appear, scroll until you find the intended recipient.

An SMS overview

Compose message

The basics of messaging a friend

This is the button you’ll want to tap to create a message from scratch, and not if you are replying to a message already sent to your phone

Group messages

Most phones will give you the option to send messages to groups of people all at once. You can usually define who appears in these groups in your contacts, allowing to send multiple messages with ease.

Re-read If you want to re-read an ongoing chain of messages, or reply to a message sent to you, this is where you want to tap

Delete It’s rare on modern Android devices to run out of space because of messages, but all the same it is possible to delete messages to free up room

Settings Use this option to customising the message settings to suit your needs, from text message limits and delivery reports to the language and message tone

04 Writing the message

Enter your message in the text box. While you have a character limit, you can type more than this – the phone will simply send multiple messages.

05 Sending your SMS

Once you’ve written your message, tap ‘Send’. The phone will take care of the rest, and your recipient will receive their message in a matter of seconds.

06 Message options

Long-pressing on a message will bring up a number of extra options, including copying the message text, forwarding the message and deleting it.


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Getting started Managing your messages It isn’t just about sending and receiving texts – smart Android users know exactly how to manage their messages…

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f you’re anything like a great deal of Android users, you’ll be using your device a great deal for messaging – it’s quick, simple, and can do the job of a phone call in a fraction of the time, using only a fraction of the effort. But there comes a point when simply composing and replying to existing messages isn’t enough to suit your needs – messages need to be forwarded to others, or you might need to delete some to free up space. It might have got to the point where you have so many messages on your device that you can’t find the particular SMS you were looking for, and so require the search function. And of course there are times when a message isn’t a good enough response to someone, and a phone call is required.

Messages

01 Open Messages


“This simple guide shows you how to manage your messages, dealing with each SMS in an efficient and productive fashion”

Basic SMS management

On your home screen you will see the icon for Messages. Tap it, and it will bring up your messaging app, where your SMS and MMS messages are stored.

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This simple guide shows you how to manage your messages, allowing you to deal with each SMS received in an efficient and productive fashion. Streamlining the process makes things a great deal simpler and less stressful, and once you learn just how to make the most of the messages already on your Android, you will be one step closer to mastering the device.

02 Find the message

Scroll down until you find the message you wish to manage. All messages sent to an individual are listed under their name, whether you’ve sent one or 100.

03 Forwarding messages

If you want to forward a received message, tap Menu>More, then Forward, and enter or select the number of the person you wish to forward to.

Message management

Other options Tapping on a message received will bring up a list of further options of what to do with it, allowing forwarding, deleting etc

An overview of managing your messages

Access info

Managing It isn’t just messages from others that can be managed – you can do the same with messages you have sent by tapping them on the screen

You can also access the contact details of the person a message is from directly through Messages. Simply tap on the message from the person you want to check on, and choose Open contact. You will then be taken to their People screen.

Menu options

If you want more…

Pressing Menu brings up most of the options you’ll need. It might look slightly different to this image, but the choices are the same

04 Getting rid

To delete a message, it’s a simple case of tapping Menu>More>Delete and hitting the OK button. The message should now be gone.

The More button often hides a lot of the most useful options behind it, so if what you’re looking for isn’t there, check behind this little chap

05 Finding lost messages

Tap Menu>More>Search, and enter any text from a message you are looking for. This is useful if you’ve had your device a long time and received a lot of messages.

06 Call, don’t message

Making a phone call is sometimes necessary. It’s easy to do this while looking at a message; simply tap Menu, then Call in the bottom-left corner.


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Getting started Keep updated via the Android notification bar Android’s trademark feature provides a quick and simple way of accessing new messages or updates

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he notification bar is one of the most important features of Android. It can provide notifications from apps, report new text messages or keep you updated on new calendar events. Without a doubt it is very much the backbone of any Android device. It’s not just a feature that’s restricted to the home screen either; many apps will work alongside the notification bar to keep users updated on new occurrences as and when they happen. The feature works in two stages; first there’s the status bar at the top of the display, a small strip that provides a wealth of information. In most cases this strip will contain details relating to the time, battery status, signal strength, Wi-Fi connection and current sound settings. It also

Notifications

01 The bar itself

Using the notification bar

One half of the notification bar provides incoming alerts while the other displays more constantly required information such as battery status and signal strength.

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displays notification icons relating to incoming alerts such new emails, missed calls or phone system notifications. The second feature is the notification panel, simply drag the notification bar down the screen and it will open to display the notification panel. This contains more detailed information about recently received notifications. Each entry can be used to open any linked applications simply by pressing the relevant entry on the screen. Depending on your model of device the notification tray may also provide a number of quick access shortcuts to device settings such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or GPS controls. These can be used to toggle the features on and off without the need for searching through settings menus.

02 Drag it down

Drag the bar down to open the notification tray. On some Androids you can open the tray by pressing Menu then Notifications from the home screen.

03 The notification tray

The top half provides information about ongoing activities. Incoming notifications are listed below this. Tap an entry to access it or open the corresponding app.

The Android notification bar

3G or Wi-Fi When using a data connection the icon in the top right of the screen will display either a 3G or Wi-Fi signal icon to show your connection speed.

The most common Android notification icons Facebook updates If you have the Facebook app installed it can keep you updated with what’s happening with your Facebook account by displaying that familiar F icon in the notification bar.

App update alert To get the most out of your apps you’ll need to keep them updated. This icon highlights when new updates are available from Google Play.

SMS Alerts Text alerts by default appear as a smiley face icon within a speech bubble. Drag the notification bar down and tap the update to go straight to your new SMS.

Quick access to settings

The notification tray can also be used as a quick access point for numerous handset settings. We recommend downloading the free ‘Quick Settings’ app from Google Play and enabling the status bar shortcut in the app settings.

04 Clear any notifications

There’s also a Clear button that can dispose of any updates that you don’t need. Some versions of Android can also have notifications ‘swiped’ off the display.

05 Close the tray

Closing the notification tray is easy. Drag it back up the screen or retract it by pressing the back key. Pressing a notification also removes the tray.

06 Notified by audio

Be sure to set up your own choice of alert for new notifications. You’ll soon create a mental link between hearing that sound and checking your phone for updates.


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Getting started Using widgets in Ice Cream Sandwich Widgets can add a new visual element to your home screen, here’s how to use them

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our home screen is the hub for all of your shortcuts to the apps and settings you want quick access to. A more common term for these types of shortcuts is widgets. With an Android phone powered by Ice Cream Sandwich, you have the ability to add these shortcuts to up to five home screens at any one time. Although it may seem like a good idea to add lots of widgets to every home screen, it can make your Android device look cluttered, and you only get limited space on each home screen. This means that selecting the right widgets to use is of the utmost importance. The stock widgets that come with most Ice Cream Sandwich-enabled phones are great, and offer unique shortcuts to your favourite apps.

More popular apps, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, come with a variety of different widgets for you to use, and all in different sizes. By accessing the Google Play store, you will be able to find a variety of extra widgets to download. The most common types are weather and clock widgets, but new ones are getting added all the time. In this tutorial we will show you how to access all of the widgets currently available on your Ice Cream Sandwich device, as well as the process of selecting and adding a widget to one of your phone’s home screens. In the final part of the tutorial we will demonstrate how you can search and download further widgets to add to your collection from the Google Play store.

Settings Transfer widgets between screens

01 Choose a screen

With most newer ICS devices you’ll have access to numerous home screens, and all of them can be packed with widgets and app shortcuts.

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02 Open the drawer

Press the app drawer icon at the bottom of the screen. Select the Widgets tab at the top of your screen to see which ones you can use on your device.

03 Choose a widget

You’ll find plenty of new apps here. Each widget will be linked to a certain app or settings option for your device. The size of the widget is listed next to each one.

The widget screen The widget menu has plenty of options

Alphabetical order The widget drawer lists all widgets in alphabetical order, making it a lot easier if you’re looking for a specific widget.

Integrated widgets Any additional widgets that you may download will automatically be added to your list of widgets in your drawer.

Size listings Each widget has a size listing next to it. Some apps have multiple widgets and will therefore differ in size. Make sure you choose the correct one.

Recognisable apps

How to remove widgets

Most of the preinstalled apps that’ll be available to you involve the various Google apps that come as standard on most Android devices.

If you want to remove a widget you’ve placed on your home screen, simply long press on it and drag it to the bin icon that appears on the top of the screen. The widget can still be accessed through your widget drawer, however.

04 Long press

Choose the widget you want, then long press on it and keep holding it. This will now take you to a top-down view of your home screens to scroll through.

05 Place your widget

Once you’ve selected the home screen you want, choose where you want the widget, then let it go. It will now be added to the location and ready to use.

06 Download extra widgets You will find widgets for most of the standard Google apps. Download further widgets by downloading apps from the Google Play store.


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Getting started Organise your widgets Now we know how useful widgets are, let’s look at how we can install, remove and organise them in a way that suits us…

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he modern world might be full of handy, life-enhancing conveniences, but keeping up with your daily demands can still be incredibly taxing. With appointments to keep, obligations to fulfil and a social life to maintain, there’s a lot of pressure on us to be extremely well organised. Thankfully, the days of bulky diaries, Rolodexes and little black books are a thing of the past – our Android smartphone can do all this and much more to keep us on track, and all without hardly ever having to leave the home screen. Let’s say you want to create a home screen dedicated to your work. One of the most important things here is having your colleagues’ contact details at your fingertips, so get them on your home screen by pressing and holding on an area of blank space in your home screen, click on Widgets, and cycle down to People or

Contacts. Once you’ve added the right size and shape widget from the choices available, simply click on it to add it to your screen, and select ‘Co-Workers’ from the next screen (if you haven’t already, you can add certain contacts to groups like Friends, Family, Co-Workers and VIPs). With contacts covered, you probably need quick access to your meeting schedule. Assuming you’ve already added your events and to-do lists to your Android Calendar, simply call up the Widgets panel in the usual way, and select Calendar. Chose a size that fits the screen, and press it to add. Next, you might want to keep an eye on your company’s stocks. Add your company to the ticker, and its share prices will appear front and centre. With just two minutes of tweaks, you can dedicate your phone to an important part of your life, in the process ensuring that you’re always on top of things.

Settings Organising your widgets

01 The home screen

You can create a blank canvas by deleting existing widgets. Press and hold on the widgets in question, and drag them to the bottom of the screen to delete.

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02 Add your first widget

Press and hold to call up the ‘Add To Home’ panel, and click Widget. Add your co-workers by selecting ‘People’, picking a style, then adding your co-workers.

03 Moving widgets

By pressing and holding your finger on the widget, you can grab hold of it and drag it around the screen to an area that suits you. Release your finger to place it.

Our business home screen

A quick breakdown of our work-orientated home screen Co-workers contacts

Calendar

You can quickly gain access to your colleagues’ email addresses, phone numbers and postage addresses with one click

Our events for the day are spelt out in the calendar widget. One click here will bring up the entire calendar app to add and check further events

Stock ticker When you create your stock ticker widget, you can pick which company’s performance you want to check up on

Add widgets

You can quickly add further widgets by clicking the plus sign here, though you have to create some space first if you want to make some changes.

04 Switching screens

Simply pull them to either the far left or far right of the screen, and hold them there. The screen will then slide across allowing you to place them.

05 Quick-adding widgets

It’s also possible to add widgets from the Android menu at the bottom of the screen. Simply click the plus sign to trigger the ‘Add to Home’ launcher.

06 Mixing and matching

You may find it’s tricky to place all your widgets on a single home screen. You may want to use this space to add a few application shortcuts or folder locations.


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Getting started Using the internet on your ICS device The quality of mobile internet access has increased rapidly recently. Here’s how to get started with it

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sing the internet on a smartphone has come on leaps and bounds in recent times, and with the Ice Cream Sandwich update being rolled out to numerous Android phones, the experience of visiting websites and media content is better than ever. Browsers are becoming faster, and the rendering and buffering of media images is quicker than it has ever been. With the size of smartphones also increasing, viewing media and reading text has become easier, making mobile browsing an extremely enjoyable experience. The stock browser that comes as standard in Android devices has all the basic functions you’d expect, and will be the chosen browser for this tutorial. There are plenty of other alternatives,

however, and users can expect to find around six or seven world-class browsers available to download from Google Play. Browsers such as Opera Mini and Dolphin Browser HD offer a browsing experience similar to what you’d expect from a desktop computer, but on your Android device. With an Ice Cream Sandwichenabled device, users could also try out Google Chrome; a well-established browser that is exclusive to Android 4.0 users and can be synced between multiple devices and platforms. In this tutorial we will show you how to get started with the internet on your Android device. We’ll show you how to first find the browser on your phone, open up a website and then how to access your browser’s settings.

Browser Get started with the internet

01 Open app drawer

From your home screen, open the app drawer. This will now take you to your list of apps from which you need to select the Browser app.

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02 Browser home screen

The Google home screen will load when you open the browser. For the purpose of this tutorial press on the toolbar on the top of the browser.

03 Type an address

As you start typing a web address, Google will offer suggestions for you to access. Press on the magnifying glass symbol once you’ve finished typing.

The stock browser options Much more than browsing the web

Share page You can share your favourite web pages with your contacts through the Gmail client.

Creating bookmarks Create a bookmark to save a web page that you may want to visit at a later date.

Find a phrase Press the Find on Page option to search for a particular phrase or word in a large body of text.

Offline reading Certain web pages and articles can be saved for offline viewing, meaning you can view them without the need of a browser.

Viewing videos

Viewing videos on a browser can be a little hit and miss at times. The best bet is to download the official YouTube app from the Google Play store and stream them directly from there.

04 Viewing sites

When the site has finished loading, you can freely look around it. Double tap on your screen to zoom in and out of any text you find hard to read.

05 Change your settings

Press the option button on the top right of the browser and select the Settings option. From here you can change your preferences and display options.

06 Switch between pages

Next to the option button is the tab button which, when pressed, allows you to switch between different pages you’ve opened in the browser.


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Getting started Save web pages with bookmarks See how you can save web pages that you visit on your Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone

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f you’re viewing an article on the internet, it can be incredibly frustrating if your reading experience is cut short for some reason and you end up losing the page you were viewing. You can save yourself the time and hassle of having to manually search for the exact same article once again by creating a system of bookmarks that you can then use to speed up your browsing experience in the future. A bookmark can be used to save a series of web pages, providing you with instant access to them. Any web page can be bookmarked, as well as any page that has a video or podcast embedded into it. Bookmarks can be used as a reminder of a specific site, or act as a way of sending the link to a friend.

Browser

Start creating bookmarks

01 Find Browser icon

Open the app drawer while on the home screen then scroll through your apps until you find the default Browser icon. Press it to open the browser on your device.

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There’s no limit to the amount of bookmarks you can create on your Ice Cream Sandwich device, but the way in which the browser stores and saves them differs. For this tutorial we are using the default browser. Not only is it one of the best browsers currently available for surfing the mobile web but it also has a sophisticated and unique way of dealing with any bookmarks you create while browsing on your smartphone. In this tutorial we will show you how to first find your bookmarks. We’ll then discuss how to go about saving your bookmarks, how you can customise the look of your bookmarks, and we’ll even show you a few little tips on improving your bookmarking experience.

02 Browser home screen

By default, the default browser will open up on to the Google Search screen. Use the search bar to find a website you want to bookmark.

03 Save to Bookmarks

With the site you wish to bookmark open, press the options button on the browser. From here open the Save to Bookmarks page to continue.

Manage your bookmarks

Saved pages As well as bookmarks, you can compile a list of Saved Pages which you can look through on a regular basis.

There are many bookmark options available Bookmarks list Your bookmarks aren’t organised in any particular order, but you can change this by heading to your settings.

History A list of all the pages you’ve recently visited are saved in your history tab. This can be erased in the settings.

Loading times Although bookmarked pages take a lot of the hassle away, sites with videos tend to take longer to load.

Removing a bookmark

As well as adding a bookmark, it’s also possible to remove a bookmark from your list. While on the bookmark screen, long press on the entry in question until a drop-down menu appears. From here select the Delete Bookmark option.

04 Where to save?

When you start to save your bookmark, make sure the ‘Add to’ option at the bottom of the list is selected to Bookmarks and not any other folder.

05 Enter the details

You can now fill in any other blank spaces on the bookmark form. Once you’ve finished adding all the information, press the OK button to finialise it.

06 Manage bookmarks

The main bookmark screen will now show on your screen. Here you’ll be able to open up a web page quickly by selecting one of the bookmarks.


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Getting started Choosing and using a different browser If the default browser isn’t your thing, then simply try another. Here’s how to install a new browser…

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asily one of the best features of Android devices is their customisable nature, and this extends to just about every facet of their being. This level of choice is especially useful when it comes to selecting the internet browser. It might not seem too important, but comfort shouldn’t be overlooked. There are a lot of different browsers available in the Google Play Store, each with their own features, faults and idiosyncrasies. It’s absolutely up to you which browser you end up using, and we would recommend you try a few in order to find the one that suits you best. All the same, we will be using Dolphin Browser HD as an example in this guide – a solid all-round browsing solution that is rated highly on the

Dolphin Browser HD

01 Open the Market

On your home screen, and you will see the Play Store icon. Tap it with your finger, and allow it to load up before proceeding with the next step.

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marketplace, and is absolutely free to download and use. It really does depend on who you ask, though, with some recommending the likes of Opera, and others going for less well-known options. Safe to say, though, you really shouldn’t be paying anything at all to bag yourself a top notch replacement browser to take the place of the underwhelming default option. Installing an entire new way of browsing the internet on your Android phone may seem like a daunting task initially, but with the help of this guide, you will breeze through the process, and have a new surfing solution in no time at all. The process is by no means in expert territory. In fact, it is well within the realms of achievement for a beginner or basic Android user.

Using a new browser

02 Searching

Tap the magnifying glass, type ‘Dolphin Browser HD’ in the text box, then tap the magnifying glass again. Tap the one identical to what you typed initially.

03 Install the browser

Once the page has loaded, you will see the Install button. Tap this, then accept the permissions box. The browser will now download and install itself.

04 First time usage

05 The setup

06 Successfully installed

07 Using the browser

08 Closing it down

09 Uninstalling

Once the browser is downloaded, select the icon from the apps drawer. Accept the terms and conditions – you can’t use the app otherwise.

Although it’s different, Dolphin works just as any other browser does. Simply tap the address bar at the top of the screen, and type in the web address you wish to visit.

The browser will take you through a number of steps. No problems are likely to be caused so long as you simply leave things the way they are.

To exit, press the Home button, or go via the Menu>Exit route. The latter allows you to delete the browsing history in case you require anything be kept private.

Once it’s downloaded, the conditions accepted and the initial setup is finished, the process is complete. You now have a brand new browser.

If you feel that Dolphin isn’t the browser for you, then simply navigate back to its page on the Play Store, and choose the Uninstall option.


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Getting started Using Google Search The Google Search home screen widget is sometimes overlooked, but it’s a pretty useful tool for searching local and online content

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or most people searching the web normally involves firing up a search engine and typing in a request (this could be to find the nearest Gamestation store or discover what a CMOS battery is). The most popular of these search engines is of course Google, but on your smartphone you don’t necessarily have to launch your web browser directly in order to search for content. Thanks to Google’s Search widget you can discover web content straight from your device’s home screen. However the feature is a lot more powerful than just basic web searches because the widget can also be used to find apps, contacts or content on your phone such as a memo document. Plus it can tap into your location services to find Points of Interest (POI)

near your current location (which we speak of in the Knowledge Base boxout). Some older handsets will have a search icon fixed as one of the main Android buttons at the base of the screen (which will bring up the feature), however for this tutorial we have used a modern Samsung Galaxy S II with Android 2.3 and a pre-installed Google Search widget. As a result some steps may differ slightly from your own handset, but the process should be roughly the same so they should be easy to adapt and follow. Also don’t worry if your phone does not have the widget on the home screen as we will guide you through installing this. Additionally we will cover how to search for web/internal content (such as apps) and also how to use your voice to perform searches.

Google Search Widget Utilise Google Search Widget

01 Add the Widget

Find a clear row on your home screen and then long-press. Select the widget(s) option and then locate the Google Search widget and drag it into place.

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02 Search for web content

Tap the Google Search field box. Now type in what you want to search for then press the Go/Search icon key to display the results in Google’s search engine.

03 Search suggestions

Beneath your original search request on the Google Search field box will be a list of alternative search suggestions. Hit an arrow to switch to an alternative search.

Google Search field box and results Use Google Search to find content Search field boxout The search field box is where you can type in your search request. This could be anything from an item on the web or an internal file.

Results list Once an item has been searched for, a list of the closest/similar matches found will be displayed below. If you select an item it will then take you to the web or an internal application.

Switchable suggestions Next to each search result (on the right) you will find an arrow which can be pressed to change the original search request into Google’s alternative suggestion.

Location Services

Under the main Search Settings option from within the Google Search widget, you will have the option to enable location services. This will then allow search results, for say restaurants or bars, to be tailored to places near your current location, as opposed to global.

04 Voice Search activation Press your Android home button and next to the Google Search widget press the microphone symbol. When prompted speak in your request.

Search Settings The Search Settings box will allow you to customise what Google Search will use as search items. This means you can search your device for almost any content (including apps).

05 Searchable item settings Select your Google Search widget then press the Android menu button and choose Search Settings then Searchable items. Tap on the Music tick box.

06 Additional content

Exit the settings option. Now type in the name of a music track. If a match is found, you can select it to begin playback using your device’s default app.


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Getting started Control your phone by using your voice Unlock the hidden potential of your Android phone simply by telling it what to do

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hile touch screens have become the standard interface for mobile devices, the next wave of handset control is already making its presence felt on today’s devices. If you’ll excuse the pun, we’re talking about voice activation and how it can be used to control your handset. Google has been busy working on a free app known as Voice Search. It can be downloaded from Google Play, however, most devices already have this app built-in by default. Voice Search works by listening to a phrase that’s said by the user before analysing the audio and performing the requested function. Given its name it’s easy to assume that Voice Search is mainly for performing web searches

but it’s actually capable of much more. Using Voice Search it’s possible to dictate a text message or email to your device and have it appear on your screen ready for sending. If you need to locate somewhere you can use Voice Search to ask for directions and it’ll open the navigation app. It can even play music stored on your device, all it takes is a quick verbal request. In most cases Voice Search works great although it is possible for it to go wrong from time to time. It should also be noted that the voice functionality is reliant on a data connection, without one it will not work. Over the next few steps we’ll take a look at a number of voice command functions and how to apply them to your daily use.

Voice Search Using Google Voice Search

01 Open Voice Search

To start Voice Search from the home screen, hold down the Search button. After a few seconds the Voice Search window will appear on screen.

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02 Start talking

Once the window appears talk into the handset and it will record your voice. A menu will appear to confirm your given voice command.

03 What to say

There are many voice commands at the disposal of the user. For a quick list press the help button on the search window. This will open up a few examples.

Handy Voice Search tools

Get directions It can also be used to get directions. Open Voice Search and say ‘Directions to’ followed by a destination. Google Maps will open automatically and provide directions.

A few nifty ways to use Voice Search Open a website

Try saying ‘Go to’ and a website address. Android will open up that website in a browser. Before doing so it will open up a menu to confirm your choice.

Make a call Voice Search can also be used to make phone calls without the need for dialling beforehand. Activate the function and say ‘call’ followed by a name in your contacts list.

A voice-activated calculator

Cancel your search If at any point you need to cancel your search it can be done by hitting the cancel button that is always available within the Voice Search window.

It’s something of an overlooked bonus but Voice Search also works as a useful voice-activated calculator and unit translator. Simply speak your calculation into your device and Voice Search will use Google to do the maths for you.

04 Look on YouTube

The help section also includes a YouTube link, select it to see a range of examples that can be applied in everyday life. For beginners it’s a recommended watch.

05 Voice text entry

It’s also possible to use Voice Commands to input text into apps that use the Android keyboard. Press the microphone icon to open the ‘Speak Now’ window.

06 Stay connected

Voice Search is dependent on a data connection which is required to process the incoming audio, so make sure you’re connected to use this feature.


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Getting started Set up Gmail Gmail is a key part to your Android experience. In this tutorial, we show you how to set this up

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ith Android being developed by the corporate search engine giant Google; it was no surprise that the core operating system would contain its own propriety email client. It works well, which is good because your Gmail account is important, as it’s used to make purchases from the Google Play store. Granted, while you are not tied down to just using Gmail, and you can add your own existing email accounts (which is covered in a separate tutorial), it is still worth investigating. We feel it provides both consumers and business user alike a BlackBerry-style experience without the expensive overheads. For example, you can get synchronised mail, contacts and calendar entries pushed straight to your phone. In plain English, the upshot of this is that you don’t have to worry about missing that all-

important email, because there is no need to manually connect to retrieve mail (known as the pull method). Mind you, this can create an extra load on your data usage, which ultimately has a negative impact on battery life as a result, but there are ways you can adjust the sync method in order to reduce this, which we will cover later. In this tutorial, we have used the latest Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which features Android 4.0 OS and its own interface. However, most Android 2.3 users should be able to follow the tutorial as well, because the processes are similar. The tutorials themselves show users how to configure their smartphones to use Gmail. We will also cover the basics, such as launching the client, familiarising yourself with the menu options, and even showcasing how to configure additional Gmail accounts on your handset.

Gmail Creating and using Gmail

01 Create a Google account When you try to access Gmail, it will prompt you to configure/log in. Ensure you have a data connection in place, and follow the on-screen setup procedure.

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02 Gmail basics

Select the Gmail icon. Composing emails is simple: type in the address (ie test@test. co.uk), a subject, compose the email, and click on the mail icon to send.

03 Send a message

Press the + icon to start composing a message. Have a play around with the various heading and sub-headings you can use.

Settings option The settings option can be used to set up your email account to your required taste

Message actions Each message you send and receive has a specific set of actions that you can attach to it. Use this menu to apply and remove certain actions

Message text size If you’re short of sight, you can alter the size of the text by choosing this option

An account for life

Once you have already created your Gmail account, it can stay with you for life, meaning it can be used on a new Android handset. If you ever decide to swap handsets, just enter your Google Account details (when prompted) on the new handset, and all your contacts/mail will be synced over.

04 Get notified

By default you are alerted to new emails via a ringtone and a notification alert. To adjust Notifications, head to Settings and look under the notification settings.

Clear search history Clearing your search history will speed up your Gmail account considerably. It works in the same way as clearing your Google Search activity

05 Add secondary account Select Accounts. Choose Add account, and follow the setup wizard (we cover how to access your accounts in the Organise email in Gmail tutorial).

06 Adjusting sync

Press the Menu button, and select Account Settings. Deselect the Autosync option. Emails will then need to be manually sent using the refresh option.


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Getting started Configuring Mail If you don’t want to use Gmail for your main email account, then you can configure your existing email via the built-in Mail client

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e already praised the standard Gmail client, which comes with Android equipped smartphones, but we are confident that a lot of users will be sporting a number of different email accounts. For this reason, your Gmail app will need to be put aside, and you have to rely/configure your mail using the default built-in email client. As with other operating systems, the Google Android platform has basic support for a number of different email standards, such as POP3, IMAP and Exchange. The difference between POP3 and IMAP is that the POP3 accounts are normally pull accounts, where the data is manually pulled down/stored to the phone, while IMAP is server-based (like Gmail), meaning that the data is kept on the central server, so it’s ideal for accessing your account via multiple computers.

Mail

Setting up your email

01 Set up

Launch your email client. Key in your email address and password. Click next, and your device will attempt to configure your sever settings automatically.

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Modern versions of the mail client, such as the Samsung we were using for the tutorial, are a lot better at taking the grief out of this process by automatically configuring your settings for you, but you will still need your username and password at hand for the email account to work. Unfortunately, you may be forced to manually configure your server settings at some point if the mail client can’t detect them properly (these server settings take the form of an incoming servers address, ie pop3.test.co.uk and an outgoing server address, ie smtp.test.co.uk). In this case, you are best advised to speak with your ISP to find this info out. For the most part, you should be able to grasp the basics quite easily, as the client has not changed a great deal from Android 2.1, but the Samsung Galaxy S II has a more refined interface, which may differ slightly.


02 Manual set up

Choose the type of account you have, then enter the server settings provided by your ISP. Click next to confirm your settings, and move to step 3.

03 Email check frequency

After choosing click Next, then key in your account info. To adjust this, press the Menu button, and choose the frequency option via the More/Account settings.

Getting to grips with the interface Most of the options are standard, but companies like Samsung have their own way of doing things…

Intuitive interface Samsung has streamlined the default interface to be a lot more user friendly. So rather than selecting options by pressing the Menu button, it uses tabs at the top to jump straight to the most common tasks

Change your view Samsung has provided a few views, which allows you to display emails differently; we will talk more about these in the ‘Organising your default email’ tutorial

Setting Favourites Similar to Gmail, emails will have a star symbol next to the message detail, so you can add them to your Favourites folder

Email widget

You will find that your Android phone comes with a useful Email widget. By placing this on an empty home screen, it provides a small window showing you your current emails. Plus, if you are lucky (and your widget supports it), you may be able to compose, edit or delete emails from the front screen.

04 Checking email

If no emails are displayed, click on Load more messages, or hit Refresh. Click on the Menu button again, or the top-right mail icon to start composing mail.

Main settings option Additional options are found by clicking the Menu button and selecting more. Accessing your main settings will allow you to tailor your set-up further

05 Signature/ notifications From the inbox, select More/Account Settings. Now, locate the Email notification option, and adjust the ringtone/vibrate option.

06 Additional accounts

Either press the Menu button from within the inbox and choose Accounts, or click on the top left-hand corner and select your existing account name.


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Getting started Organise your Gmail emails Over time, your emails will start to arrive in numbers, so keeping them organised is a must!

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n a previous tutorial, we discussed the merits of Gmail, plus how to set up and familiarise yourself with the interface. Here, we will take this a step further as we look at ways you can organise your emails. You may be wondering why you would want to do this, as if your email account has only just been created there may only be a handful of emails arriving. However, over time these will increase as you join mailing lists, purchase items, and your friends/business colleagues start to utilise the address that you gave them. Soon it gets to the point where you will find your inbox swamped, becoming increasingly difficult to sort the good from the bad. This highlights why organising them is so important.

Gmail

Organising your emails

01 Threaded conversations By default, multiple replies to your emails are stacked neatly. Tapping on the sender’s name will open/close the message. Press Back to exit.

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Thankfully, Gmail has a number of features that will help. One of these is a feature called Conversations, which works when you get multiple responses to the same email, threading the emails together into one conversation. Unfortunately, Gmail doesn’t provide an option to turn this off, so you need to get used to it. Google also provides folders to organise your emails, but it likes to confuse you by referring to these as ‘starred’ and ‘labels’. But don’t worry, as throughout the tutorial we will guide you on how to use the features. We have used a Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone running Android 4.0 but provided your phone is at least running OS 2.1, you should find this guide helpful.


02 Adding a favourite

Do this quickly by clicking on the star symbol next to the right-hand side of the message (located within your inbox, or in any label folder).

03 Label your mail

The emails will have greyed-out tickboxes next to them. By selecting the tickboxes, you can place your emails into one of the pre-defined Labels.

04 Viewing labels

05 Syncing labels

06 Mute emails

07 Report spam

08 Search emails

09 Switching accounts

Ensure that none of the email tickboxes are selected, then tap the labels icon from the menu. Select the label you want to view from the list.

Select the tickbox next to an email, and press Menu. You can report an email as spam, which will prevent it from appearing in your inbox.

By default, Google Servers sync with the inbox and sent items. To sync with other labels, go to Settings. Pick a label and choose the duration.

Ensure no emails are ticked, and tap the Search icon. Then type a phrase to search your entire Gmail for mail containing your search phrase.

Select an email you want to mute, and press Menu. Select the Mute option, and the email will be moved automatically into the All Mail label.

On the top-right of the page, select the name of your account, and then pick the one you want to display. This will then switch accounts.


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Getting started Organise email in Mail With the default mail program supporting multiple POP3 and IMAP accounts the need for keeping your emails organised becomes much more apparent

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hile a lot of people prefer the Android OS in its virgin state, some developers do a pretty good job of customising the Android OS. Alongside the standard array of apps there is the default email client, which feels more intuitive than previous generations. However, that’s not to say the default email client is as good as its desktop counter part – far from it, but with a little bit of fine tuning, we will show you how to get the most from your Mail app with this tutorial. We already covered the benefits of organising emails, which we detailed in the Gmail tutorial, but it is just as important to keep track of emails with the default Mail client, especially when you may have multiple accounts. Speaking of which, the default Mail client can be configured to read

Mail

Organise your default mail

01 List by view

Enter your email client and you’ll see all your emails arranged in the standard view. Press Menu and List by, and you can sort your emails in a number of ways.

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your Gmail accounts (the Samsung app does this by default), meaning that you can disable the conversation view (ie messages that are threaded/grouped together) and display emails separately, which may be useful for those who can’t get along with the original Gmail app. This isn’t covered directly but by following the steps, it should be easy to work out how to disable it. However, we will look at how to view/create your own folders for storing emails – this does require that your email accounts are using the IMAP 4 protocol. Users of an older Android OS may find that some steps will differ slightly for your handset so owners of the latest generation of phones may benefit more. However, the basic foundations are in place, so before long you should be able to keep your emails organised to your heart’s content.


02 Favourites

Return to the inbox and select the greyed out star next to each email that you want to assign as a favourite. By selecting the star, it is then highlighted.

03 Conversation

Within inbox press Menu and then More. Select View mode and pick Conversation view – all emails will now be grouped in the Gmail conversation format.

04 Move emails to folders

In the inbox press the Menu button and select Move to Folder. Select the tickbox next to each email you want to move. Select which folder you want to move to.

In inbox press the Inbox icon at the top of the screen and select the folder you want to view (for older phones press the Menu button and choose View folders).

05 View folders

06 Create your own folders

07 Search

08 Download attachments

09 Universal inbox

From your folder press Menu and choose search. To the left of the search field there is a box labelled All, select this to change your search criteria.

Select an email with an attachment, next to the Attachment box there should be a drop-down icon. Select this and choose the Save icon next to each attachment.

Open your phone’s web-browser, type in the address of your ISP and log in. Switch to desktop view and locate the folder/ label option.

Multiple email accounts can be linked together in one universal inbox. To do this click on your account name icon. Select All inboxes from the top.


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Getting started Using attachments in Gmail

How to send pictures, documents, music and more from your phone to your Gmail contacts…

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mail is the best and most convenient way to send and receive email from a smartphone. Its many advantages include immediate status bar notifications upon receiving new mail, auto-complete in the address bar and integration with your Google contacts. Moreover, the Android version is automatically synced to the web version meaning everything you do within Gmail on your Android smartphone is automatically mirrored with Gmail on the web. If that wasn’t enough, all of Google’s incredible usability features are available on Gmail, too – you can use labels, stars and even conversation view. The topic for this tutorial, though, is attaching documents to your email, which couldn’t

Gmail

Add attachments to your Gmail

01 Install a file manager

To add attachments you’ll need to have a file manager installed on your phone. There are many options available, though we recommend OI File Manager.

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be easier through Gmail. In fact, should the recipient of your attachment also be using Gmail on their Android smartphone, not only will they get the email instantly, thanks to the push email functionality, but they’ll also be able to open the attachments direct on their phone. This way photos, Microsoft Word documents, PDF files and even MP3s can be accessed instantly. This tutorial assumes you’ve already got the Gmail application up and running on your Android phone. If you haven’t, it couldn’t be easier to configure since it uses the same log-in features you used to create your Google Play Store account. Simply search for ‘Gmail’, install the application and follow the simple on-screen instructions to log in for the first time.


02 Kick-start Gmail

Before you can add an attachment to your email, you must first compose your message, so open Gmail and tap the Menu button and press ‘Compose’.

03 Write your email

Begin adding an address in the ‘To’ box. If the email appears on a drop-down autofill box, click to complete it. Now add a subject and your message as normal.

Sending your mail Gmail’s email routine is quick and simple…

Subject Give your email a title in the usual way – if you’re attaching a document to your mail it’s good practice to let the recipient know

Auto-fill As you’re typing Gmail will search your contacts for the same name and automatically fill in the gaps, saving you time

Menu By pressing the options buutton you can open up a menu which outlines some basic options to help you send the mail

Multiple files

If you’ve got more than one file or file type you’d like to attach to your Gmail, all you need to do is repeat steps four and five. Remember, if you’re sending images, music, PDFs and even Microsoft Word documents to another Android Gmail user they’ll be able to use that content instantly on their phone.

04 Select an attachment

Click on the menu and tap the paperclip icon. Now choose the type of attachment you want to send. Use Gallery for pictures or your file manager for other files.

Discard If you decide you want to delete the message you’re about to send, or decide you want to delete an attachment; you can use the Discard option to get rid of it.

05 Adding your attachment Now, simply select the file you would like to attach. Click on your file and it will be added automatically and appear above your message.

06 Send your email

Once you’re happy with the email and your attachment, check over it one last time. If it’s ready to send simply click the Menu button and select ‘Send’.


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Getting started Use email attachments in Android Mail Master Android’s default email application and send documents to your work colleagues, friends or family…

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ow many emails do you think are sent over the internet every year? Well, statistics from Radicati group suggests that upward of 294 billion emails were sent during 2009, but not over the course of the year, but every single day of the week. By our counting that’s a mind-blowing 3.4 million emails every second! What’s even more incredible is that number is expected to skyrocket during 2011 thanks in no small part to programs like Mail on Android smartphones. The convenience of sending and receiving emails whenever and from wherever you want means it’s never been easier to keep up with work, stay in contact with friends and share pictures. Until the advent of Android, though,

one thing that wasn’t particularly convenient to do via mobile phone email was attach documents to your messages. Those days are long gone, however, because in this guide we’re going to show you just how simple it can be. Since this guide is dedicated to this one part of Android’s default Mail application it assumes that you’ve already configured your personal email settings via the set-up wizard. If not, take a trip to page 40 to find out how to get started. Since the vast majority of people rely on services like Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail, the set-up process is almost automatic – simply put your username and password (the same details you use to login online) and the Android Mail application will work out the tricky bits behind the scenes.

Mail Sending email attachments with Mail

01 Open Mail

This guide assumes you’re already setup and ready to go, so click on the Mail icon in your application list (not to be confused with Gmail).

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02 Start your email

Click the Menu button and ‘Compose’ to fill in details. One of the clever things about Android Mail is that it pulls in email addresses from your Android contacts.

03 Compose your email

Give your email a title and fill in the email as usual. In this instance we will be sending a work email with a PDF document attached.

Adding attachments in Mail

Recipient Once you’ve added the name of the recipient you can type in the ‘To’ box again to add further recipients if you’d like

It’s really easy to add pictures, videos, documents and music in Mail for Android…

Email body Compose your email here as usual. Our phone flags that we’re writing from our mobile – this is useful since phone-typed mails can appear slightly different

Paperclip The attachment you’ve added will appear next to the paperclip. Like recipients, you can repeat the process to add more files

Send

Other mail apps

Once you’ve finished adding attachments and composing your email you use the Menu button to call up the Mail menu – from here you can click Send

There are numerous third-party mail applications available on the Android Market, some of which are well worth a look. That said, Mail is the default program in Android for a reason – it’s fast, convenient and reliable.

04 Add your attachment

Once you’re happy with your email you can click the Menu button – click the ‘Add Attachment’ icon. Select what kind of attachment you’d like to add.

05 Ready to send

The Android OS will filter through your files and folders on your smartphone to only show results of that file type. Simply click on the file you wish to attach.

06 Want to add more?

If you would like to add more than one attachment of the same or different file types simply repeat the previous steps until you’re happy.


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Getting started Setting up your Calendar Never lose track of your work and social events thanks to Android’s built-in Calendar

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e are all busier than ever, and keeping track of multiple calendars and social schedules alongside work can be a job in itself. Therefore, using the calendar on your smartphone and syncing it with multiple email accounts and calendars makes for a very enticing prospect, seeing as you can have all your appointments in one place. The Calendar app that comes with Android is neatly designed, and as such is easy to navigate and read in a hurry. It allows you to alter the on-screen view between an overall view of the month, week or day. There is also a useful feature called ‘Agenda’, which lists your upcoming events in chronological order, creating a checklist-like setup for you to work with.

National holidays are built in and colourcoded, so even notable events that you didn’t manually enter show up on your schedule. The app can also sync with your Contacts and place markers on their birthdays to prevent you from forgetting them, and reminders can also be set with an impressive level of detail. For example, you can add repetition if it’s the monthly board meeting, and set reminders to appear as either a notification or an email. In short, if you take the time to set up your Android’s Calendar, the chances are that you won’t regret it, as being able to see what’s coming up in the timer ahead will stop any surprises or last-minute dashes.

Calendar Organise your Calendar

01 Options

Head for the options icon in the top right-hand corner of the screen. From here, you’ll be able sync events from your Gmail accounts and set other preferences.

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02 Calendars Displayed

Upon tapping the icon, you’ll see a dropdown menu. To sync your phone calendar with Gmail, tap ‘Calendars To Be Displayed’ and select your email address.

03 Preferences

Under Options and Settings you’ll find General Preferences. This allows you to alter some of the appearance and reminder settings of your calendar.

Your Calendar

Home

How to navigate your life in-phone planner

Tapping the Calendar icon takes you back to this app’s home screen, which is the week view, with the current day highlighted. From here you can see all your upcoming events

Date Tap the date at the top of your calendar screen to change the view to focus on different time frames, ranging from a day view to a month, or just the dates that contain events

Options From this icon you can change all of the calendar’s preferences, as well as choose which email accounts you sync this app with. Any events saved to them will be added to this calendar

Add Event

Preferences

Tap on any time slot on your calendar to see a blue box appear. Tap this again, and the ‘Add Event’ screen opens, from which you can put in the details of your new appointment

You can use the Preferences section of the Calendar to not only edit which time zones are used, as well as whether or not you would like an audio or vibration related alert as a reminder.

04 Reminders

Scroll down to see the Reminders section of this menu. You can choose to set up notifications as well as the tone and time you receive calendar-related reminders.

05 View

Change the view of your calendar by tapping the date in the top corner and choosing from the menu. Day, week and month views are all on offer.

06 Agenda

The final option is the Agenda view, which narrows down your calendar to show you just the days that have events taking place on them.


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Getting started Set Reminders in your Calendar Remind yourself of those important dates with prompts from your smartphone

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ometimes, just having a calendar in your phone isn’t enough, and you need that extra prompt to remind you about certain appointments. Luckily, it is more simple to set up such reminders via your Android Calendar, which can be synced with Google Calendar and Gmail accounts. Reminders can be set up to a week in advance, and you can apply more than one to any event within your calendar. You can use reminders to change your status on a Gmail account when an event starts, as well as set the length and repetition – if necessary – of an event in your schedule. It is also possible to add reminders to existing events, and not just to new ones. You can alter the preferences of your alerts so that you receive

a gentle vibration or an alarm tone. You can even have a reminder sent to you via email should you not look at your phone one morning. Sync the Contacts from your Google account with your calendar, and you can set reminders for birthdays and any other personal events you have saved to that account, and see it added to the clever Agenda list within your Calendar, which rather than showing you every day regardless of whether you have any events, shows you a list of all your events in order. Having this near-personal assistant is a handy asset for anyone who relies on their phone to keep them organised, so here is how to go about setting up some reminders for your own calendar…

Calendar Don’t Forget, Use Reminders

01 New Event

Select ‘New Event’ to start creating a reminder. It is also possible to add reminders to events: find it on your calendar, tap it and add a time and alert.

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02 Details

You will now see the ‘Details’ screen for your event, which goes beyond just entering the name. You can add guests, a description and times.

03 Reminder Time

At the bottom of this page you will find the reminders section, where you can set exactly when you would like your reminder.

Making Sense of Reminders

Repetition If an event is recurring you can adjust the frequency of it by using this part of the event creation menu

The key parts of adding a reminder Time

You can adjust when you would like to receive a reminder about the event by tapping here and choosing from the various options

Type This tab allows you to change whether you receive the alert as a notification on your phone or as an email to the account you’re linking the event to

Account Syncing

Availability

You can change which email account an event or reminder appears in by tapping the coloured bar containing the email address at the top of the new event screen. A list of your available accounts will appear with one touch of the address.

04 Reminder Type

The other key aspect is how you receive the alert for your event. It can either be via a phone notification or email to the account associated with your calendar.

If synced with a Gmail account, you can also change your status via a reminder, setting yourself to ‘Busy’ when an event starts so others know not to disturb you

05 Preferences

Once the reminder is set, it is still possible to change how you receive it by heading to the Preferences section. Edit the reminder time and add vibrations here.

06 Ringtone

Tap ‘Select Ringtone’, and a pop-up list will appear for you to scroll through and choose from the wide selection whatever ringtone alert you want.


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Getting started Exploring YouTube Enjoy the wonderfully diverse world of YouTube for Android, by checking out the wackiest and latest uploads from its huge online community

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ouTube – the home of the slightly disturbing, hilariously entertaining and sometimes interesting content. Put aside its varying degrees of quality and you have a video portal that’s brimming with ideas, talent, experimentation, information and inspiration – there really is no other place like it. Its content is accessible with Android’s YouTube application, which enables you to log in to your own account to upload, create, share, comment and rate until your battery runs flat. If you can’t help think that YouTube is a load of visually enticing waffle, then you would be wrong (for the most part). You can catch up on the latest film trailers, music videos, reviews of the newest gadgets, and much more. It’s just a case of having the patience to sift through the

YouTube

Searching, playing and commenting on videos

01 Looking for videos

Load up YouTube. If you know what you’re after, hit the magnifying glass to the top right. You can also search within categories, using Browse (press Menu).

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hundreds of completely unrelated uploads to find the one you want. And let’s face it, a big part of what makes YouTube so special is the endless number of viewers’ thoughts – positive, negative, or controversial. Here we show you the ins-and-outs to searching for your favourite videos and how to navigate through the Android-adapted interface. Browse by category for a specific type of video, or just have a peek at what’s just been uploaded from the members of this ever-growing community of video enthusiasts. Also find out how to go high quality for an even better YouTube experience. It’s a love-hate relationship no doubt, but it’s addictive on many levels. Here we show you how it all begins…

02 The Browse route

Here you can pick your favourite Category (Sports, People & Blogs, etc) and then filter by Most Viewed, Top Rated, Most Discussed, or Top Favourited.

03 The back story

When you’re watching a video you can read up on information that the author has uploaded, as well as how many people have ‘Liked’ or ‘Disliked’ it.

Hunting down that video

Search Tapping the magnifying glass at the top will open your keyboard. Enter in those important keywords for YouTube to make a match

Where to begin searching for clips

Video length

YouTube logo

The length of each video is indicated on the preview thumbnail, in minutes and seconds – so you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into before streaming a video

Hitting the logo to the left takes you back to the front end of the application, displaying the latest uploads from the members of this vast online portal

More info

Searching

There are details about each video displayed before you watch them – from the author’s YouTube name to whether the video has newly been uploaded

Speech recognition is another way to search for your favourite videos on YouTube. To access this option, hit the magnifying glass symbol once to go into Search mode, then hit the microphone symbol along the top. You’ll be prompted to “speak now” and the speech search will begin.

04 Similar videos

Next to Info you can find the Related Videos panel, which you can access by flicking sideways. Here you see all the similar videos that have been uploaded.

05 Having your say

Once you’ve watched a video you can give it either the thumbs up or thumbs down, which are represented by two hand symbols above the video.

06 There’s more!

By tapping on the More option to the top-right of the screen you can explore the features on YouTube. These include sharing a video on Facebook.


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Getting started Music Hub Transferring music to your phone

Copy songs to your phone

01 Music stores

Head into your Application menu and open Music Hub on the Samsung. You can get a similar app from the Play Store by searching for 7digital. Here you can download music to your phone.

Your phone can play music as well as video files. Here’s how easy transferring songs to your phone can be

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ost people believe that Apple is the top dog when it comes to transferring music and content. While Android is arguably still in second place, the good news is that the platform is catching up with each OS release. Also, there are plenty of manufacturers who are keen to modify the default Android apps and embrace the ease-of-use factor that iTunes offers by releasing their own music stores and applications for transferring music. We have used a popular Samsung phone to showcase what software to use in order to get music onto your phone, but for the majority of Android users the principles are the same. For example, when purchasing music you can turn to third-party vendors such as 7digital (which is incorporated under the Samsung interface as a program called Music Hub) or Amazon. All of these are downloadable for free from the Play Store. Most of these steps use techniques similar to those that we covered in the film copying tutorial, so you will be familiar with terms like ‘Mass storage device’. Again, you also need to be aware of what file types your default music player supports before copying and pasting. You can find this information out by visiting the supplier/manufacturer website. However, we have a few extra tips for importing your music from iTunes and syncing tunes from Windows Media Player, plus we show you a couple of steps for transferring content via Bluetooth. This last part does require a touch of IT literacy, but if you do get stuck it’s best to consult the documentation that came with your device.

“You need to be aware of what files your music player supports” 90


04 Application transfer

Disconnect then reconnect your device so it’s in MTP Application mode. Launch Kies if you’re using a Samsung. Choose Music library and Add Music. Select songs and click Transfer To Device.

07 Transfer via Bluetooth 2

Enable your Bluetooth on your other device. Now on your primary device select ‘Search for Devices. After scanning it’ll pick up the other device, so select this from the list.

02 Mass storage

03 Sync with Media Player

05 Import iTunes Library



09 Transfer via email attachment

Open the Settings option and select Wireless and Networks. Open the USB utilities and select Connect Storage to PC. Connect your device via USB. Now copy and paste files into the Media folder.

You can also import your iTunes library from Kies. Click on the File menu and choose ‘Import iTunes playlist to Library’. After it’s finished you can choose what you want to transfer.

From your other device, open up your music app and select the track you want to transfer. Next press the Menu button and select the option ‘Share music via’ or ‘Send’. Choose Bluetooth from the list.

Now launch Windows Media Player. Drag your music to the right panel, directly beneath your connected device. Once you’re finished, click ‘Start Sync’.

You can also transfer music via Bluetooth. Head to Settings and go into Wireless and Network. Now select Bluetooth Settings and turn on your Bluetooth. Place a tick next to Visible.

Songs can be copied from an email. Once you receive your file via your mail client, select the email and scroll to the attachment. Next to the attachment should be an option to save it.


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Getting started Set your favourite song as a ringtone Ringtones are another way of personalising your phone, and can also prove useful for identifying individual contacts

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magine having your favourite music track bellow out when your phone rings, or the grin spreading across your face you are likely to get when a friend calls, and their very own personalised tone starts to kick in. Joking aside, it is certainly a brilliant way of identifying a caller, which otherwise may get ignored if your ringtone stays the same. We have already covered methods of how to transfer music to your phone, so we assume you have already done all the hard work. However, the only snag is that the transferred music in its virgin state isn’t readily available as ringtones unless you tell the system otherwise. Additionally, even once you convert a song to a ringtone it will still cut off after a given time

Ringtones

01 Via Music app

Set music tracks as ringtones

To set a default ringtone, head to your Music app. Select the track, and press the Menu button. Next, choose ‘Set as’, and choose ‘Phone ringtone’.

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(normally 30 seconds), which can be annoying if it takes a while for the song to get going. But not to worry, as all the tools you need to create/customise your ringtones are already on your phone, and if they aren’t, a quick visit to the Play Store will fix this. For the purposes of this tutorial, you won’t need a great deal of IT savvy, as the steps should be fairly straightforward, but we will start off by showing how to convert music tracks to ringtones, and the next part will show you how to access them once they are converted. Finally, we will look at how to utilise the ringtones for individual contacts so that by the end of the tutorial, you will be able to personalise your phone according to your tastes.

02 Buy ringtones

You can install 7digital or Amazon MP3. Once installed, open either app. Type in ringtones, then the search icon. This will list tracks to purchase and download.

03 Set ringtone

Download/install Astro File Manager. Launch it, then browse your music folder. Hold on the track that you want, select Music options, and then ‘Set as Ringtone’.

Ringdroid custom ringtones

Timeline To aid you with cutting the songs, a timeline appears at the top. After setting a start and end point, press play in order to hear the playback between those two points

Customising your ringtones to your exact requirements Main interface

Zoom function

Ringdroid’s main interface can be used to effectively cut out parts of the song you don’t want by setting the sliders, or by keying in the start and end points

You can also use the zoom function to zoom in and out of the screen. This again makes life easier when editing your sound file with the adjustable slider

Install music

Another use for the Astro file manager is to create folders. If you create a folder called ringtones, you can install music directly into this folder so that it can be accessed by the main settings option that we previously spoke of in step 6.

04 Resize your ringtone

Download/install Ringdroid. Pick a track from the list. Enter the points of the tracks you want to clip. Press play to hear the song, and when happy press Save.

Save tracks Saving your tracks allows you to assign your custom track as a ringtone, or by pressing the drop-down tab you can assign a song back to your music player, Alarm or Notification

05 Assign to contact

Either use Ringdroid, or launch your Contacts app. Select a contact, scroll to the bottom, and select Ringtone. Select one of the ringtones or a track.

06 Change settings

Select Settings. From the list of choices, select Sound, and locate the ringtone option. Once selected, you can pick from any of the ringtones you have created.


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Getting started Creating a playlist Everything you need to know to make a totally customised music playlist on your Android

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reating custom playlists is essential when striving to get the most out of your Android device. With mix tapes well and truly a thing of the past, playlists have taken their place, allowing you to scour your music library for relevant tracks, and then allocating them into various groups to suit your every mood, and mark pretty much every occasion. While there’s a Shuffle facility built into the menus, sometimes there’s just no replacement for a finely calculated, portable mix tape of your own making. The on-board, catchily titled app, Music, allows you to achieve exactly this in just a few easy steps, creating any number of playlists you like, with the facility for them to be further customised at a later date. Adding songs by artist, genre, album or even composer, reordering them to your exact specification,

Music

Making custom playlists

01 Starting out

Scroll down on your home screen until you find the green music note icon – the app called Music – and touch it to enter the program.

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and changing all of these things later on as you acquire more music are all possible with Android. Seeing as many Android handsets include a full-size 3.5mm headphone jack, as well as the capacity for absolutely massive memory cards, learning to create and manage playlists could see you one step closer to chucking away your separate, portable MP3 player for good, and managing and playing your music library entirely from your phone. There are numerous advantages to doing this, the best of which is having all your songs available to assign to your phone’s functions. Separate ringtones for each of your friends, text sounds and even integration into various apps and games can only be better the more songs you have. Join us now as we teach you all about playlists, and the almost endless possibilities that they entail for your Android phone.


02 Access Music’s menu

You’ll be shown the last song that you played on your phone. Touching the bottom-left button will bring up Music’s options menu.

03 Get scrolling

Fourth from the left at the bottom is the icon you need. Touch it, then ‘Add playlist’, and you’ll enter the control centre for all your playlist options.

Your playlist The key parts of creating a custom playlist

Choose songs This is where to touch in order to start racking up those songs for your dream playlist

Name playlist Touching here makes the onscreen keyboard appear, letting you name your playlist

Delete Touching here helps you quickly and effectively remove any songs you added by mistake

Shortcuts

While working in the playlist customisation screen, pressing the Menu button will bring up a new screen with shortcuts to features already discussed. However, it also shows ‘Change order’, which takes you to a simple sub-menu in which you can touch and drag tracks around to change the playing order of your playlist.

04 Name and shame

Touching the top of the screen lets you name the list, while ‘Add songs to playlist’ will take you to the selection sub-menu, where you can fill your list with songs.

Menu Pressing Menu at any point opens up a few more options, including the option to reorder your songs in the playlist (see Shortcuts boxout)

05 Pick and mix

The options define how you search. When you select a choice, you’ll be taken to the appropriate list. From there, tick which songs you want, then touch ‘Add’.

06 Refine your playlist

Each selection brings you back to the name screen, so when you’re done, hit ‘Save’. Your playlist can then be accessed by following the steps up to three.


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The next step 98

An overview of the Google Play Store An overview of Android’s equivalent to the App Store

100

Purchase an app

100 Purchasing an app Buy an app to use on your device

102 Refund an app Get your money back on an app you don’t like

104 Keep your apps updated Make sure you have the latest versions of your apps

106 Learn how to use Google

Play Books

Start reading ebooks on your phone

108 Downloading an ebook

from Google Play Buying your first ebook

110 Overview of

Google Play Movies Google’s movie rental service

112 Rent a Movie

from Google Play Watching your first movie

114 Take your first photograph Snap away with your phone’s built-in camera

116 Send a photo to a friend Share your favourite pictures with your mates

118 Upload your photos to Picasa Allow the world to see your snaps

120 Record videos on your phone Capture those magic moments

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136

Back up a phone

104 Update apps

Learn your way around Android’s more advanced features

126 Navigate in Maps

132 Use

122 Share your videos with your friends Send your recordings to your friends and family

Twitter

124 Upload videos to YouTube Post your best videos online

126 Navigating with Google Maps Find your way around

128 Local search in Google Maps Search for restaurants in your nearby area

130 View different map types in Google Maps Change from satellite to terrain view

131 View traffic info in Google Maps Never get stuck in traffic again

120 Record a video

132 Discover how to use Twitter on Android Tweet away on your mobile

134 Using Facebook Update your status and more

136 Back up your phone Ensure you don’t lose your data

“Google Play is a burgeoning and vibrant shopping experience” Android for Beginners

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The next step An overview of the Google Play Store A quick guide to finding your way around the re-branded Android Marketplace

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emoulded and renamed, Google Play has replaced the old Android Market as the new hub for Android users to download apps from. But crucially, the Google Play Store has much wider reach than the Android Market as it now allows users to download books, music and rent movies. This means there are likely to be far more reasons for you to visit the store. Having this central hub means all your entertainment needs will be serviced in one place. On the home page, you can see banners for the most popular current downloads on Google Play, and then individual sections for apps, books and movies. Movies can be rented and viewed in HD on your smartphone, something that is

bound to impress anyone looking over your shoulder on the train. You can also keep track of all your downloads in the My Apps section, which lists everything you’ve downloaded from the Store and also gives you update information to ensure you always have the latest version. You can link different Google accounts to the Play Store and view your downloads on each as well as open or launch an app directly. The Settings section also allows you adjust the download setup, changing whether or not you would like widgets created on your home screen for your downloads. So here is a guide to the key parts of Google Play, what you need to know, and how to navigate the new-look store.

Play Store Find your way around

01 Home Page

The Play Store home page has banners advertising the most popular downloads. Scroll down to see what’s on offer, or Search to find something specific.

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02 Apps

Hit the Apps button to head to the appdedicated section of the Play Store. Here you’ll find Staff Choices, games, featured apps plus much more.

03 Books

Head back to the home page and then tap Books to see all of the downloadable books available. Swipe left and you can view books by category.

The App Page The key parts of the download page

Share If you find something you think others might like, you can share it by tapping the Share icon and choosing one of the options, such as Google+ and Gmail.

Screenshots You can swipe through the various screenshots of an app to get an impression of what it’s like. Some also come with a trailer to watch. Tap on any of the images to open them full screen.

Buy The price of an app appears in blue in the header at the top of the screen. Tap it to start a purchase by opening the terms and conditions screen.

Reviews

A complete record

Scroll down the page to read reviews from other users who have downloaded the app. Each will provide a star rating and an overall summary of opinion is shown in graph form at the top of the review section.

The All screen lists everything you’ve ever downloaded and installed, all tied to your Google account. If you ever reset your phone, or buy a new one, you will find your favourite apps here.

04 Movies

The Movies section looks a little like Apps and Books, but it also features interactive banners. There are also plenty of films available for users to enjoy in HD.

05 Search

Tapping the Search icon allows you to be specific in your browsing, and as a useful additional feature, all your previous searches are saved.

06 My Apps

Next to the Search icon you can access a section called My Apps. This gives you a list of all your downloads, as well as telling you if any updates are available.


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The next step Purchasing an app How to get the most out of Android’s growing app market, starting with your very first app download

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he expanding range of utilities, games and other fun stuff on the Play Store is making the platform extremely competitive in the world of smartphones, and is something you should get stuck into as soon as possible in order to get the most out of your Android handset. There are a couple of provisos before you begin, however. First and foremost, you will need to set up a Google Mail account in order to use the Play Store. Simply point your phone’s browser to http://mail.google.com and follow the simple set-up instructions, and you’re all set. Having your Android phone linked to a Gmail account will help you in all sorts of other ways, too – it even lets you back up your entire phone contacts book to your email account in case your phone is lost or stolen.

Play Store

01 Go to the Store

Shopping on the Store

Access the Play Store app which can be found on the home screen and tap on it to open up Google’s replacement for the Android Market.

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The other thing to think about is exactly how safe and high quality the content on the Store is for you and your phone. Unlike Apple’s App Store, the Play Store is a relatively unmonitored environment, which means, while there is often a greater range of choice in what you can download – at very cheap prices – rogue applications will sometimes appear that won’t offer you much in the way of value, or may not even work with your unique handset. It’s best to check out reviews from other users first (shown on the download page for each application), or download a demo of the app if one is available. All this said, the Play Store is a burgeoning and vibrant shopping experience, so join us now as we demonstrate how to start buying apps that will make your smartphone even more fun to use.

02 Apps or Games?

The Store is split into Apps and Games sections. For this tutorial, we’ll be hunting down and downloading the game Doodle Jump, so hit the ‘Games’ tab.

03 Sections

The ‘Games’ tab is also split into sections. ‘All games’ gives you a list of the most popular games. ‘Top paid’ and ‘Top free’ offer the best paid and free games.

Navigating the Store

Search The search function lets you track down what you want, or even type keywords in to help you locate an app you didn’t know even existed

How to shop quickly and effectively

Sections You can select the Staff Choices, Editors’ Choice and Games categories from the Play Store home screen

Featured app The main screen features a prominent featured app that regularly changes to tempt you

Check for updates

More options

Logging onto Play Store after you’ve bought apps and games will automatically check them for updates, and if any are available you’ll be greeted with a menu which allows you to automatically queue up updates for those that accept it, while ticking off manual updates for any with changed permissions.

04 Search for success

Simply typing ‘doodle’ into the search box at the top will bring up a list of selected results. Touch the suggested title that matches your query.

Tap the menu button and you’ll be able to access information on your account, your apps, as well as getting help and changing the settings

05 Purchase

Select your app and click Buy. After that, the Buy box becomes an ‘OK’ agreement for the permissions you give the program; such as connecting to the internet.

06 Pay and play

Buying an app for the first time, you’ll be asked to add a credit card account to Google’s secure server. Just follow the on-screen instructions.


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The next step Refund an app Once you buy an app you have 15 minutes to test it, and can get a refund if you don’t like it

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ith hundreds of thousands of apps on Google Play, there is more than enough choice for every user, no matter how they wish to use their handset. A large proportion of apps are free, often supported by adverts, and can be every bit as good as their commercial rivals. Even the apps that you need to pay for are usually pretty cheap, and you should be able to pick up something in almost any field for little more than a pound. However, buying apps does not come without a small risk. What if they don’t work well on your phone, do not perform the function you

wanted them to, or if you simply don’t like them? Thankfully, in the Play Store this is not a problem. When you buy an app, you have a 15 minute window in which you can download and test it, and if it doesn’t fit the bill, then you can uninstall it again for a full refund. It’s a useful feature for any apps that don’t have ‘lite’ versions, that are supported by adverts, or have fewer features in comparison to the paid option. It’s not long, so you are going on first impressions alone, but for most small apps in particular it is enough time for you to ascertain whether you want to keep them or not.

“When you buy an app, you have 15 minutes in which you can download and test it, and if it doesn’t fit the bill, then you can uninstall it”

Google Play Store

01 Find an app

Open the Play app. Search for the app you want to buy either by pressing the magnifying glass icon and entering a name, or by browsing the categories.

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Get refunded on a paid app

02 Make your purchase

Once you have found the app you want to buy, complete the purchase. Click the Buy button, and then proceed as prompted in order to download it.

03 Test the app

You have 15 minutes in which to give the app a quick once over. Tap the app icon in the Apps screen to launch it and begin testing it.

Refunding an app

Email Make sure you’re logged in to your Google Play account else the wrong list of apps will be shown

What to look for in the My Apps section

Installed All the apps you’ve previously installed on your device will be listed with the word Installed next to them

Uninstall Any app that you’ve previously uninstalled will be listed with their price next to them. This is a good way to see if you’ve refunded an app in time

Start the timer!

The 15-minute limit starts the moment your transaction is completed. Bear in mind that if you’re downloading a large game, or have a poor network connection the 15 minutes might be up before you’ve had a chance to even finish downloading the app.

04 Uninstall

Open the Play app and tap on My Apps. Locate the app, tap on it, then hit the Refund button. If you’re too late, the button will say ‘Uninstall’ instead.

App pages As well as being a list of apps, this page also works as a portal to each individual app’s page. Press on one to see the app’s details

05 Get confirmation

Once the app has been uninstalled, you will receive an email confirming that your purchase has been cancelled, and that you haven’t been charged.

06 One time only

You can refund as many apps as you like, but only each individual app once. If you try to buy an already refunded app, a message will appear forbidding this.


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The next step Keep your apps updated

Developers don’t sell you a program and wash their hands of it. They continue to hone and refine their offerings…

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t is important to keep on top of your apps. As time goes by, bugs are fixed, features are added, and niggles are removed. The only way you can benefit from these is by ensuring that you always update the apps that you have installed on your phone. There is, of course, no charge for this. Since you have already purchased your app (or downloaded a free one), all the updates do is make the app better than before. It will ensure that you are up-to-date, and, just as crucially, better equipped to deal with any security issues. Usually updates make your apps work better and more fluidly, as well as add extras that have resulted either from user feedback or developers revising their programs.

There is no excuse not to update the apps. You are certainly made aware of them in the notification bar at the top of the page. There is also an ability to check out the updates by going to the Play Store app, and clicking on My Apps. Either way, you will be able to identify what needs updating, and ensure that a fresh, brandspanking new app is rapidly installed to your phone with the minimal of fuss. If you’re not staying up-to-date, then it means you are probably running old versions of the app, and are missing out. There is a chance you are not being kept informed of the alterations, however, so in our tutorial we look at how you can make sure that you are in the loop, and are told of any changes that need to be activated.

Play Store Updating an Android app

01 Accessing the updates

To check for updates, either drag down the notification menu, or alternatively, open up the Store app, press the Menu button, and select My Apps.

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02 Allow notifications

Tap Menu again, and choose Settings. Under Notifications, ensure it is showing ‘Notify Me’. If not, then use the dropdown to select it.

03 Checking the apps

In My Apps, you can see which apps need updating. If there is more than one, then you could select Update All for a mass upgrading session.

Updates explored

Notifications Apps that can be updated will also be shown in the notifications bar. Tap on them to access those apps quickly

Check for updates using the My Apps screen Updates All your apps that have updates available and that can be updated manually will be listed at the very top of the screen. You can update them one at a time, or in a batch

Manual updates Apps with new permissions cannot be updated automatically. These need to be updated one at a time

All-in-one

The Update All option under My Apps will only be effective if the apps don’t have security confirmations. In many cases they don’t, so this will be an easy way of updating en masse.

04 Updating an app

In the middle of the screen you’ll see a box that says Update. Sometimes, you need to confirm permission to allow the existing app to be replaced.

Up to date Your other installed apps are listed below, labelled as Up to date. You can access them through a single tap

05 Read the rules

Before the update starts, you will be shown a list of things that the application will access. Read through the list to make sure you are completely happy with it.

06 Almost there

You’ll then be able to watch the progress of the updating app. Once complete, you can open the updated app. You’ll also get a message to say the app’s updated.


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The next step Learn how to use Google Play Books On the Android platform, you can utilise Google’s Play Books app to read ebooks on the fly

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n the Apple platform you have iBooks and on the Amazon side you have Kindle. With your Google account you have access to Google Play Books, which effectively allows you to read ebooks from your handset. An ebook is simply a digital form of a book (think Word documents), and is presented in a smartphone-friendly interface which can be formatted using a variety of options. Depending on your device’s level of storage, you could literally store thousands of ebooks for reading on a commute to work or on vacation. In this tutorial, we focus on using the Play Books app, giving you a general overview of some of its core features.

For test purposes, we have already downloaded a few books as an example of what you can expect to find when exploring the app, although some books may be downloaded by default so that you can quickly get to grips with the steps (in a separate tutorial, we will show you how to purchase and download ebooks). Additionally, we look at ways to zoom in on pages, change the backlight, set the device into night mode and change the font size to suit you. We also cover how bookmarks are handled in the Knowledge Base box-out. Please note that we have used a Samsung Galaxy S II for this tutorial, but the app is universal, so will appear the same no matter what device you have.

Google Play Books Overview of Play Books

01 Download Play Books

Launch Google Play, and click on the search icon. Type ‘Google Play Books’ and select from the results. Launch the software, and choose ‘Turn sync on’.

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02 Changing the View

Books are displayed in a carousel format. You can change the view by pressing the menu button and choosing the ‘View as list’ option.

03 Zooming in and out

When you open a book, the formatting will be fixed. However, if you press the menu button and choose ‘Original pages’, you can zoom in and out of the book.

The main book interface

Contents Using the contents option, you can move between the various chapters of the book if you don’t want to use the embedded search or fast track slider

Adjust your book experience to taste

Display Options The Display option is where you can adjust the ebook view according to your taste. This could involve adjusting the backlight or changing the font type or size

Share your book If you particularly like the book you are reading and want to share your findings with others, you can use the share option to forward a link via social networking sites or email

Automatic Bookmarks

Speak the words

When you enable the sync option, the app will automatically remember the last page that you were reading. So if you exit the app or read a book on another device, you should be able to continue from where you left off.

04 Fast track to pages

Press the menu button and choose ‘Flowing text’ to return the book to its previous state. A slider and a search icon will appear on the page.

For visually impaired users, the option to read text aloud is extremely useful. It also highlights the paragraph that it is being spoken at the time

05 Change the Display

Press the menu button and tap ‘Display Options’. Here, you can switch to night mode, or you can adjust the font type, size or backlight brightness.

06 Text-to-speech option

If you are hard of sight, you can enable the ‘Read aloud’ option via the menu button, which will highlight the text. Press the menu button again to stop.


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The next step Downloading an ebook from Google Play You can use Google Play to download a range of ebooks directly to your handset

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n our previous tutorial we covered a basic overview of how to use the Google Play Books app. For this next stage, we look at the methods you have available for downloading an ebook directly to your handset. You normally have two easy options open to you for downloading ebooks. The first and most obvious choice is to download directly from the Google Play Store. However, in this tutorial we access the store from the Google Play Books app itself, which has a handy embedded link at the top of the page. Don’t worry if you haven’t downloaded the app yet, as you can grab this quickly from Google Play – just follow our overview of Play Books tutorial.

Google Play Books

01 Launching the Store

Launch Play Books and look for the shopping bag symbol at the top of the screen (next to the small search icon). Click on this to access the Book store.

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Again, we used a Samsung Galaxy S II for the tutorial, but we must add that in order to download paid-for ebooks, you will need a Google Checkout account (now part of Google Wallet). This is simply a means of assigning a payment card to your Google account so you can make purchases. If you have downloaded paid-for apps before, you are already sorted. If not, we will quickly show you how to set up the payment method. We will also cover how to download ebooks for offline reading, which is useful if you don’t have access to an internet connection. Finally we will also advise you on how to access your ebook collection from your computer as well as phone.

Downloading ebooks to Play Books

02 Book search

Swipe the screen so you can view the Categories. Here, choose ‘Fiction’, for example. Swipe the screen to Categories to refine your search.

03 Use the search icon

Alternatively, click on the Search icon at the top. Type in the name of what you want to search for. Then, pick the corresponding word and select the book.

Browsing for Books to Download

Basic on-screen info Each book that is listed below the section heading will display basic info such as the price, and more importantly a star rating, so you can see if it’s worth checking out

Google Play has a comprehensive Book Library Swipe and search

My Books

You can swipe right or left to reveal a host of books under section headings such as ‘Top Selling’ or ‘Categories’

If you are inside Google Play and you press the Android menu button, you can select the ‘My Books’ option, which will take you to the Google Play Books app

Read Books on your Computer

Launch your computer’s web browser and sign into your Google Account from here. You can then navigate through the ‘More’ dropdown box to the ‘Books’ option and access your downloaded books from the ‘My Library’ link at the base of the screen.

04 Download free sample

Click on the ‘Free Sample’ icon. This will download and launch Google Play Books so you can start to read a snippet of the book before purchase.

Account selection If you press the Android menu button and then pick ‘Accounts’ from the list, you can select which Google account you want to use with Google Play

05 Download & purchase

Either return to the Google Play Book Store to look for a new book or press the menu button and choose ‘Buy’. To purchase the book, click ‘Accept & Buy’.

06 Offline reading

Click ‘Open’. You should still be in the book you were reading before purchasing. Next, tap the menu button and choose the option ‘Available Offline’.


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The next step Overview of Google Play Movies With Google Play, you can take advantage of their growing range of movie titles and rent them on the fly

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oogle first released its movie rental service in the UK back in October 2011, and with it, the launch brought a series of movies to the platform that you could rent directly from your handset. Since then, Google has rebranded the Android Market and turned this into Google Play, which most handsets and tablets should have installed. It has even updated its growing catalogue of movie rental tiles, so you can stream or download them for offline viewing (more on this in the ‘Rent a Movie’ tutorial) at a later date. Typically, you get 24-48 hours from the start of watching a movie before it expires. Google has also made the transmission for watching movies a little easier with the launch

Google Play Movies

01 Download Google Play Movies

Click on the search icon and type ‘google play movies’. Select the name from the list and then the app itself. Click ‘Install’.

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of its own Google Play Movie’s App, which is the partial focus of this tutorial. The app was tested on a Samsung Galaxy S II, with the one major requirement being that it does require Android 2.2 or higher. Nonetheless, the app provides a handy platform for organising/playing the movies you rent from the store. Moreover, as a bonus it has the ability to organise your local videos, so it’s worth downloading. For the most part, we will show a basic overview of the Google Play movie store, which you can access from the app or via Google Play. From here, we will talk about how to browse for content so you will be ready for the rental part of our next tutorial.

A look at Google’s movie store

02 Security allowances

Select ‘Open’ to launch the app. You may be greeted by two security warnings – click ‘Allow’ on both occasions so you can continue to the main app.

03 Interface basics

The ‘My Rentals’ tab will display recommended movies to watch, or any you have rented. Select ‘Personal Videos’ to play any locally stored videos.

Google Play Movies Interface

Quick access to the Store At the top of the interface you have quick access to the Google Play Movie store, which allows you to rent movies in either standard or high definition

Manipulate your rented movies via Google Play Movies My Rentals screen By default, this will be display a list of recommend movies to watch, but the list will change to display your rented movies once they have been sourced from Google Play

Personal videos As well as rented movies, the interface holds a record of all your locally stored videos. You can play them back by tapping on the thumbnail picture

Change Google accounts

Additional help

Pressing the Android menu button within the app will bring up the Accounts option. In here, you can add or select different Google Accounts that you may own. This is ideal for separating your rentals between accounts.

04 Configure streaming warning

From the ‘My Rentals’ screen, press the menu button and choose ‘Settings’. Here, ensure the ‘Streaming’ box is ticked.

Pressing the Android menu button will bring up another selection of choices, including the ability to gain access to the online Help system. This may answer any questions you have

05 Access the Store

Press the back button to return to the ‘My Rentals’ screen, then press the shop icon next to the ‘Personal Videos’ tab. This will take you directly to the Movies store.

06 Navigating the Store

Swipe right, and you can pick films from categories or manually key in the title via the search icon. Press the menu button and select ‘My Films’ to return to the app.


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The next step Rent a Movie from Google Play We show you how to rent a movie and download it for offline viewing

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n our previous tutorial, we touched base on how to utilise Google’s Play Movies app, and gave a brief tour of the Google Play Movie Store, which is where you can gain access to all the movies that are available to rent. Renting from Google Play, however, does require an active Google Checkout Account (now partially integrated into Google Wallet). You should already have one of these if you have bought any apps from the store before, but if not we will briefly show you how to set up your payment option. Additionally, any movie you rent from the store will have a 30-day lease, which means you have 30 days from the moment you download the movie in order to watch it. However, as soon

as you start to play the movie, you are then bound by its viewing expiry time, which can be from 24-48 hours. For the most part with this tutorial, we will be showing how to rent a movie using the Google Play Movies App. Plus, we showcase how to download it for offline viewing, as well as how to access the movie from other sources, such as your computer via the Knowledge Base box-out. Once again, we used a Samsung Galaxy S II with a Wi-Fi-enabled connection, though the process covered in the tutorial may differ depending on your device and OS. However, the Google Play Movies App is a general release and compatible with Android 2.2+, so it should be relevant for most of the steps.

Google Play Movies Rent and play a movie

01 Pick a movie

Launch Google Play Movies and click on the shop icon. Before renting, it Is useful to read reviews or play back the embedded movie trailer if available.

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02 Renting a movie

Once you’ve decided, click ‘Rent’. A dialogue box will then appear. Choose ‘Accept & Buy’ to confirm the purchase or ‘Continue’ if no card is configured.

03 Add Google Wallet

Skip this step if you have a payment card set up. Otherwise, you need to fill in your credit card details. When this is done, click ‘Save’ then ‘Accept & Buy’ to finish.

Manage your Rentals

Basic playback controls Selecting the movie thumbnail will reveal an overview screen with info, suggestions for similar types of movies and basic playback controls

View/download your rentals for offline use Dynamic changes

Next to the thumbnail of the movie you downloaded, you will see when the movie will expire. This will change from 30 days to the rental period once playback has been initiated

Offline management If storage space is getting low on your device, bring up the Android menu and then choose the option ‘Manage Offline’ to remove the download. Note the film can still be streamed

Alternative Viewing

Settings option

If you launch a web browser and log in to Google Play’s site, you can play your rentals from your computer via the ‘My Rentals’ link, or view them on YouTube (Note: you must disable offline downloads from your app before doing this).

04 Download rental

You will be taken to a link where you can either download or play the rental. For the moment, click ‘Download’. Click ‘OK’ after selecting ‘Wi-Fi’.

Next to the ‘Manage offline’ option, you can select ‘Settings’ and use this to adjust various streaming and download options (ie, whether to use Wi-Fi or mobile data for downloads

05 Play back rental

From the ‘My Rentals’ screen, tap on the movie thumbnail to open the playback window. Next, click ‘X’ to expand the view. Now, click ‘Play’ to watch.

06 Manage offline rental

After the film has finished press the back button. From ‘My Rentals’, click the menu button and choose ‘Manage Offline’. Tap the green pin icon, then ‘Finished’.


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The next step Take your first photograph With your Android phone in your hand, you will always be ready and prepared to take amazing photos no matter where in the world you are

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vital component of any mobile phone today is the camera, and as you would expect, you have the ability to take photographs using your Android handset. The quality of the images depends on the camera built into the various devices on the market but you wouldn’t expect to get less than 3MPs nowadays (and nor would you really want to if photos are important to you). With your Android phone, you are not restricted to just pointing and shooting. The Camera app offers a whole wealth of

excellent options to allow you to refine your images and get the perfect shots. You can alter the colour, saturation and contrast to name but a few. And you can adjust the settings to take into account the environment in which you are shooting. With the 2.2 Android operating system (also known as Froyo) some advances were made with the camera so that it is now possible to take images one-handed using transparent dials. Earlier versions use pulldown menus but both give you a wealth of options. With Android 2.2, however, also

came more levels of digital zoom, with the plus and minus zoom buttons replaced by a more simple slider which requires less thumb action. But no matter what version of Android you have, the fundamentals are the same. Your images are stored in the Gallery so that you can manipulate them and share them with friends and family or post them to social network sites. And you can also flick the Camera app out of still-picture mode and take videos which we explore elsewhere in this book in greater detail.

Camera explained Looking at the various camera options

Menu There are many options you can play with to make your images sharper and better composed. Go to Menu>Settings within the Camera app

Anti-banding

If you are taking a shot of a television or computer monitor (something that is rather common these days), then press Menu and head for the antibanding feature. You can choose between 50Hz and 60Hz in order to get the smoothest, nonbanded picture possible.

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Restore If you get in a muddle and need to go back to the original settings, just tap Restore to default settings

Quick snap

View image

Click the round button on the app when you’re happy with your shot and the picture will be taken and then stored to the Gallery

You can see the last image you have taken in the top righthand corner of the app. Click on this to see more options, including deleting it

Camera

Get snap happy with Android

01 Take a photo

02 White balance

03 Other settings

04 Sharpness and contrast

05 On-screen options

06 View last image

Open up the Camera app on your phone. Line up your shot and tap the on-screen round button in the bottom right-hand corner (with the camera in landscape) to take a photo.

You can also change the colour effect via Menu>Settings. There is an option, too, for picture quality with the choices including super fine, fine and normal. Picture size can also be altered.

As you size up your shot, if you tap down on the screen, you can focus on various spots. Two interactive elements also show: a zoom option and a slider to make the image lighter or darker.

Press the Menu button and you can play around with the settings. They include the option to change the white balance, enabling you to toggle between auto, incandescent, daylight and more.

There are various levels of sharpness and contrast found, again under Menu>Settings. It goes up in various levels and so you need to play around for the one that best suits your shot.

You can view the last image you have taken by tapping on the picture in the top right-hand corner of the app. This displays some options including the ability to delete it, share or set as wallpaper.


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The next step Send a photo to a friend You don’t have to keep your favourite snaps to yourself. You can easily send them to a friend either by email, Bluetooth or MMS

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ith all Android phones having a camera built in, chances are you are going to be very snap happy. One of the joys of taking pictures is allowing others to see them and so, at some point, you are going to want to send an image you have taken to a friend or family member. The advantage of this over waiting and printing off a hard copy is the immediacy at which that person can see the image you’ve just taken. The Android operating system has an app called Gallery built-in. Here, all of your images are stored and you can use Gallery to browse and select the ones you want. Each of the pictures are displayed as thumbnails so you can see at a glance the host of images that you have stored on your handset. By clicking on the Share icon which is nestled within the Menu option of Gallery, you can

Gallery

Email or MMS images

01 Open up Gallery

Any photos that you take using the Camera app on your phone will be stored within the Gallery application. Open this up from your menu screen.

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choose to send your images by email, Bluetooth or picture message (known as MMS). If images are too big to send as an MMS, then your phone will automatically resize them to ensure that you’re not eating up too much data and to avoid unnecessary error messages. From Android 2.1 onwards, the Gallery app has allowed you to flick your photographs from side-to-side rather than use the arrow buttons which makes full-screen browsing much a more interactive and enjoyable experience. You can access the Camera from within the Gallery app and you can call up information on each image, such as its origin and date taken. With Android, you are not limited to sending just one image. It is possible to select several images and email them with just a few taps of the screen. By following our tutorial, you’ll be sending images in no time.

02 Select an image

Tap the batch and the photos will be displayed individually. Select an image by tapping it. To select multiple images, tap each image so it has a green tick.

03 Share the image

Once you have made your selection, tap the Share button in the left-hand corner of the screen. This will bring up some options, choose Email first.

Sending a picture

Select By pressing Select All or Deselect All you can choose to send every image on the screen or tell your phone you want to start again

A look at how to send your snaps

Choosing Tap on each of the thumbnails and a white arrow in a green box will show. Tapping it again will make it grey

Share The Share icon is hidden beneath the Menu icon. It calls up the various options that are available to you to send your picture to a friend or family member

Options

Replace an image

The most common options when sending a photograph to a friend are Email, Messages and Bluetooth and all of these are at your fingertips

If you decide against sending an MMS with the image you have selected you can choose an alternative picture by clicking Replace. This will present you with a list of options, letting you attach a new image or, if you wish, take a new photo using your Camera.

04 Compose your message

You can now send your image or images in an email. Input the email address in the To field, add a Subject and compose a message. Attached images are shown.

05 Send an MMS

If you want to send your image as an MMS, select Messages rather than Email. It opens up a Message so you just need to find a contact and send it.

06 Bluetooth an image

To send via Bluetooth, ensure Bluetooth’s turned on, select Bluetooth, select the device (tap Scan for Devices if none are shown) and it will be sent through the air.


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The next step Upload your photos to Picasa Discover how to send your images to Google’s free and easy-to-use photo software to organise, edit and share

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f you have a Google account, then you automatically have access to Picasa. And as Android was created by Google, it stands to reason that the mobile phone platform has builtin syncing to this online photo library. One of the Share options when you go to the Gallery is Picasa. It means you can take one of your photographs and post it into an album created on Picasa. The whole process is very easy. At times, for reasons we cannot fathom (and we have suffered this ourselves), when signing in via your Google Mail account, the software asks the user to sync their data but this doesn’t include Picasa. Users are then taken straight back to the Gallery and their photo is not uploaded. It appears than only a factory

Gallery

Sharing images with Picasa

01 Select an image

Go to the Gallery app. By holding down on an image, you will display a tick in a green box. The image has been selected. Now tap Share and press Picasa.

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reset will sort this but it’s a drastic measure that will wipe all your apps and personal data and so is to be used with caution. That aside, Picasa is well worth trying. You are not purely limited to a single picture. Multiple images can be uploaded. And by being able to organise them into folders on your phone, it makes for neat processing. What Picasa shows more than anything is the power of Google and its many apps, which are all accessible via the single log-in. This makes Picasa a good way of syncing your images from your phone to your computer. Picasa also lets you select a custom email address which you can use to directly upload. This could be done via your phone but the Share option is slicker.

02 Add Google account

If you haven’t already, you will need to add a Google Account. Tap the corresponding button. You can go Back if you decide you don’t want to upload.

03 Signing in

To sign in with an account, you need to use your username and password. If you have problems here you may need to perform a factory reset (Settings>Privacy).

The uploading process

Multiple You can upload more than one image. As you can see here, we are uploading two but you can share even more than that

A look at the options for uploading

Account You are not restricted to just one Google account. Your phone will sync images to any number of Google accounts that you may have set up

Album You can place images straight into albums. Picasa syncs with the web version so that the two work hand-in-hand. Albums created online will show here

The plus key If you tap the + key, then you can create your own albums right on your Android phone without having to go to the internet

Public album

When creating an album on your Android phone, you can either make it public or unlisted (ie private). Albums can also be given a specific name. The whole process takes mere seconds and you can produce as many albums as you wish.

04 Upload a photo

You can give your image a caption, then choose which account you wish to upload your photo to and specify which album you want the image to appear in.

05 Process underway

The image will now be uploaded to Picasa. As soon as the bar has run its course, the image will be ready and waiting for you when you log in to Picasa.

06 A result

You can now see your image nestling nicely in your library. This example is being viewed on the web at http:// picasaweb.google.com/.


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The next step Record videos on your phone Some moments are best captured with moving images. It’s time to become the next Steven Spielberg with Android’s brilliant Camcorder app

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ntroduced in 2009, the camcorder function built into Android phones is brilliant for those times when a simple photograph will not do. At its very basic, you can load it up, press the record button and start shooting within seconds, which is great when you need to get an instant video and have little time to waste. But if you want to produce something a little more professional and thoughtful, you will need to tinker with the settings and take more time when composing your shots. By pressing the Menu button on your Android

phone, you can call up the Settings menu. This lets you alter the quality of the video, in addition to optimising it for whatever end purpose you require. For example, if you want to share your video by MMS, then you cannot take a long, high-quality video. The settings allow you to tailor your video for this purpose. Likewise, you can choose the highest, HD quality which would look amazing on a large screen. As long as the camera facilities on your phone are good enough, you will be able to get wonderful results.

Accessing the camcorder is pretty straightforward, and it works in tandem with the camera so that you can quickly switch between the two. You will instantly know when you are in record mode because the bottom right-hand button suddenly becomes red, but because there is a slider to the right-hand side of the screen, this too gives the game away, and ensures you won’t mistakenly think you have recorded when you’ve just taken a shot. You’ll use Camcorder time and time again, all that’s missing is built-in editing facilities.

The video interface A look at how the interface works

Image The image in the corner shows one of the previous videos which you have shot. If you tap it, the video will play

Where’s the zoom?

Before you start looking everywhere on the app for a zoom function, we have to hold our heads in our hands and tell you that there isn’t one. We can guess that zoom will be added at some point, though.

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Settings All settings are accessed by pressing the Menu button on your phone. The settings menus are displayed on the left-hand side of the screen

Toggle

Record

By moving the slider towards the camcorder or the camera, you are able to switch between taking still or moving images

Recording a video is a piece of cake. All you have to do is tap the red record button, and tap it again when you are finished

Camcorder How to record videos

01 Familiarise yourself

02 Flash

03 White balance

04 Have fun

05 Time lapse

06 Video quality

The Camcorder app can be launched via the Camera app. There is a slider on the right which lets you toggle between the two. Tap the red ‘Record’ button to start recording.

You also have the option to change the white balance. This will depend on the lighting where you’re shooting, but changing the setting can produce a clearer picture.

There’s the added option of shooting time-lapse videos, and altering the duration of the gaps to suit your needs. These can create some nice video animations.

There are a range of settings for you to play with by tapping the on-screen settings option. Firstly, you can set the flash to On or Off, depending on the time of day or brightness.

In Ice Cream Sandwich, there are a few fun effects you can add to your images. There are a range of humorous face options, as well as a choice of backgrounds.

As phone’s improve, so does the quality of the videos they record. Some now offer the option to record HD video, although this obviously increases file size.


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The next step Share your videos with friends

Captured some amazing footage on your Android phone? Don’t keep it to yourself – send it to your friends and family

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iven phones have had built-in video capabilities for some time, creating videos has become a popular pastime but there is no point in producing films just for yourself. The joy is in the sharing of them. With your Android phone, it is easy to send videos. Each video is accessible via the Gallery app, which can be accessed through the app menu on your phone, or via the Camera app. You can also access the Camera from the Gallery app in the same way. When you select a video, you can choose to send it via a variety of methods. We have covered YouTube elsewhere in this bookazine, but you are not limited to using this videosharing website. You can also use MMS, email

and Google Mail and, if you have them installed, the likes of Dropbox and Twitter. Emails are good for better quality videos. You may prefer to be in a Wi-Fi area when sending them if your video will eat a lot of data. MMSsent videos should be smaller in size – take one via the Messaging app, and it will automatically lower the video quality to reduce bandwidth. Dropbox is a brilliant app that is free to download, and is great for videos. Recipients can be sent a link which they can use to download your video. Whatever method you choose, Android makes it easy to select. It is a similar process for images, but we deal with that on its own in the tutorial on page 116.

Gallery Using Gallery to share video

01 Choose a video

Go to the Gallery app, and it will display all your photos and images. The videos have a play arrow in a circle on them. Tap and hold, and a green tick will appear.

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02 Sharing the video

Tap Share to display the options. Depending on what you have installed, you could email, MMS or Bluetooth your video. You could even send it to Dropbox.

03 Using Dropbox

If you have Dropbox, you could pop the video into the Public folder. To create a link to send to friends, tap and hold, then select whether to share the file or link.

Studying the options

You have a wealth of sharing options at your disposal

Videos You can instantly tell the difference between a video and a photo by the arrow symbol in the centre of films

Dropbox You will have to install the free app, Dropbox, on your phone if you wish to take advantage of this option

Tap By tapping and holding on a video, a green tick will show. These denote the videos you wish to share

Share options

The method you use to share usually depends on the video you are sending. If you intend to share a video by MMS, it is best if it less than 30 seconds and of low quality. You can actually record video from within the Messaging app. When you are writing a message, hit Menu, select Attach, then Capture video.

04 Send an email

Videos can be sent via email or Google Mail. Your video will be instantly attached to a message. From then on, compose your email as normal, and send it.

Share Click the share button, and Gallery will present you with many ways to send your video to a friend

05 Send as MMS

If your video isn’t too large, send it via MMS. Select MMS and you’ll be taken to the Compose message box. If it is too large, you’ll get a an message as above.

06 Bluetooth your video

When you select Bluetooth, the phone automatically scans for nearby devices. You can allow your video to move between the two handsets.


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The next step Upload videos to YouTube

Create a video on your phone and share it with the world in a matter of minutes with the built-in YouTube app

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he 1.5 release of Android made some people very excited indeed. At long last you could record a video on your phone and share it on YouTube. Those special moments in your life could finally be uploaded to the world’s largest video-hosting site. It cut out the need to fiddle around porting videos to your computer and uploading them via the website, and it turned Android phones into very effective and useful social media tools. There are two ways of going about uploading your videos. You can go to the YouTube app, press the Menu button on your handset and tap the Upload feature icon. This takes you to the Gallery app where you can select the video you wish to send to YouTube.

YouTube

Sharing your video

01 Choose your video

Go to the YouTube app, call up the menu and select Upload. You’ll be taken to the Gallery. Select the video you wish to upload by tapping and holding it.

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You can also go direct to the Gallery app. It’s useful to go via YouTube, however, because it will automatically show only videos rather than mix them up with photos. The upload procedure is very easy to follow. Once you have selected your video, it’s just a matter of just filling in a simple form and pressing Upload. The YouTube app also lets you check your account (you will need to set one up before you can upload, but you can tie your account in with your Google Mail address, which is to be expected given Google owns YouTube). By going to your account, you can see which videos you have shared and how many people have viewed them.

02 Click Share

Once you’ve highlighted your video, you need to tap on the Share button in the bottom-left corner of the screen. Now press the YouTube icon.

03 Log in to YouTube

You will be taken to the YouTube log-in page, which asks for your username and password. If you don’t have an account, you can create one here.

Filling in the YouTube form

Title Choose an eye-catching title that sums up your video but is still quirky and interesting enough to draw people in, then write it in this box

How to upload your video effectively Public/Private

Account

You can choose to allow the whole world to see your videos or only allow a privileged few. You do this by checking either Public or Private.

You can have numerous YouTube accounts. By clicking the down arrow in this box, you can toggle between them all

Using tags

To give your video a boost in the search listings, be sure to make good use of the tags. There is ample space on the description page of the YouTube app to fill in some keywords which better identify your videos, so feel free to throw in as many relevant ones as you can think of.

04 Fill in details

Now type in details about your video. Create a title, then tap More Details to view more options. One of these is Description, where you provide info about your clip.

Description Tell potential viewers more about your video by typing as much information as you can into this box. It’s a great way for people to make sense of what they are watching

05 Upload your video

Once you have filled in all of the boxes and selected the various options, simply click Upload and your video will be immediately sent to the YouTube servers.

06 Ready to play

By going to the menu and selecting My Account, you can check to see if your video has been posted. If it is there, tapping on the video will play it.


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The next step Navigating with Google Maps With Google Maps comes free 3D GPS navigation, with full turn-by-turn directions for drivers

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t was only a couple of years ago that satnav was only available in dedicated devices that stayed permanently affixed in your car windscreen as you drove. Now you can not only get it on your Android smartphone – with the same level of highquality mapping – but it is completely free as well, as part of the incredible Google Maps suite. The Navigation function can be accessed either through the main Google Maps interface, enabling you to switch quickly from a location search to full-on navigation mode, or directly using the Navigation icon that you will find in your apps screen. If you use the feature on a regular basis you can drag this icon onto one of your home

Google Maps Navigation

01 Turn on GPS

Launch Google Maps Navigation. If you haven’t got GPS switched on you’ll need to activate it now. Click OK and then tick the GPS button. Now relaunch the app.

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screens for quick and easy access by holding your finger down on the icon until the home screen reappears, then moving it into your preferred position. Navigation is a fully featured satnav experience, including full 3D mapping and voice directions. You can purchase an in-car cradle from many accessory retailers so that your phone can be supported in your car windscreen when you are using it. Heavy users should also look to purchase an in-car charger too, as GPS is one of the more battery-hungry functions available on any smartphone, especially over long journeys. Read on to discover how to make the most of this fantastic free feature available on all Android smartphones.

Navigating with Google Maps

02 Choose a destination

You can enter a destination by speaking it or typing. The speech version is handy for when you’re on the road, but is not totally accurate so in most cases type it instead.

03 Start navigating

Select your destination and voice directions will point you toward your next turn. There’s also a visual indicator in the top-right corner of the screen.

Discover the navigation screen

Next turn Your next turn and the road you are turning onto is displayed along the top of the screen, as a handy at-a-glance visual indicator

A lot of information is packed into the main navigation screen

Direction

Time

The compass icon shows the direction you are driving. Tap this and it will twist the map into a north/south view

The time in the bottom left of the screen is an estimate of how long it will take you to arrive at your destination

Route

Maps

The arrow in the middle of the screen is you, and the blue line plots out your route on the map

The maps for navigation are not stored on your phone so you will need an active data connection as you drive. The app is good at caching maps along your route, so you should have no problem if your signal drops.

04 Check your route

To check the route press the List icon. To customise the route press the Menu button, hit the ‘cogs’ icon to change it or the one to the right of it for alternatives.

05 My position

Press the blue Navigation icon to return to the main screen. The bar at the top of the screen shows your next road. Tap this to skip through your next few turns.

06 Street View

Where it is available on your route you can switch into Street View mode. The Street View icon will be displayed when images are available.


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The next step Local search in Google Maps With Google Maps you can search for businesses, shops or restaurants in your local area

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oogle Maps comes pre-installed on every Android smartphone, and will almost certainly become one of your most used apps. It offers a full range of navigation-based functions, but at its heart is an incredibly powerful search feature. Google Maps taps into the full Google search database to locate businesses, restaurants, shops or any other point of interest and, because the app knows your location, can then show you which are the nearest to you. On the most basic level it replaces a book like the Yellow Pages: need to find a plumber or a vet? Here’s five all located within a five-mile radius of your house. Even better, when you’re on holiday and need to find a restaurant you can do so with ease. And the

Google Maps Navigation

01 Places icon

Locate the Places icon and tap it. The Places section of Google Maps will launch, and within a couple of seconds will have found your location.

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app goes a lot further than merely showing you these things on a map. You can check reviews of the business, find out opening times, and also get the company’s phone number – and give them a call from within the app. Local search in Google Maps works best if you have GPS turned on on your phone, although it will work almost as effectively with it off, instead using your 3G signal to find your location. It’s slightly less accurate using this method, so for precise directions you’ll need to use GPS, but it works perfectly well when searching. You can access the Local search feature either through the main Google Maps app, or by using the Places icon that presents you with some readymade search criteria based on common uses.

Find a local restaurant

02 Choose an option

There are seven search options already set up, or you can add your own by pressing Add. We’re looking for a restaurant so press the Restaurant button.

03 Filtering results

You will now see a list of nearby restaurants, listed in order of their vicinity to you. Use the buttons at the top of the screen to filter the list.

Viewing the Directions screen

Distance The distance to the destination, and the estimated time it will take for you to arrive there are displayed just above the search results. This is handy for planning when you should leave

How to view and change directions Driving

Press the Driving icon to choose a different type of route, including those for public transport, walking and cycling

Map view Hit the Maps icon in the top-right corner to view the destination on a map, along with your current position and a line displaying your route between the two

Finding ATMs

One of the options in the Places app is for ATMs. This will show a lot of local cash machines in the US, but in many other countries where different terminology is used it will produce no results at all. Add your own search for ‘cash machine’ if you need to use it regularly.

04 List of restaurants

With all your filters in place, you can now begin to choose the restaurant you’re looking for. Make sure to check out the user reviews as well.

Google Maps Press the arrow icon to launch straight into Google Maps Navigation. This will give you 3D turn-by-turn directions for driving and walking. You’ll need GPS turned on in order to use this

05 Make a choice

View the results to see ratings and other details. Tap one for more information. Press the Call button to phone the restaurant, or Map to view its location.

06 Getting directions

With your restaurant selected press Directions. You have three options – Driving Navigation, Walking Navigation and Get directions.


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The next step View different map types in Google Maps

Google Maps is not just designed for road use. You can load up different types of maps depending on where you are

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he Google Maps application is most often seen as a tool that’s most useful when in towns and cities. Its ability to locate businesses, restaurants and services in your nearby area can make it a full digital replacement for the trusty Yellow Pages, while its powerful routing engine is best designed for cars that are travelling from one location to another, making it a complete replacement for your old-fashioned A-Z or road atlas. However, this brilliant application also supports the ability to view different types of maps that can be of use when you are not in your car, or even not on the road at all. These include a Terrain view that shows the rise and fall of the land and can be immensely useful

Google Maps

01 Viewing layers

Switching maps in Google Maps

With the Maps app open tap on the Layers icon, the middle icon at the top right of the screen. This will display the list of map types and layers available to you.

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when you are out on foot, or even off-road, or both, as well as the excellent Satellite view that has always been so popular within the desktop version of Google Maps. This helps you to find your bearings wherever you are, and is also good for simply browsing an area. These are both activated using the Layers function in Google Maps, a function that can also be extended to add other supplementary information to a map, including facts and background information on a location that is sourced from the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. The feature extends the power of Google Maps far beyond its most basic function, and is well worth investigating. Follow the three steps below to learn about the different maps.

02 Terrain view

Click on the option marked Terrain. The map will now be displayed, replacing the traditional map view with one indicating the type of terrain.

03 Satellite view

Repeat step 1 and this time press the Satellite button. The map will now be displayed as a series of large photos taken from a satellite.

View traffic info in Google Maps

With Google Maps you can see how much traffic there is on your route, and how fast it is moving

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oogle Maps is one of the cornerstones of the Android experience. This incredibly powerful application can show you what is happening in your local area, guide you from one location to another, offer full satellite navigation routing, and – brilliantly – even display traffic information along the way. The traffic feature in Google Maps does not match the more advanced functionality you would expect to find in some paid, third-party navigation applications. However, it does present you with an incredibly handy tool for checking how the traffic is moving on your chosen journey, either before you set off or as you are on the move.

Google Maps

01 Open Maps

As a result you will know whether you should search for an alternative route or stick to your original course. It can even be used on more common journeys, such as the drive home from work. If you encounter some delays you might be able to look on Google Maps to see if there is a full, reported hold up or if the problem is more minor and is likely to soon be back to normal. Google Maps’ traffic information is supported in a large number of locations around the world. It is mostly focused around major roads, so while it won’t be able to show you what is happening on any side streets, most motorways and other main roads will be covered. Follow the three steps below to learn how to use it.

Traffic info in Maps

Open Google Maps, using the Maps icon. It should be located on one of your home screens by default. When it launches it will show your location on the map.

02 Launch traffic

Click the Layers icon at the top of the screen. Now click the Traffic option. Traffic data will now be displayed in the form of a line on major roads on the map.

03 Reading the data

A green line indicates normal traffic. A yellow line shows that there is heavy traffic but that it’s moving normally, while a red line shows that there are delays.


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The next step Discover how to use Twitter on Android

Twitter is a hugely popular source of information. Now you can stay updated wherever you go with the official Android app

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witter is a real-time information network made up of messages called ‘tweets’. It’s free to sign up to and there’s also a free mobile app to accompany the desktop version. Signing up for a Twitter account allows you to write and share messages with your friends and followers. It is a great way to follow your interests directly through industry professionals, celebrities and musicians. If you read something you like and want to share, you can retweet it so your followers don’t miss it and get a chance to read the post. If you just want some search inspiration then Twitter lists all the latest trends so you can keep up with the latest talk and events around the world. There is even a list of suggested users in each of

Twitter

01 Sign in

Set up the official Twitter app

On opening Twitter you will be prompted to sign in using your account details. If you do not have an existing Twitter account, click the Sign Up button.

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the categories to get you started. Once you have started to follow some people, what you should end up with is a feed of interesting updates that you can scroll through and read at your leisure. Android’s official Twitter app is an accessible and easy-to-use platform for keeping up with Twitter. The app offers integration with your Google contacts, and handset notification updates as often as you wish with whatever you want to keep up to date about. In this tutorial we will look at how to get started in the official Twitter app and have a quick look over the basic features of the app. Once you are all set up, however, it is down to you to get searching for friends to build up your own social network.

02 Sync settings

Once logged in, click on Menu and open Settings. Syncing contacts will display their latest tweets. Set the refresh interval for how often you want them to be updated.

03 Set notification alerts

While in Settings be sure to set the things you would like to be notified about. You can then select how you wish to be alerted about them.

Tweeting a message

Add camera image The camera icon will open up your phone’s camera and allow you to take pictures that you can add directly into your tweets

A look at the tweet menu

Add gallery images

If you have already shot an image you wish to use then you can retrieve it from the gallery, allowing you to edit it beforehand

Message to users The @ sign in the toolbar at the bottom allows you to write your tweet and then direct it at anyone you are following

Enable location The target icon uses the phone’s GPS location data while you are tweeting. This adds geotagging information and makes it available under locationbased searches

Bring up edit

If you see a tweet in a search you have done, then you can bring up the edit menu by long-pressing on it. The options are the same, but it saves you leaving the search list each time you want to do something.

04 Find your friends

Press on the search bar at the top of the Twitter app. You can now type in the name of any friends and family you wish to follow.

05 Retweet and share

When viewing others’ tweets there is a menu bar on the bottom. You can ‘retweet’ the post, reply to it, add it to favourites or share it via other social media.

06 Tweet messages

Tap the pen and paper in the top right. Type the message and use the options below to add images from camera or gallery, select recipient and press Tweet.


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The next step Using Facebook Stay in the loop with all your latest live feeds and messages synced to your handset using the official Android Facebook app

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acebook is the world’s biggest social networking site with over 500 million active accounts. Originally Facebook was a desktop platform but it has organically applied itself to mobile devices. Now there is no reason to be chained to a computer reading your Facebook feed and messages. The mobile version works perfectly in letting you stay instantly updated wherever you are and removing the need to sit indoors in front of a screen. Over 200 million users access Facebook from mobile devices every month. Android users can benefit from the free official Facebook app available in the Google Play store. Facebook is the perfect platform to stay in contact with family and friends, letting them know what you have been doing since you last met. It is also a great way to follow interests, groups and

Facebook

01 Sign in

Sync your Facebook account

First, log in with your Facebook account details. The app only supports one Facebook login at a time, you can switch accounts once you’re set up.

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even keep in the loop with business contacts. Although the mobile app doesn’t have the full functionality of the desktop version it does offer a useful range of features. The app allows you to use your existing login and sync all your contacts from your account. Mobile integration of Facebook means you can use your handset to alert you when you receive new notifications. You can use handset features like the camera or the gallery to upload images quickly and easily to Facebook. We will be looking at how to sync your Facebook account, setting preferences and the basic functions of the app. If you do not have an account you can sign up through the app and start from there. All you need to sign up to Facebook is your name, a password and a valid email address. You can only assign one Facebook account to individual email addresses.

02 Set contact sync

Syncing contacts will add details such as email, birthday, profile picture and status updates. Select to sync all your Facebook contacts or just link your existing ones.

03 Set sync interval

Open the Facebook settings menu. Make sure the notifications box is ticked. Now click on the ‘refresh interval’ option and set a suitable frequency.

Your Facebook profile

Search Use the search function to find friends and family who you want to add as a Facebook friend. You can also use it to find a specific page

A look at how to navigate your profile

Messages

News feed

Within the Messages section are all the private messages that have been sent to you during your time on Facebook.

The news feed is the place to go when you want to see what your contacts are up to. On the feed you’ll be able to look at photos and watch videos.

Battery life

Chat

If there is a noticeable difference in battery life after setting up Facebook you can go back and tweak the refresh interval to a longer period or unlink some of the contacts you don’t want the extra information for.

04 Find the top stories

Press on the newspaper icon on the right hand side of the app. Here you can select to see the contact that has been recently uploaded by your contacts.

The chat function is similar to the messaging service on your Android phone. By opening this up you can choose to start talking to different contacts.

05 Using news feed

From the main Facebook dashboard you can get the latest updates, links and photos. From there you can like, comment and link to external content.

06 Update status

To update your Facebook status from the home screen click on the message icon in the top right. Click the text box, type your status and click ‘share’ to update it.


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The next step Back up your phone Working out how to back up your Android device can be a minefield. We take you through the basics

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ne thing that really sets Apple’s iOS and the Android platform apart is the ability to sync the device. Apple devices offer a full syncing process through their iTunes media platform working across both Mac and PC. Due to the security constraints and different versions of the Android platform there is no universal syncing practice. A full backup is not achievable without rooting the device and this will void the warranty of the handset, so isn’t really advised. So that leaves the rest of us looking for a more practical solution. All Android handsets will back up contacts through Google’s cloud-based services in the Gmail account the phone was set up with. This means if you lose your phone, your contacts will be safe and can be restored through your account on a new replacement handset.

Astro File Manager

01 Configure app settings

Go to Menu, then click on More and select Preferences. Select the folder you wish to use for your backups, the default folder is called Backups on the SD card.

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Google Voice is currently the native way to back up text messages but is not currently available in the UK. There are a number of thirdparty apps, such as SMS Backup, but for this tutorial we are just going to focus on backing up downloaded apps. There is nothing more frustrating than having to reinstall all of your apps to your phone. Running apps from the SD card will save internal memory so we will be looking at moving them over and also backing them up on to a desktop computer. There are a lot of backup solutions available on Google Play. We are going to be using a free app called Astro File Manager. Astro is a file management app that works brilliantly as a backup tool. Annoyingly, the free version contains advertising but you can get a paid version for £2.56 that comes without the adverts if you prefer.

Back up your apps

02 Set home folder

The app is a file manager so will always open the root of the memory card. To make your backup folder home, locate it, long press it and select ‘Set as home’.

03 Backup your apps

Go to the main menu, select Tools and go to ‘Application Manager/Backup’. All your apps will appear, tick the ones you want to back up and press Backup.

Backing up apps

Top menu tabs Use the tabs at the top of the page to view the apps installed on your handset and apps that have been previously backed up

A look at the backup menu

Show app info

Selecting apps

Long clicking on an app in the list will bring up a new window with its details and an option to launch or uninstall it

Once you have decided what to back up, you can select them by ticking each one or tick the box at the top to select them all

Schedules

Unfortunately, you cannot set up backup schedules with Astro File Manager so it is a good idea to create your own. The longer you go without backing up, the more potential data you can lose.

04 Move to computer

Transfer the apps to your computer by connecting your handset using the ‘Mount as disk drive’ option and copy the Backup folder from the SD card.

Menu options In the menu options you can change the way the app is displayed and sort the list in to the order that suits you best

05 Restore your apps

Go to ‘Application Manager/Backup’ again. Select ‘Backed up apps’, choose which apps to restore and click Install. Ticking the top box will batch them all.

06 Relink updates

After the restore you may find your ‘My apps’ list is partially empty. To restore the full list, search and manually reinstall a missing app and they will all appear.


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Essential apps

Essential

Apps W

ith over 100,000 available apps, Google Play store is emerging as a serious contender to Apple’s App Store. With many of the popular favourites now available on the platform, developers are llooking ooking to Android to expand their consumer base, and its open source nature means it’s easy for people to get their apps onto the store. But as always there are apps at either end of the quality scale, so in this feature we will show you the top apps available to download today, expanding the functionality of your Android device no end.

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Essential apps 5 essential apps 01 Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus

Price £4.33/$6.99 Developer Gameloft A spin on the Modern Warfare franchise, Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus is easily the best shooter for Android phones. The graphics are a feast, with textures and rich animation to rival the Wii. Nice touches include slomo pans when enemies are downed in style and subtle camera distortion when the player is hurt. The levels are varied, with dense jungles and frozen tundras to explore, and controls are touch-based, so the larger the screen, the easier the game plays.

■ The arrow at the top of

02 Doodle Jump

the screen points to the next checkpoint

Price £0.61/$0.99 Developer GameHouse This is one addictive game. The rules are simple: guide a character up the screen by bouncing from one platform to another. Bonus objects include springs and jet-packs that shoot you up. Controls are tilt-based, making it easy to pick up the game and immediately start playing. As a result, this is the perfect time-filler and a great app for keeping lively children busy.

■ Fight against other players in snowy forests

■ Vary the setting for your Black Pegasus combat

your finger on the virtual joystick to the left of the screen

■ Fire your gun by tapping the ammo button to the right

Price Free Developer Rovio Mobile Ltd.

04 Asphalt HD

Price £2.99/$4.99/Free (demo) Developer Gameloft

Unusually for an arcade-based racer, Asphalt HD includes more than 30 licensed vehicles from manufactures including Ferrari, Lamborghini and Audi. It takes place in real-life locations including San Francisco and Las Vegas, but it’s not the most realistic of games. In fact it’s far from it with fast, fun, colourful gameplay – more Ridge Racer than Gran Turismo.

simply tap the gun icon in the top-right corner

■ Move by holding

03 Angry Birds Space Angry Birds has quickly become a phenomenon, with games across multiple platforms, extensive merchandise and even a movie on the way. If you’ve yet to try the game then now is the perfect chance, as Angry Birds Space is available free from the Google Play store. The game sees you chucking your feathered friends at the nasty pigs who have stolen their eggs. Can you complete every level?

■ To reload your weapon,

Games

■ Touch-screen controls

mean the bigger your screen, the easier the gameplay

With the power of modern Android devices in your pocket, it’s now possible to play the latest games at any time and in any place. Some true blockbusters await you in the Google Play store, with actionpacked shooters, edge-of-your-seat racers and addictive platformers available. Of course, controlling these games with accuracy is key. Until you’ve played a game using touch-controls then it’s hard to imagine how intuitive and easy it is. Puzzle and strategy games are easier to

handle than ever before and it’s possible to rearrange the on-screen buttons to accommodate the size of your device. With in-built accelerometers it’s also possible to control games simply by tilting your device. Here we’ve rounded up what we think are the best five games currently available for Android devices. Some can be completed in mere minutes, making them perfect for commutes or long queues, whereas others are focused, lengthy titles that are great for filling long afternoons.

■ Angry Birds; addictive gameplay at its best,

■ The tracks of Jet Car Stunts are filled

05 Jet Car Stunts

Price £1.19/$1.99/Free (Lite) Developer True Axis Enjoy stunt racing? If so you’ll love Jet Car Stunts. It tasks players with navigating a multi-level, twisting track filled with loops, obstacles and vertigo-inducing drops. The graphics have a colourful appearance that’s rendered with a sparse beauty and it’s easy to drive the car with touch controls for boosting and braking, plus tilt controls for steering.

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and a hit across all platforms

with death-defying obstacles

Books and reference The internet has always been known as the greatest encyclopaedia the world has ever seen, with a tremendous amount of accumulated knowledge being added on a global level each and every day. And with more app development, more of this information is being made available to mobile users in packaged forms that enable users easy and controlled access. Many thousands of books are gradually being transferred to data to be accessed via small devices such as smartphones or specialist eReaders, while reference material is now being sorted into more manageable formats and under specialised headers and websites. Apps play a critical part in the new way information is being disseminated. You will no longer have to sift through data in a raw and unappealing format as, through the app’s interface, the information can be presented in an intuitive manner. Extra touches such as attractive font design enable you to digest it more thoroughly and more enjoyably.

5 essential apps 01 Kindle

Price Free Developer Amazon Mobile This app allows you to read Kindle books via your phone. Many classics are included for free as are sample pages of new titles. Optimised for use on Android (and Honeycomb) devices, you have access to over 900,000 books, including popular new releases and over 100 newspapers and magazines. Amazon Whispersync can also sync your last page, bookmarks and notes across compatible devices so that you can pick up on another platform.

02 Google Reader Price Free Developer Google Inc.

Google Reader is a sort of aggregate. The app constantly checks your favourite news sites and blogs for new content. Whether a site updates daily or monthly, you can be sure that you won’t miss a thing. It also shows you all of your favourite sites in one convenient place; it’s a bit like a personalised inbox for the entire web. You can also share content with friends and sync it to the web version.

03 Zenith ■ When finding the meaning of a word with Dictionary, the synonyms for that same word are also revealed

“Apps play a critical part in the new way information is disseminated”

Price £2.65/$4.27 Developer Mobilizy This app from Zenith turns your mobile phone into a mobile telescope and, while it’s doing so, provides an augmented reality planet view. In action, the app enables you to explore the night sky. You just have to point your mobile phone upwards and the app gives you access to hundreds of stars, their constellations and our solar system’s planets. The app also provides images of galaxies plus nebulae taken via the Hubble telescope.

04 Star Chart

Price £1.99/$3.19 Developer Escapist Star Chart is the ultimate guide if you’re looking for specific names of stars and locations in space. Each illustration is beautifully drawn, and can be saved as a wallpaper if you wanted to. The app also has information on many of space’s constellations and our solar system’s planets.

05 Dictionary

Price Free Developer Dictionary.com, LLC

■ Search for planetary systems using Sky Chart

■ Read newspaper and magazine in articles in Kindle

This mobile dictionary takes its information from Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com, and features an audio pronunciation and voice-to-text search. It offers 375,000 words and definitions, 300,000 synonyms and antonyms and phonetic pronunciation. Other features include the etymology of the words and how a word is used in a sentence.


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Essential apps

Business With the right apps installed on your Android device, it’s possible to have your own portable office in your pocket. There’s a wealth of incredible programs awaiting you in the Google Play store, many free and packed with features. You can open and edit Word files, Excel documents and PowerPoint presentations, create and view PDF files, access any documents stored in the cloud and more – all via the touch screen on your smartphone. No longer do you need to be tied to a desktop computer

5 essential apps 01 Documents To Go or office. Using this clever software, the amount of paper work you’re likely to generate is also cut down significantly. But what if you need to access the office computer while you’re outside or travelling? You’ll be pleased to hear there are apps that will enable you to remotely access any Mac or PC as well – we’ve covered all the bases. But don’t just take our word for it. Read on to discover what we think are the five top apps for business users and give them a go yourself for a streamlined workflow.

Price Free/£9.99/$14.99 Developer DataViz, Inc. Need to view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files on the go? If so, Documents To Go is exactly what you need. It’s a full office suite for Android devices that enables you to not only edit Office files but also Google Docs and PDFs too. The interface isn’t exactly attractive, but it squeezes in all the necessary tools for writing and formatting on a small screen. Not entirely bug free, if you’re unsure give the free version a go, although this only enables you to view files not edit them.

02 QuickOffice Pro

Price £6.19/$9.99 Developer Quickoffice Here’s another app that can open and edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Google Doc files. With a wealth of tools including the ability to insert and resize images and text-tospeech, it can also access files in your Dropbox, SugarSync and MobileMe accounts. The interface is colour-coded and easy to navigate, and an HD edition is also available for Android tablets. This app comes highly recommended.

03 Splashtop Remote Desktop

Price Free/£0.60/$1.99 Developer Splashtop

■ Access your entire desktop from your smartphone with Splashtop

This clever app enables you to control any desktop computer (whether Mac or PC) from your Android device. It works surprisingly well, showing your computer’s desktop on the screen. Setting up is easy, simply download the Streamer app from www.splashtop.com/ remote. It will automatically see your Mac or PC if it’s on the same network. You can pan and zoom, open files and even play games.

04 Monster Job Search Price Free Developer Monster Worldwide

Looking for a new job or change of career? This app makes browsing vacancies on the Monster website easy, with the ability to search for job titles, keywords or even use your current location to find the nearest jobs. Most jobs can’t be applied for through the app, but nevertheless this is a quick and easy way to find that next dream role.

05 Fish4Jobs

Price Free Developer Trinity Mirror

■ There are plenty of jobs available ■ Quickly access your recent documents from the main menu

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through the app

Fish4jobs is a great resource if you’re on the hunt for a new job. Through the app you can apply directly to any job you find, as well as upload a copy of your CV. If you can’t find the type of job you’re looking for, you can create notifications to email you relevant job alerts.

Comics

Collecting and reading comic books has been a popular hobby for years. Although the interest for comics had died down recently, it is quickly re-emerging with all of the new superhero movies being released. So with their popularity soaring, new and exciting ways to read comic books are becoming available. Many Android platforms are ideal for this sort of task meaning you can enjoy your comics like never before. It is not surprising, therefore, that a number of companies are cashing in on this capability and producing comicspecific apps. Some comic books are available for free while many others are available as previews so you can check out a book before you hand over your cash for the next issue. And it’s a great way to get your favourites right here, right now without waiting a week for the shipment to arrive at your local shop.

5 essential apps 01 Comics

Price Free Developer ComiXology Reportedly, this app offers the largest digital comics store on the Android platform, acting as a reader for the same. Apparently, the archive of comics available for access has now topped the 6,000 figure with 300 of those available for free viewing and you can download and store with Guided View technology. The fact that the app frames each page in a readable manner is a highlight, allowing the story to be read as the author intended. This particular program also features good screen scrolling.

02 Graphicly Comics Price Free Developer Graphicly

With Graphicly you can read comics from over 200 publishers. The app gives you access to around 2,000 books from the likes of Marvel, Archie, IDW, Creator’s Edge, Flash Universe, Lead Pipe, O.G. Comics, Omni Consumer Comics, Paper Street Comics, Renegade Comics, Scare Tactix, Story Studios and others, with many independent and creator-owned titles included in the mix. The service adapts itself to the mobile format well for easy reading.

■ You can access any chapter to read first

“You can enjoy your comics like never before”

03 Scott Pilgrim

Price £3.49/$5.75 Developer HarperCollins A graphic novel issued by a major publisher, the first volume of the original piece is known, in its entirety, as Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life and is a great read. This fair-sized project spans a total of 149 pages and is packed with 720 frames plus other extras. As for the story itself? Here’s a bit of the blurb: “Join Scott on his awesome adventure as he fights Ramona’s seven evil exes in a struggle that will make your mobile buzz with excitement.”

04 Marvel Comics Price Free Developer Marvel ■ You can read your comics in a number of ways

■ You can read an overview before you download

Featuring the world’s most popular super heroes, Marvel Comics contains hundreds of comic books ready for you to download. The app itself includes a variety of different reading views, and comics cater for plenty of ages. The comics aren’t free, however, and you’ll need to buy comics individually.

05 Robot 13

Price Free Developer Robot Comics ■ A comic based

upon the story of Robot 13, an ancient droid

A fun new comic story based in 1939, when something was pulled up from the ocean depths off the coast of Spain. It was a mystery to the fishermen who found it, but the crew knew one thing, and that was that it saved their lives. A very intriguing story that will have you hooked from the start.


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Essential apps 5 essential apps

■ The My info

panel in Skype enables you to set your current status and bio

01 Skype

Price Free Developer Skype Skype enables anyone to chat to another user for free, make video calls, send instant messages and call landlines or mobile phones. Why has it become the number one video-calling service? Probably because of its availability on nearly every platform on the planet. The Skype app for Android enables you to take advantage of most Skype features, with one massive exception: it can’t make video calls. Put that issue to one side however, and you’ll find an easy-to-use app with a great interface.

■ You can tap

the book icon to see your full contacts list

■ Tap the

contacts button to see every available contact

02 Opera Mini

■ Call any number in the world from the Call screen

Price Free Developer Opera Software ASA What makes Opera stand out from every other browser is its sheer rendering speed over a 2G or 3G connection. That’s because webpages are rendered in the cloud before being sent to your device. As a result, pages spring into life. The tabbed browsing mode is also incredibly efficient, displaying mini thumbnails of each page. The ability to add websites to the home screen also makes finding your favourite site easy.

03 WhatsApp Messenger Price Free Developer WhatsApp Inc.

WhatsApp Messenger is a great replacement for sending SMS and MMS to friends and family providing they also have the app installed. It uses your EDGE/3G or WiFi connection to send messages and files to your contacts, doesn’t cost a penny for the first year and is rather interestingly priced at $1.99 (about £1.20) a year after. With the ability to chat in groups, send files, share your location, contacts and more, this is a great way to stay in touch with the world.

04 eBuddy Messenger Price Free Developer eBuddy

Chat to anyone on MSN, Facebook, Yahoo!, AIM, ICQ, GTalk and Myspace. Because eBuddy Messenger supports Google C2DM (push), it can run quietly in the background when not in use and notify you when new messages come in. As a result, it’s a great replacement for SMS. You can’t send images and files however, nor can you video or voice chat.

■ Edit your

profile shot and details from the My info panel

Communication It doesn’t seem so long ago that we could only talk over long distance via the wizardry of landline calls. For the last 15 years, however, mobile phones have revolutionised how we communicate and only recently have apps added even more features to our handheld devices. We can now video call, send instant messages, files and more – all for free. Thanks to Google’s C2DM (push) technology we can also run apps constantly in the background without

losing battery life, removing any need to send SMS and MMS messages. With so many features available for free that can enrich a user’s life, there’s honestly no reason to buy a non-smartphone device. Want to send free messages and make video calls for free? You can only do that on a smartphone using apps. We’ve rounded up our five essential apps to get you started. Read on to discover how to communicate like never before…

05 Google Chrome Price Free Developer Google

Chrome is currently exclusive to Android 4.0 users, but the sheer amount of features within its interior is staggering. Tabbed browsing is at its absolute best, and adding bookmarks has become a whole lot easier. As a result, Google Chrome is a fantastic browser.

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■ WhatsApp’s funky fonts seem pretty garish at first, but you get used to them

■ Chrome is easy to navigate and has a stylish interface

■ The eBuddy chat

interface is attractive and supports profile images

■ Manage tabs easily with real-time previews of each window in Opera Mini

Education As mobile devices become more integrated in classrooms, educators and students are looking for new ways to apply them to the learning process because these devices can add new dimension to the subjects. Applications on all of these devices can help automate

current classroom (or out-of-the-classroom) processes and present new ways to learn that have previously been unexplored. As we know, it is sometimes the way that a person learns new information itself that affects how well they are able to retain it. As has been hinted above, technology has made it possible for children and adults alike to learn from almost anywhere. Whether students need help defining a word, locating the lumbar spine or practising French vocabulary, there’s definitely an app for that. Because of the imaginative methods employed by many of today’s developers, the innovative methods on offer provide fresh impetus to even the most staid of subjects.

“Children and adults alike can learn from almost anywhere”

5 essential apps 01 HowStuffWorks Price Free Developer Discovery Communications

A regular feature on the web, this established service now makes its appearance as an app, providing you with access to over 30,000 articles, podcasts and videos. You can tweet with the podcasters who work for the service, stream podcasts while reading any article or chat directly with the podcasters. Headers include: Stuff You Should Know, Stuff You Missed in History Class, BrainStuff, Stuff Mom Never Told You, Stuff to Blow Your Mind and CarStuff.

02 Factbook Ad-Free Price £1.99/$2.99 Developer Urbian

Although it is entitled the Factbook, users might be more familiar with it as the always-information-packed CIA World Fact Book. In this case it has also been joined by United Nations Data files to add even more core figures, and the paid-for version removes all of the advertisements. This app includes in-depth studies on areas such as the geography, population, economy and more of countries around the world.

03 SPB English Cards – Learn By Heart!

Price £2.95/$4.95 Developer SPB Software An app that takes the old-fashioned method of utilising a flash card sequence to teach English and gives it an Android twist by adding photos, native speakers’ dubbing, learning progress visualisation, smart adaptive algorithm and detailed statistics. Featuring over 1,000 words and over 65 different categories, the program negates the need to first learn the word in your mother tongue. Instead, the image does the talking, you just learn English.

04 NASA Images Archive Price Free Developer Ngo

If you’re looking for a source of NASA images on the Android platform, then this is the main game in town because it holds the largest amount of images – over 60,000 in fact. Associated information for each image includes: title, description, release date, object name, object type, position and distance in five categories.

05 TED

Price Free Developer TED Conferences

■ TED has a lot of familiar speakers, who have a lot of wisdom to share

■ Find facts on individual countries fast, and learn while on the go

■ Included images can be

spectacular with Ngo’s free NASA app

A slightly new take on educational apps, TED is filled with keynote speeches from experts in many fields. The main focus is centered around technology, but speakers from engineering, medicine and science are also included. Every keynote is free, and more are being added on a regular basis.


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Essential apps 5 essential apps 01 Expense Manager Price Free Developer BiShiNews

If you have a job that involves the handling of expenses, it can become a bit of a headache after time. This app is designed to help as well as managing your income too. Initially, it can be set up to track your expenses and incomes by week month or year, or by categories if you prefer. You can set up multiple accounts to separate different types of payments, there is the option to schedule payments and recurring payments and, if you need to, flag payment alerts.

02 pFinance

Price Free Developer BiShiNews ■ You can manage your PayPal account on the move with the official app

This app is rather ambitious as it claims to satisfy all of your financial needs. It is packed with features including detailed financial news from major sources plus headlines from Twitter, currency portfolio, converter as well as stock, portfolio, currency and commodity widgets. You’ll get technical charts, a market overview with index and fund information and commodity futures. Tools include a loan and compound interest calculator and a tip calculator.

03 Unit Convertor Full

Price £0.61/$0.99 Developer AHA Technologies

■ The latest market trends will be ■ You can import and export activities with Expense Manager

Finance

Managing your money shouldn’t get in the way of living your life. That’s why personal finance apps are such a natural fit for the Android. They let you track your stocks, convert currencies, calculate how much you owe and track expenses – all on the go. The more full-featured among the available programs even let you manage multiple bank accounts with the ability to transfer money between them. The best options are those that take advantage of

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available to you in Google Finance

An all-encompassing but easy-to-use conversion utility that enables you to convert between common units with a few extra surprises to boot. It can convert units such as length, weight, volume and cooking to engineering units such as power, force, pressure, frequency and energy and, as this is a financial section, many units of currency. The program is quite advanced in many areas. For example, it even has Ohm’s and Watt’s Law equations built in, in case you were interested!

04 PayPal

Price Free Developer PayPal Mobile

the Android’s finger-friendly interface or features such as location-awareness. For example, GPS or Wi-Fi can be helpful in finding the way to the nearest ATM. Most of these apps are free or available for a nominal charge, so there’s little to lose by trying them. Keeping track of your money can easily become a daunting task, but we have some apps here that can help you set budget goals, while others give you access to upcoming flights and Facebook.

PayPal has become a well-respected, worldwide financial service over the past decade, and this official Android app brings you all the PayPal functionality to your handset. Transfer money and manage your account on the move with ease.

05 Google Finance Price Free Developer Google

Google’s official Finance app will give you the lowdown on the latest movers in the shares market. You’ll also find the latest industry news, with some including commentary from analysts and experts. Various stock prices can be compared, and can also be exported for external viewing in a different app.

Health & Fitness Android devices are packed with clever technologies that can aid in exercise and improve your health. The GPS can be used to track your route and distance in real-time, the accelerometer can monitor footsteps, the web connection can compare food nutrition and the incorporated camera flash can even monitor your heart beat.

“Improve your health with apps” Making the most of these features to improve your health is easy thanks to the myriad apps available on the Google Play store. Nearly all are free, so there’s no excuse not to download an app, put on your sports shoes and get running (or whatever other activity takes your interest). We’ve scoured the Market and rounded up the five essential apps that can improve your health and fitness. You’ll find reviews of a distance tracker, heartbeat monitor, calorie counter and gym mentor here. With these apps and a little determination, you could be a whole new person in next to no time. ■ 3D videos show you the correct workout technique

5 essential apps 01 Endomondo Sports Tracker Price Free Developer Endomondo

Anyone who exercises outdoors or over long distances will really appreciate this app. It tracks your progress in real-time via GPS, then creates a post-activity report. Simply tap Start on the Workout page and the app will track your progress, giving you audio feedback for every km or mile. You can compete and compare workouts with friends, upload results to Facebook and track your workouts over time via the website.

02 Calorie Counter MyFitnessPal

Price Free Developer MyFitnessPal, LLC

This app enables you to keep a daily diary of your food intake and calculate how many calories you have consumed and how many you have remaining. The app has more than 75,000 food items stored in its database, so finding the correct entry is a breeze. It also works out how many calories you’ve burned during exercise. As a result, it’s easy and surprisingly fun to work out the best techniques for losing weight.

03 Instant Heart Rate Price Free/£1.85 (pro)/$2.99 (pro) Developer Azumio Inc.

You must be wondering how exactly an app can measure your heartbeat? It’s rather clever. It uses the camera flash on your Android device to measure the change in colour of your fingertip as blood flow increases and decreases with each heartbeat. It takes up to 30 seconds to work but is surprisingly accurate. With a real-time PPG graph and the ability to export charts to email, it’s a functional and impressive app.

04 VirtuaGym Fitness Home & Gym Price Free Developer VirtuaGym

This is a fantastic app for learning new work-out routines and discovering tips for maximising results. It includes dozens of exercises that can be completed in your own home or the gym, with 3D graphics that demonstrate how to complete them. This is the perfect app for those looking to improve their fitness.

05 Cardio Trainer Price Free Developer Noom

■ Quickly check how many calories you’ve consumed

■ It takes a while, but Instant Heart Rate is very accurate

Keep on top of your fitness levels with Cardio Trainer. The app helps you plan the best route for you to jog in your local area, whilst also calculating the amount of calories you can expect to lose. The built in pedometer will also keep tabs of your walking patterns, and outline areas of possible improvement.


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Essential apps 5 essential apps 01 Sleep as Android Price Free Developer Petr Nálevka

An unusual app that aims to improve your general night’s sleep; an ideal proposal for those whose sleep patterns are haphazard. The Sleep Cycle Tracker follows your sleep sequence and an alarm with nature sounds gradually wakes you. The idea is to lift you from deeper sleep into lighter sleep states. Other features include a useful sleep graph history, sleep debt stats, share functions via Facebook and email, varied alarms, music choices and a snoring recording function – great for settling arguments!

02 DailyHoroscope Price Free Developer Comitic

There is something wholly fascinating about a horoscope. Even those of us who scorn the astrological discipline cannot help sneaking a look at what the stars hold for them. This particular app includes information on all of the standard Zodiac signs plus the horoscope for the Chinese symbols which are becoming increasingly popular in the West. The app allows you to save and share your readings as well as scrolling back if you’ve missed a day.

03 Mixology Drink Recipes Price Free Developer Digital Outcrop

This is a an impressive alcoholic drink mixing and bartending app that is packed with around 7,900 drink recipes plus 1,300 ingredients. Using a combination of unit types to mix, you can feature drinks you have to hand, enter those and derive recipes from the list which is a great way to get the most out of the stock you have available. Featuring a range of categories, the app can even utilise your phone’s GPS to find the nearest off-licence for those dry moments.

04 Earthquake

Price Free Developer Reto Meier Unfortunately, this app is rather timely in its appearance and will prove to be of scientific interest for some, of general interest to others and, who knows, perhaps of critical importance to those in the hotspot areas. The app provides details of the past 24 hours of earthquakes plus a quake magnitude indicator.

05 Jamie’s 20 Min Meals

Price £4.99/$8.08 Developer Zolmo Quick and easy meals from one of the UK’s greatest chefs. Recipes are available in video format, and can be paused and rewound for you to keep up and follow. There’s also a forum where budding chefs can interact with one another. Don’t be deterred by the app’s price as there’s plenty to love about this it.

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■ Drinks can be created in a variety of different ways

■ An interactive map is included on Earthquake

■ Select what areas of your phone you wish to clean

Lifestyle In the Lifestyle section of this guide you will find programs that can both affect and enhance your routine or even change how you live your life, whether that be within a practical, environmental way or for rather more frivolous reasons. Lifestyle apps are often the most interesting and fun because they normally group together the most unusual and slightly bizarre programs on the store such as spiritual examinations within the psychic field or even, it has to be said, the alcoholic one. You’ll also see various items such as jokes and soap opera updates. These applications will offer truly personal services that follow you throughout the day and offer bursts of entertainment when convenient. The key ingredients of lifestyle apps are cool, current and compelling data. They reflect the personal, attend to the fickle and serve those user preferences that can be viewed as fashionable.

“Lifestyle apps are cool and current with compelling data”

■ Astrological signs from other cultures feature in DailyHoroscope

5 essential apps 01 SketchBook Mobile

Price Free/£0.62/$0.99 Developer Autodesk Inc. This is the perfect app for those who love to doodle and sketch whenever they get a chance. It’s a powerful painting program that includes 47 brush types, support for up to six layers, a canvas size of 1,024 x 768 plus controls for rotating and scaling images. SketchBook uses a pop-up wheel menu for accessing tools and touch-screen controls for editing presets. Though it requires a speedy device to make the most of its capabilities, we reckon it’s the best art app in the Market.

Media & Video With a dizzying array of multimediabased apps to be found in the Google Play store, it’s possible to have a never-ending source of video and entertainment on your smartphone or tablet ready for moments of boredom. Those with a creative streak can find painting apps that enable you to create fantastic digital art with your fingertips or manipulate images with realistic brushstrokes. There are multimedia apps that can find and play nearly any video format, enabling you to watch classic

02 BBC iPlayer

Price Free Developer BBC

movies and heavily compressed files alike. It’s possible to catch up on your favourite TV shows and movies, watch live TV and copy any video file to your device for later. It’s also possible to stream video, leave comments and read thoughts by others, all in the palm of your hand. In short, your Android device is an incredibly powerful tool for entertainment purposes. Read on to discover just a few of the best video, audio and creative media apps available on the Market along with some of their stand-out features. ■ Paint over photos using intuitive touch controls in SketchBook

The venerable iPlayer finally arrives on Android mobile devices. It’s not as exciting as we hoped, however. Content only streams over a Wi-Fi connection, videos can be jumpy on slower devices and there’s no way to download programmes. The interface looks fantastic though, and it’s easy to find shows. Provided you have a speedy Android device and local Wi-Fi connection, then this is a great way to catch up on your favourite TV and radio.

03 Vimeo

Price Free Developer Vimeo Vimeo is home to one of the largest collection of virals on the internet. The app works in a similar way to that of YouTube with a profile and comment system also implemented. There are plenty of differences, however, and the app aims to cater for more of a niche audience. Videos range in quality, but there are so many to choose from. You’ll never have to live again without being able to see ‘Nyan Cat’ on repeat.

04 YouTube

Price Free Developer Google Inc.

■ Instantly apply album art to your music

This app comes pre-installed on devices with the stock Android UI. For everyone else, it’s a highly recommended download that enables users to watch nearly any video from the YouTube website. All the features you’d expect to find are included such as info, comments and related videos.

05 Album Art Grabber Price Free Developer Tim Clark

■ As with the web version, the day’s most popular shows are displayed on the home screen

■ Switch to landscape mode in YouTube for a fullscreen view

Do you have a large collection of music stored on your Android phone’s SD card? If so, chances are some of the albums are missing cover art. This app will automatically apply any missing album art, pulling imagery from Last. FM and MusicBrainz. It works surprisingly well, and takes mere seconds to complete.


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Essential apps 5 essential apps 01 IMDb Movies & TV Price Free Developer IMDb

The IMDb app enables you to access the entire website from your smartphone, but it also packs some clever features that enrich the experience. For example, it’s possible to view movie trailers, read critic and user reviews, check out movie showing times for your local cinema, shop for DVDs and Blu-rays via Amazon and see the latest US Box office results. All of this is wrapped in an easy-to-use interface that’s perfectly suited to Android devices.

02 Akinator

Price Free/£1.38/$1.99 Developer SCIMOB This is a fun and unique app. It aims to guess what real or fictional person you’re thinking of in just a few questions. They start out asking gender or nationality, but quickly get more specific, such as asking if the character had an affair with a head of state. We thought of film and TV stars – even British politicians from the Seventies – and Akinator guessed them all.

■ Set a new background for your device

03 Backgrounds 10,000 Wallpapers

Price Free Developer Stylem Media There’s a wealth of wallpaper apps and themes in the Android Market, but Backgrounds 10,000 Wallpapers leaps ahead of the others with a massive selection of images. It’s easy to use the app, you can browse via category, recent or popular images, then swipe through the pages arranged in lots of four images to find more. If you’ve tired of the animated backgrounds bundled with the Android OS, then this app is a great way to freshen up the look of your home screen.

04 FoneJacker

Price £0.50/$0.71 Developer Widebeam Digital If you’re yet to see Fonejacker on TV, then you’re sorely missing out. Fonejacker is based around a voice artist, mimicking voices in a variety of sketches. The official Android app includes clips from the TV series, as well as a variety of soundboards which will guarantee you a few laughs.

05 Movies

Price Free Developer Flixster Inc. Similar in many regards to IMDb, Movies enables you to get screening times for local cinemas, view trailers and read reviews from Rotten Tomatoes. It differs by offering a catalogue of 65,000 DVDs and the ability to add and manage your Netflix queue. Movies also supports Android tablets, with a fantasticlooking interface in widescreen mode.

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■ Watch the latest movie trailers in the app

“There’s never an excuse to be bored with an Android”

Entertainment There’s never an excuse to be bored when you have an Android device in your pocket. That’s because there’s a nearly never-ending selection of fun apps to be discovered in the Google Play store, many available for free and more being developed and brought out all the time. It’s possible to instantly check the cinema times at your local screen without even entering your location, and while we’re on the subject of movies, you can read critic and user reviews, watch trailers and see how films are faring in the box office.

Some of the other entertaining apps that await you in the store include image manipulation programs that enable you to twist and morph photos into strange shapes. These intuitive and hands-on apps are great for keeping children entertained. Guessing games can also be found that attempt to read what’s on your mind with just a short set of specific questions. Read on to discover some of the best entertainment apps in the Google Play store. We’ve rounded up our five favourites, all of which happen to be free!

5 essential apps

Medical

01 BMI Calculator

Mobile medicine is a growing sector in the app market. Apps have the ability to take advantage of the growing internal CPU power of the smartphone and the support of attendant, complex operating systems to enable you to achieve results that were undreamt of just a few years ago. Associated with that, not so long ago the mere suggestion that your phone could provide any sort of medical assistance was a joke. But how times have changed. Some apps let you cut away images of muscle layers to see what lies beneath, while others offer an e-health record system or even a smartphone-based blood pressure monitor. Some medical programs can be downloaded and used for a bit of fun, some can be almost used for educational purposes while others provide a genuine use or offer advice to enable you to change your lifestyle in a positive way.

“Some programs can enable you to change your lifestyle”

Price Free Developer Woytek

It’s true that the Body Mass Index (BMI) has had a bad press of late, particularly when the indication demands that a specific athlete happens to be obese. The notes to this app make a point of this and recommend that it not be used for such individuals. For the rest of us, the app asks you to input a range of personal information to find your own figure which can then be measured against a reference to provide a general rating of your health. It includes support for seven languages plus different unit types.

02 Pocket Lab Values

Price £1.99/$3.10 Developer Medplusapps

■ Medical Terminology helps you understand jargon

Designed for people in the medical industry, or for students studying to get in to the industry, Pocket Lab Values includes vital clinical information. Users who also be able to find information and reference points for medical terms, as well as a comprehensive guide to most labs all over the world. The overall detail is phenomenal, even though it may not be everyone’s cup of tea.

03 NHS Direct

Price Free Developer NHS Direct With many of us put off by visiting a doctor or facing up to the long waits at A&E, this Android app is perfect for help diagnosing problems. Simply scroll through the symptom checker and accurately choose what applies to you, answer a few basic questions and you’ll be advised on what action to take next. Although this is obviously no replacement for going to a doctor, especially in a serious case of illness, it is definitely a good port of call to get an idea of what may be wrong.

04 Medical Terminology and Abbrev Price £1.23/$1.99 Developer Simple Tree

If your diagnosis from your doctor has left you baffled, or you’re struggling to understand a medical term in a text book or on a website, then this is the app for you. Breaking down medical jargon into simple terms, it’s also a great app for all medical students.

05 Muscle Trigger Point Anatomy

Price £1.84/$2.99 Developer Real Bodywork

■ Use NHS Direct to find out what’s wrong

■ Muscle Trigger Point will help you target pain

This app is great for finding out which muscles are responsible for any pain you’re feeling. You can zoom in on specific areas or muscles, and find out how they affect parts of your body. This is also a great massage guide for those with muscle pains.


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Essential apps

Music

It wasn’t so long ago that jukeboxes were the only way to store dozens of albums in one place and play any track at will. Now, though, we are totally spoiled with the ability to download and play millions of songs through the tiny Android device in our pocket. We can even stream live radio programs – all at the tap of a finger. With the shift to storing music online and listening to it on any device, Android is at the forefront with support for Amazon’s

5 essential apps 01 Amazon MP3 Cloud Drive and Google Music. That means you can upload your entire music collection and listen to it at any time – without taking up precious space on your SD card. There’s a wealth of other great abilities awaiting you in the Google Play store, including apps that help find music from your favourite bands or apps that can recognise music playing in the background. We’ve rounded up five essential music apps to help you get you started in this area.

Price Free Developer Amazon.com The Amazon MP3 Store is quickly catching up on iTunes as the number one place for music online. You only need to read about the free Lady Gaga album giveaway to see how serious Amazon is at taking that spot. This app enables you to buy, download and listen to music from the Amazon MP3 Store, and features an attractive, bright interface that’s easier to use than the stock music player. US users can also save and stream their music over the internet via the in-built Cloud Drive feature.

02 Winamp

Price Free Developer Nullsoft, Inc. Hands down, this is the best music player for Android devices. Why, you ask? Well, you can wirelessly sync your music from the desktop client to your phone, control playback from the lock screen, add a home screen widget and browse Amazon to buy more music. It also has a fantastic UI that’s more attractive then the default player. For example, while playing a track you can tap and hold on it, then search for more music by the artist on Amazon, YouTube and Last.FM.

03 Ultimate Guitar Tabs Price £1.86/$2.99 Developer Ultimate Guitar

■ US users can stream music via the Cloud Drive feature

Ultimate Guitar Tabs holds the largest collection of guitar tabs that can be accessed on an Android phone. Each set of tabs are ranked by difficulty, and can be set up to notify you if any similar tabs are added to the library. If you’re looking to learn the guitar, or just looking to learn some new songs in your bedroom; then Ultimate Guitar Tabs is definitely the app that will help you rock out!

04 SoundHound

Price Free/£2.99/$4.99 Developer SoundHoud Ever wondered what the music track playing in the background is? Simply whip out your Android device, load up SoundHound and tap the large button in the centre of the screen. After a few moments, the app will reveal a wealth of information about the track and even offer a link to buy and download it from the Amazon MP3 Store if it can.

05 TuneIn Radio

Price Free/£0.61/$0.99 Developer TuneIn Inc.

■ TuneIn Radio has widget capabilities for ■ Check out info about the song in SoundHound

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controlling playback from the home screen

With more than 40,000 radio stations available to stream over Wi-Fi or 3G connections, there’s an endless supply of music and banter to be accessed via this app. Unlike the iOS version, you can’t record and save live broadcasts, but nevertheless, for listening to live radio you won’t find a more thorough app.

5 essential apps

■ Click on a homepage icon to access the full story

01 Pulse News

Price Free Developer Alphonso Labs Pulse takes a selection of both news and social networking sites and organises them, in aggregate fashion, as a series of tiles on your device’s screen. Just press a tile and you access the news from that site. Pulse is multitasking in nature because you can browse news as you read and, if you find something you like, it takes just two taps to share it with someone on a social networking site. You can also import news from Google Reader. The news itself is divided into a range of subjects for perusal such as Breaking, Technology, Sports and so on. ■ Each news

02 The Economist Mobile Price Free Developer Premanand

The Economist is one of the leading news-based newsstand magazines, covering a wide array of topics. Famed for its business, international and political coverage, the magazine also handles lifestyle elements such as book reviews. Here, the publication presents text via its RSS feeds which can be viewed onscreen. You do have the ability to share the text, however, as it can be diverted to a friend or colleague via a social network site.

03 Guardian Anywhere Price Free Developer Future Platforms

The Guardian is one of Britain’s most respected and long-standing newspapers, and its data implementation, after a slightly shaky start, has now matured into a quality product. Able to work out of network range and be read offline, the paper can be obtained while you sleep. Featuring a home screen widget, the app offers a range of personalisation features plus some welcome add-ons such as the ability to transfer any image on the site to wallpaper.

subject is divided into sub-headings

News & magazines Arguably, the combination of news text along with the mobile platform is a match made in heaven. In fact, the concept of the 24-hour news world has largely been forged around the mobile phone. The smartphone has turned news access on mobile platforms into an accepted and increasingly specialist medium which has encouraged mobile magazines to take firm root in many genres. It is little wonder then that you will see newsstand publications offering free

content as an app to partly encourage you to also buy the paper version or perhaps to try and tempt you with further data coverage upon the payment of a fee. Because this is a data medium, news on a mobile platform can be manipulated in a variety of different ways, which means feeding you information via RSS or aggregating it to combine a variety of sources. Ultimately, news and magazine apps allow you to modify and tailor reports to how you want to receive them.

04 BBC News

Price Free Developer BBC Text stories on the app are arranged into a variety of standardised subject headers such as Top Stories, UK, Sport, Health, Arts and so on. In addition to basic text, there are plenty of images and videos to watch. Once you have read a story, just swipe to reveal the next one.

05 Pocket

Price Free Developer Read it Later Formerly known as Read it Later, Pocket is a social hub for the latest news from around the world. When you find something on the web you want to read, but have no time at the present, then open it in Pocket to sync it directly to your device for offline viewing. You can even subscribe to certain sites.

■ The Guardian app provides all of the latest news

■ Subscribe to as many different websites as you want

■ A selection of features are available in the free edition


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Essential apps

Photography The inclusion of photo-related apps on your mobile phone is both an understandable and, to be honest, obvious move. After all, every smartphone has a camera attached to it. Even the lowest quality modern smartphones have the ability to take pretty decent photographs nowadays. Some of the generally available photo apps utilise the camera by attempting to enhance your images subtly or enabling you to modify in

a more dramatic fashion either to improve the quality of the inherent image or to add a slice of fun to the output by giving you extra colours, distortion effects and so on. Some apps encourage you to make use of the additional facilities of your phone’s camera to give you more image flexibility while others take a step away from the hardware and look at the wider world, offering the chance to view other people’s work as archives or as pieces of art.

5 essential apps 01 QuickPic

Price Free Developer Alensw.com One of the most frequently used parts of any smartphone is the picture viewer. As long as a phone features a camera, then you will always need to store the images in some manner and, it follows, you will always require the ability to view them. Trouble is, once your store of images starts to reach humongous proportions, the ability to store them becomes less important. All of a sudden, the ability to access each photo quickly becomes the priority, so an efficiently designed picture viewer is invaluable. This app is just that; a viable alternative to the Gallery option.

02 Guardian Eyewitness Price Free Developer Mainwave

Hosted by The Guardian newspaper, this app presents the best of photography seen across the world during the past seven days. Each day, the app highlights a single image – a photograph that has been used in and around a story – and features a description on the image plus tips from professionals who frequent The Guardian. Ideal for photographers who want to expand their skill set or budding photojournalists, this app is a masterclass in a microcosm.

03 Photoshop Express Price Free Developer Adobe Systems

This app is derived from the much respected, well-known and broadly used suite of programs that amateurs and professionals use all day and every day, and so has the advantage, over other similar programs, of a broad familiarity. Many users will find that they can load and use it without too much of a learning curve intruding. The app itself enables you to perform basic edits and share photos, and then access them all on Photoshop.com.

■ A useful

picture viewer

■ Thumbnail

previews can include or exclude folders

■ QuickPic is

04 PicSay

known for its high-resolution image output

Price Free Developer Shinycore One of the most popular effects apps in the Market, this photo-editor app enables you to add a new zest to your images, with a selection of tools and special effects to lay down, including stickers and varying styles. You also have the option to colour correct your photos.

■ Management

includes rotate, crop, share, set wallpaper, slides and sort

■ Cropping is one of the in-built tools in Photoshop Express

05 Instagram

Price Free Developer Instagram

“Add a slice of fun to your image output” 154


There are two very distinct sides to the apps that will cater for two very different audiences. On one side you have a strong social aspect, and strong photography aspects which will cater for both novices and seasoned photgraphers alike. For a free app, you can’t really ask for much more.

Personalisation One of Android’s strengths is its personalisation features, enabling users to tweak notification settings, add widgets and more without any restrictions. It’s what sets Android devices apart from the more locked-down operating systems such as iOS and the PlayBook OS. Browse the Google Play store and you’ll discover apps that apply statistic widgets on your home screen, add notification bubbles that can be interacted with and display amazing graphics in the background of your home screen, as well as programs that can give you access to literally millions of ringtones and wallpapers for you to use. All of these features can be downloaded as apps – most for free – and you don’t need to hack or root your device to use them – you’re largely free to customise your Android device as you see fit. To help you get started we’ve rounded up our five favourite personalisation apps. Read on to discover how you can customise your device with amazing graphics, audio and communication notifications. ■ The Pro version of Fancy Widget comes with

several widget sizes and additional settings

“Customise your Android device as you see fit”

5 essential apps 01 Fancy Widget

Price Free Developer Android Does Ever longed for the large clock with weather report that’s included by default on devices with HTC Sense? Fancy Widget can do just that, displaying a large clock with weather graphic, temperature, sunrise or sunset times and even the battery level. A free version can be downloaded which includes only the largesized widget. The Pro edition includes a compact widget that takes up only one row of apps, plus further customisations for tweaking settings. A great way to liven up your home screen.

02 Notification Bubbles Price Free Developer Commind AB

This clever app displays a bubble on the home screen every time you receive an SMS/MMS, phone call, Twitter mention, Gmail or Facebook notification. Each bubble has a brief, text preview of the message, then tap on the bubble to burst it and open the relevant webpage or app. It’s a great way to stay on top of social networking updates, and the app includes options to change the background, colour and sounds.

03 Zedge Ringtones & Wallpapers Price Free Developer Zedge

For sheer content, this app is hard to beat. It offers millions (we didn’t have time to count and verify) of ringtones, notification sounds and wallpapers that have been shared by its 19 million users. It also makes getting these ringtones and wallpapers onto your phone remarkably easy, enabling you to select the audio settings of your choice and apply them from within the app. You can also sync with your online favourites if you already have a Zedge account.

04 Symphony of Colors Price Free Developer maxelus.net

This is a live wallpaper that displays in the background of the home menu. As the title suggests, it emits a symphony of colours across the screen that slowly rotate. Pan to the left and right and it quickens pace, prod the colours with your finger and they spin under your control in a rather mesmerizing way.

05 Beautiful Widgets

Price £1.69/$2.73 Developer Levelup Studio

■ Give your device a burst of life with the Symphony of Colors app

■ Beautiful Widgets offers a superb amount of choice considering its cost

Beautiful Widgets includes a selection of different widgets that can be added to your phone or tablet’s home screen. There’s plenty of variety, with weather, news and wallpapers the common things you’ll find within the app. Further widgets can be added and downloaded to the app . ■ Never miss an email or poke with Notification Bubbles


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Essential apps 5 essential apps 01 Evernote

Price Free Developer Evernote Corp. Evernote is one of those essential apps that makes life so much easier. Its basic task is to take down notes and create to-do and task lists. It does all three with ease, enabling you to format text any way you like. Its true strengths lie, however, in its syncing. The app uploads any changes to its servers on the web, enabling you to edit on a desktop computer, iOS device or another Android smartphone. Access your notes and lists from any device in the world.

02 Firefox

Price Free Developer Mozilla Your Android phone already comes with a fantastic browser. So what incentives are there to swap to Firefox? Well, if you’re a fan of the desktop client then you’ll be pleased to learn this mobile iteration can sync with your bookmarks, tabs and passwords. You can also install add-ons (such as Adblock and foursquare), browse tabs via a sidebar and run full-screen. For Firefox fans with bookmarks galore on their desktop, this is a good option.

■ Pinch to see pages running in LauncherPro

03 LauncherPro

Price Free Developer Federico Carnales Ever wished your stock Android smartphone had the animated screen previews, smoother scrolling and seven home screens seen on devices with HTC Sense? LauncherPro enables you to have all of those, plus more – and all for free. How does it work? LauncherPro replaces the stock launcher (basically, the home screen and apps menu) with its own custom version, one that looks almost exactly the same but is tweaked to give smoother performance and a few extra features.

04 Dropbox

Price Free Developer Dropbox, Inc. A number of online storage solutions are available, but Dropbox is our favourite with its simplicity and compatibility. After signing up you’ll discover 2GB of free storage for you to save photos, files and videos. View and upload these, save email attachments and edit Word documents in the cloud.

05 Swiftkey X

Price £1.86/$3.00 Developer TouchType Swiftkey X is one of the most established keyboards that can be used in place of the stock one that comes as standard with Android devices. Letters are spaced further apart, and you’ll find plenty of new emoticons and symbols to use while typing and sending messages to your friends and contacts sorted on your Android device.

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■ Take a picture of a landmark and discover all about it

■ Save your photos and files in the cloud

“It’s staggering technology and easy to use”

Productivity Android smartphones might have relatively small screens, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be used as productive tools. The Google Play store is ripe with apps that enable you to take notes and sync them with any device in the world, store photos, videos and documents in the cloud, share them with friends and browse the web with the same bookmarks and passwords that you saved on your desktop computer. Unbelievably, your Android device can also take a photo of any landmark, product or piece of art,

and then instantly tell you more about it. It’s staggering technology wrapped in a number of easy-to-use interfaces. To help you be more productive we’ve carefully chosen the five most impressive apps in the Google Play store and featured them below. Read on to discover some incredible apps that were almost unimaginable only a few years ago. Working while on the go and discovering more about the world around you will be easier than ever before, and you may be able to do it all faster than you thought too.

Shopping

5 essential apps 01 Amazon UK

First we fell in love with shopping online, now it’s all about doing it on the go. Not that the high street retailers are particularly happy, but it does make life easier. It is a wider symptom of a changing shopping world and the ability to shop via apps has triggered a shift in how we buy our products. Mobile shopping has enforced a tremendously speeded-up evolution of the entire shopping experience. This has not only added to shopping convenience (forgot to order a birthday present for your loved one? Sort it while you’re on the train to work), but it has meant that anything and everything is now available and accessible at your fingertips (want to buy that rare record but it’s only available in somewhere like London and you live in the Lake District? Turn on an app). In short, shopping via an Android app is efficient, direct and enables you to find the best price for what you want.

Price Free Developer Amazon Mobile EU Now one of the most respected and largest online shops Amazon is a great resource. Important when you are thinking about sending your hard-earned cash down a data cable and into the wild blue ether, Amazon has separate apps for every major country it covers. The UK version of the app enables you to search, shop, compare prices, read reviews and, of course, buy items right from your phone. You can also scan a barcode for instant details on pricing and availability. Once you have bought your chosen product, you can track its progress to your door to make sure you get what you need.

02 eBay

Price Free Developer eBay Mobile

■ Your eBay history is available to view

■ Locate your nearest store

The most well known and popular online auction site in the world has a mobile presence. Because auctions can be accessed nationwide, the necessity to be able to monitor bids that you have made at any time can be critical. So monitoring on the move with this app can be a godsend. Includes barcode scanmatching, PayPal payments, item views via text and images, messaging functions, notification alerts, search, watch and buy options and more.

03 vouchercode

Price Free Developer Invitation Digital Ltd.

■ Variations on

a product theme are grouped together

■ Reader ratings are included for each product

This app is the mobile sister of those extremely popular online promotion sites. It roams the web and picks up discounts for holidays, meals at restaurants, clothes, drinks in bars, DIY equipment, furniture... you name it and it will display those offers to you. Often arriving with a strict time limit, the voucher zeroes in on your location using your phone’s inbuilt GPS system so you can quickly access those deals nearest to you.

04 Out of Milk

Price £1.24/$2.00 Developer Capigami ■ The Prime, fast delivery option is available on most products

■ Prices are

normally well below high street levels on Amazon

■ A wide variety of new offers regularly appear for you

The app acts as a shopping list that stays with you wherever you go. There’s a monitor function that keeps tabs of everything that you’ve stock of, and create lists of what you need and where you can get it from in your local area. A barcode scanner is also included.

05 H&M

Price Free Developer H&M This retail-specific app allows you to get under the skin of the H&M shop. By that we mean you can receive shop-specific offers (just shake the phone to update), examine the latest fashion campaign, news and videos of new stock. You can also get notifications of offers sent to your phone.


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Essential apps 5 essential apps 01 Facebook for Android Price Free Developer Facebook

There’s no bigger social phenomenon right now than Facebook (although Twitter ranks a close second), and the official Android app is by far the best way to access the site. With every popular feature of the website available with touch-friendly controls, it’s easy to check out your friends’ profiles, read the news feed, chat to other members in real-time and view or upload photos. If we have one niggle it’s the sheer amount of battery it takes up during live chat. Nevertheless, an essential app for Facebook fans.

Social

Perhaps the greatest aspect of owning a smartphone is the sheer number of opportunities to stay in touch with friends, family and the wider world. Thanks to the amazing amount of social networking apps available for Android devices, there’s a wealth of content out there waiting to be discovered. Some of the very best apps enable you to chat to friends in real-time, share and view photos, send free messages, read tweets from friends

and the famous alike, ‘check-in’ at locations to share your current whereabouts, plus plenty more. Incredibly, all of these apps are free to download and use. Read on to discover five essential social networking apps that enable you to stay in touch and tell the world what you’re thinking without spending a penny. You’ll wonder how everyone managed to communicate with only landline telephones just two decades ago.

02 Twitter

■ Select the data you wish to share from the main menu in Bump

Price Free Developer Twitter, Inc. Join the social revolution that’s captured the world’s imagination. The clean interface includes shortcuts for the timeline, @mentions, messages, new tweets and searches, with content appearing below. The search feature is actually incredibly powerful, enabling you to search for keywords by location, profile name or regular search. For staying up-todate with your favourite tweeters or posting your own, this official app is all you need.

03 Plume

Price Free Developer Levelup Studio There are plenty of Twitter clients available for Android users, but not many are as easy to use when compared to Plume. All the standard features are there, and Plume offers a quick way of being able to look through your feed, while also splitting the screen in two for you to be able to compose a tweet at the same time. The app automatically sets itself up to send notifications you way when you receive any replies.

■ The main

home screen offers shortcuts to every feature of Facebook

■ Chat with your online friends by tapping the Chat button

■ A live stream

of photos appears towards the bottom of the home screen

■ Tap on the Notifications bar to see any Facebook updates

■ Discover

great locations nearby

04 Bump

Price Free Developer Bump Technologies, Inc. Bump makes sharing photos, contacts and apps incredibly efficient – simply bump two devices together, whether Android, iPhone or iPad, and the information is instantly shared. It really is that easy. Bump also includes the ability to message other Bump users for free, appearing like regular SMS alerts.

05 Foursquare

Price Free Developer foursquare By using the Foursquare app it’s possible to link your Facebook, Twitter and address book to see where your friends are in real-time. It’s also possible to ‘check-in,’ showing your friends your current location. As a result, using this app is a great way to catch up with friends and discover new locations.

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“Stay in touch and tell the world what you’re thinking”

■ View tweets from your favourite tweeters in full on your mobile device

Sports Around 20 years ago following your favourite sports team was a challenge; you had to buy newspapers, watch televisions and listen to radios to get the right results at the right time. How things have changed. The sonic boom that was the internet left our computer screens and fell into our laps, and now wherever you go, whatever your sport, the Google Play store has an app that means you’re never more than a few seconds away from up-to-the-second information about your team or your own athletic pursuits. You used to have to count the hours until your favourite sports team took the field or court, and there was precious little to do between games. Fortunately, now there are apps that help you while away the hours until kick-off. There are tools for tracking scores in football, cricket, golf, tennis and even fencing, playing fantasy sports games and much more.

5 essential apps 01 My Tracks

Price Free Developer Google When you take part in any sport that involves distance such as running or biking, you follow a course or, as this app would have it, a track. The app itself enables you to record these via your GPS function along with statistics related to it. Those figures can include things like the distance, waypoints, the speed and the elevation. The data itself can be viewed live and saved for later or shared with friends and colleagues. You can also attach external physical monitors to extend the information retrieval.

02 Sports Calendar

Price £1.25/$1.99 Developer Unnamed App. This is a great little app for organising the sporting events that are important to you. Simply select the team you follow from a number of different sports and leagues (from the NHL and NBA to the Premier League and PGA Tour) and the app will add your team’s schedule onto your Google Calendar. This way you’ll always know what events are on when, and never miss your team’s next fixture. A great app that’s well worth the money.

03 SkyDroid – Golf GPS

Price £1.25/$1.99 Developer Paul Goldstein

■ Maintain stats on each track

For anyone who loves golf this is the perfect partner for when you’re out on your next round. SkyDroid is a GPS app that will help you improve your game by informing you of the distance to the green, as well as any hazards that may pose a risk. It has satellite views for many popular courses, as well as the option to download extra course details. It even has shot tracking so you can see where you’re going wrong!

04 MMA Junkie

Price Free Developer Freerange360 Mixed Martial Arts, more affectionately known as MMA, is one of the most highly regarded sports in the world, and MMA Junkie aims to be the premier news app for it. The app itself is crammed full of content, with everything from interviews with MMA stars to breaking news, it has it all.

■ Each adopted sport provides new updates in SportsTap

■ SkyDroid will help you improve your golf skills

05 SportsTap

Price Free Developer Score Media Ventures

■ Pick from a wealth of teams in Sports

Calendar and track their schedule

Describing itself as a portal, this app provides sports news, statistics of current games plus accrued data over a typical season and in-depth scores of, for example, an England cricket test match. All of the top leagues are covered from all over the world, while alerts can be sent direct to your phone.


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Essential apps

Tools

Some of the most powerful tools available for any computer are obtainable for free within Google Play. Thanks to the clever wizards at Google, it’s possible to translate text between 50 languages and even have a conversation with someone who doesn’t speak your native tongue. Simply talk out-load and let your smartphone translate in real-time. There are even more amazing apps to install on your device for a range of problems or situations. How about voice search? It lets you speak commands aloud,

5 essential apps 01 Google Translate such as “map of my current location”, and see the results spring into life on the screen. Another great feature available to all Android users is Flash support, enabling you to watch videos online, play interactive games and be annoyed by Flash adverts (okay, perhaps we could do without that last feature in retrospect). We’ve trawled the Google Play store to bring you the top five app tools to enrich your Android experience and your life in general. Read on to discover some truly mind-blowing programs. ■ Manage the files

on your SD card without taking it out of your device

■ Select your

country of origin at the top right of the Google Translate screen

■ Now select

from more than 50 languages to translate to

■ Results appear below, and can be hear aloud by tapping the audio button

■ Tap the

Conversation Mode button at the bottom of the screen to talk and respond with audio

■ Those Flash adverts will now appear thanks to Flash Player 10.3 ■ Quickly see all of the apps available for you to uninstall with Uninstaller

Price Free Developer Google Inc.

Have you ever wished you had your own personal translator when travelling abroad? Google Translate can be exactly that, translating speech from one language to another in real-time. Tap on the Conversation Mode button, say whatever needs to be translated aloud, confirm whether it’s correct and Google Translate will speak it for you. It’s incredibly clever, although at the time of writing the app can only translate English and Spanish spoken language, though it can do 50 languages in text only.

02 Flash Player 10.3

Price Free Developer Adobe Systems By installing this small, 4.2MB tool, you’ll be able to enjoy Flash content – whether video, games, interactive media or adverts – on your Android platform. Don’t get too excited, however. You’ll need a fast, modern device to be able to take advantage of Flash’s full features. Videos are choppy on anything less than a 1GHz processor and your battery will take a beating. This is an essential app for those with dual-core processor smartphones or tablets.

03 Extended Controls

Price £0.79/$1.27 Developer Honolulu Team Extended Controls is technically a widget, but includes so many features that it’s better described as an app. It’s packed with various adaptations of widgets, with more than 30 in total. The interface is really to navigate, and can be easily configured to make it personal to you. Further widgets that are compatible with Extended Controls can be downloaded from the Google Play store.

04 Uninstaller

Price Free Developer Rhythm Software It’s simple to uninstall apps from your Android device. Tap the Menu button, choose Settings>Applications, then Manage Applications. However, Uninstaller, available free from the Android Market, makes it even easier. All it takes is one tap and the app is gone. Uninstaller also includes a Search button for quickly finding that particularly pesky app.

05 ES File Explorer Price Free Developer EStrongs Inc.

“Enrich your Android experience and your life” 160


If you’ve ever wanted to browse the file system on your Android device then this app will let you do just that. You can explore the files stored in every folder, copy, paste and cut files, edit text and search. ES File Explorer also enables you to browse computers sharing the same local area network. Very clever.

5 essential apps 01 TripIt

Price Free Developer TripIt Inc. TripIt is a travel organiser that attempts to put all of your travel plans together on your mobile phone. The app asks you to forward travel confirmation details and emails to its email address and then steadily builds an itinerary, making TripIt a sort of travel-based aggregator along with maps and directions. This action of creating the itinerary can also be produced automatically if you use Google’s apps or Gmail, the idea being that the app stops you having to collate a wide variety of disparate information which is easily lost.

02 Maverick Pro

Price £3.00/$4.85 Developer Code Sector Maverick Pro is an off-road GPS navigator that supports offline maps support, as well as compass and track recording. It includes a wide choice of global and regional maps, and each can be altered depending on your mode of transportation. Every time you set a new destination within Maverick, the app will automatically give you directions, as well as an estimated time of arrival with several points of interest that you’ll come across on your journey.

03 Rail Planner Live Price £3.49/$5.70 Developer Thales

This specialised rail-planning app offers a wide variety of options with a slick interface that asks you to plan your journey. You can view a wide variety of departure boards as well as information relating to fares. On many occasions, the timetable will also be able to tell you which platform you need to head to if you have a connecting train to catch. Other features include SMS alerts plus the inclusion of a homepage widget.

■ A bus departure board in Catch That Bus UK

Transportation What better method of accessing information relating to transport than via a mobile phone, and what better time to do it than while you are on the move? The two mediums are truly sympathetic and both change their content regularly. Transport-related apps have the ability to access timetables, for example, in real-time. As such, they can pick up late changes in those timetables due to adverse weather conditions or problems on the route. Some

apps enable you to plan your route and offer advice as you do so, while some give you a real-time movement monitor. By utilising your phone’s GPS system, they can see where you are relative to the rest of the country or find out how close you are to the next station, endlessly useful if you find yourself in an unfamiliar location. Information like this also enables you to ring ahead to friends, family and business colleagues with up-to-date information.

04 Catch That Bus UK

Price £1.99/$3.28 Developer Ashton BRSC Called Catch That Bus, this app offers you a wide array of bus departure times. In fact, its enormous data well can draw upon 370,000 stops in the UK. Often, real-time information can also be sourced so you will be able to see how long the next bus will take to arrive.

05 ViewRanger GPS Open Price £0.61/$1.00 Developer Augmentra

Now your mobile phone can turn into an outdoor navigation tool. Useful for those who enjoy walking, biking or other off-road activities. With the app you can plan, plot, navigate, track, locate, record, analyse and share your data using global web map layers like OpenStreetMap.

■ Sort out your travel timings with TripIt

■ Plan your route using

detailed maps in Viewranger

■ A live departure board from Rail Planner


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Essential apps

Weather We’ve come to expect weather forecasts to maybe not be absolutely accurate, but at least to give us a general idea of what’s in store for the next day or so. When we’re looking forward to an outdoor event, we always check the forecasted conditions. Luckily there are plenty of apps that will let you check the weather at any time from anywhere. Many of us also have lines of work which benefit from regular weather updates. As such, it is crucial to know the weather forecast at the drop of a hat. The weather app built in to Android phones is a

5 essential apps 01 The Weather Channel simple, no-fluff, no-rubbish weather app. It does its job well but any weather app can give you the highs and lows for the day. Often you might want more information such as the humidity, wind speeds or sunrise and sunset times and other data.

“Check the weather at any time from anywhere”

Price Free Developer The Weather Channel

A fully-featured weather app, this provides a voice-search facility that enables you to grab information by stating your location (your address, your city or even your postcode), with a type-ahead feature for quicker searches. A newly integrated navigation bar offers a swiping, one-click access to saved locations, current conditions, hourly forecasts, 36-hour forecasts, ten-day forecasts, severe alerts, video and settings. In addition to metric (°C and kph) and English (°F and mph) options, a hybrid now offers Celsius and mph for the UK and Canada.

02 Weatherbug Elite

Price £1.23/$1.99 Developer Earth Networks This weather-related app allows you to check the current forecast and conditions in your local area. In addition to the weather basics that we are all familiar with, you can examine rather exotic Doppler radar images. Other facilities accessible via this app include access to alerts for severe weather such as snow, high winds, freak storms along with lightning strikes and polygon vector map layers, three-day home screen forecast widgets and more.

03 Moon Phase Pro

Price £0.79/$1.27 Developer Udell Enterprises

■ Weather Channel provides a forecast

3D interactive display of each phase of the moon’s movement. View the latest rise and set times, as well as the nearest syzygies. The app itself contains a stunning, and spectacular interactive 3D simulation of the moon, right down to the light shadows that line the moon itself. You can pinpoint the moon’s appearance in your local area by the calendar that’s also included. Will it be a full moon in your area tonight?

04 3D Digital Weather Clock Price Free Developer Factory Widgets

■ 3D Digital Clock adds depth to the perceived screen layout

This little app gives you a full weather forecast, a digital clock, calendar and system info. There’s a choice of 12 or 24 hour service along with a battery indicator and two different layouts.

05 Rain Alarm Pro

Price £2.65/$4.29 Developer Michael Deiner ■ Weatherbug

includes great weather alerts

■ Maps provide detailed information in Rain Alarm Pro

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If it’s about to rain, this app will warn you via an alarm. Arriving with a widget and an animated map, it is useful if you are preparing some sort of outdoor activity or if you’ve just spent a fortune at the hairdressers. Includes settings for time frame, distance, strength, area, sound, vibration and notification.

Travel

Perhaps the biggest benefit to owning an Android device is that it’s impossible to get lost. At an instant you can pull up an entire map of the world, manipulate it with your fingers, see yourself pin-pointed and get directions to any destination. Pulling

5 essential apps up to the side of the road to ask a stranger directions is now a thing of the past. As is carrying (and folding) a paper map. Of course, there’s a wealth of further benefits to owning a smartphone. Thanks to the myriad apps in the Google Play store, you can see live flight details for any commercial plane in the world, see your seat on a plane map, view departures and arrivals for any airport, navigate the world’s streets in first-person and then see the entire surface of the planet in 3D. There’s a mind boggling array – all accessed through the device in your pocket. ■ Tap the Layers

button to see businesses, photos, Wikipedia entries and more

■ By tapping My

Location, Google Maps will zoom in on your device

■ The Settings

button brings up a suite of options

■ Toggle 3D

elevation, hardware sensors and 3D buildings on tablets

“With an Android device it’s impossible to get lost”

01 Google Earth

Price Free Developer Google Inc. This amazing app enables you to view the entire planet in 3D on your Android device. By using multi-touch you can pan and zoom across the surface, going from outer space to your back garden with just a few swipes of your finger. Of course, that’s not all the app can do. Google Earth also displays roads, traffic jams, user photos, and, if you have an Android tablet, 3D models of buildings. There are a few limitations including a lack of bookmark syncing with desktop computers. The app also requires a fast device.

02 Street View on Google Maps

Price Free Developer Google Inc. This isn’t really an app, more a shortcut that opens Google Maps and loads Street View in an instant. For those yet to try Street View (and there can’t be many), it enables you to view the world from street level – even your own home. The service works wonderfully on Android devices, with smooth scrolling and crystalclear imagery. To get started, simply tap and hold on the map and select Street View to jump to that location with a 360 view.

03 Yell

Price Free Developer Yell.com mobile The Yell.com app can do far more than just find local businesses and services. It’s possible to get a local weather forecast, see businesses on a map, read user reviews, discover special offers and even call a listing with just one tap of a finger. More than 18 million businesses are stored in its worldwide directory, and with some useful search features including predictive text and voice recognition, it’s easy to find the correct listing.

04 Tube Map Pro

Price £0.69/$1.17 Developer mxData A fully scrollable and zoomable tube map with a detailed route planner to help guide you through London’s busy Underground service. There’s live information keeping users up-to-date, and notifications can be added to your device to alert you of any delays that you may incur on your journey.

05 FlightTrack

Price £3.09/$4.99 Developer Mobiata

■ Find the nearest pizza shop in seconds with Yell

■ Drag the Street View man icon to move the view

■ See flight notes and even organise an alternative flight through FlightTrack

For regular air travellers this is an incredibly handy app. It gives you live flight status of flights throughout the world, with real-time maps, departures, gate and any delay information. It can even display your seat on a plane, provide alternative flights if yours is cancelled and show weather reports.


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Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting yourAndroid E smartphone ven with all our guides in this book, you may come up against a problem that has you stumped. Here we’ve looked at some of the most common problems across all Android devices and provided you with the all-important solutions.

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FAQs Can you use your own photo as a wallpaper?

The logical approach is to create a 480x800 pixel JPEG photo on your PC and copy it across to your microSD card, in the /DCIM folder. However, when you go to Gallery and try to set this as your ‘Wallpaper’, you’ll only get given a highlighted square to crop this down and, if you accept the ‘crop’ then you’ll end up with a very grainy image, as you’ve found. The secret is to notice that on your phone, as you swipe between home screens, the wallpaper ‘pans’ ever so slightly? The effect is

subtle, but it is there and it’s rather cool. In other words, your 480x800 pixel-screened phone actually needs an image that’s wider, wide enough to contain extra slices of wallpaper than can be scrolled across into. The exact dimensions do vary according to your device (and even according to firmware/version number, in some cases) but 960x800 pixels is common. This ‘almost square’ image is the actual wallpaper that your phone will pan across in normal operation.

“If you accept the crop you’ll end up with a grainy image” Can I use more than one Android phone on the same account? Absolutely, this is an area in which Google and Android excel. With some budget Android phones coming in at around £50 now and tablets coming in at ten times that, there’s a big gamut of devices, all of which run Android and which are compatible. So you can have a backup phone. Or even just another to ‘play with’ and try out. Android OS talks to servers on the internet for its main data, meaning

Creating Android wallpaper

1

Go back to your source material (perhaps a family photo) on your desktop (PC or Mac) and create/crop/resample it to end up with a 960x800 image.

2

Copy this into a folder on your microSD (either using a card reader or by plugging in a microUSB cable in the usual way). Gallery’s ‘Set as wallpaper’ tool will now match, in terms of aspect ratio, with your new image.

3

Tap on Home to get back to your home screens and swipe from side to side, admiring the way your new full resolution image pans smoothly in the background, creating a nice 3D effect that will sit on your phone’s screen.

that you can log into your Google account from any device and, essentially, see the same emails, the same PIM data, even the same purchased apps and device settings in many cases. And all at the same time, should you have multiple SIM cards! And yes, purchased applications can be downloaded on every device too, all on the one account – as long as each device is physically capable of running the apps!


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Troubleshooting FAQs What do I do if I’m running out of storage space?

Depending on your device, your Android phone may have as little as 100MB free of ‘internal storage’ (actually ‘flash’ memory) free or as much as a gigabyte or so. Although, with recent versions of the OS, applications can be installed onto ‘SD card’, most still install to this internal storage area by default and it’s important to keep an eye on how much space you’ve got left – if internal storage gets near to zero then Android itself will grind to a halt and stop working! The pruning process involves

examining where your space has gone, removing applications you no longer need and moving some applications to SD card if your version of Android allows this. As a general rule, if the application is used all the time (eg a utility) then leave it in internal storage, whereas if it’s something that you only need on and off, move it to SD card. That way, when you’re connected to a PC and decide to ‘mount’ your phone’s disks on your desktop, an essential utility won’t be locked out!

Sorting and managing your apps

1

Tap on Menu and then ‘Manage apps’ (this may be buried in Settings on some older versions of Android phones). You’ll then be able to browse through every add-on or built-in application on your phone.

How do I add a word to the Dictionary? When typing away on the Android virtual keyboard, you’ll have noticed the way mistakes get auto-corrected as you go. As a word is typed, a dictionary within the phone is consulted and suggestions offered for either auto-completing the word or, if the phone thinks you’ve made a mistake, for correcting the word. All great if it knows the word you want. But what about unusual names or places, what about slang and technical words for your work? For these, you need to know how to add them to the built-in User Dictionary.

“A dictionary within the phone is consulted and suggestions made” 166


2

3

Browsing your apps (tap on ‘Downloaded’ to restrict the list to the ones you have added), tap on Menu and then ‘Sort by size’ if you’re in a hurry to find the space hogs and reclaim some of that important storage!

Adding a word

Tapping on an application name, with one tap you can ‘Uninstall’ it, ‘Clear’ its data (if you think it’s out of control) or ‘Move to SD card’ if needed. Rinse and repeat for any other problem apps.

1

You’re typing a sentence and you want to use (for example) a technical word that’s not in the built-in dictionary (“widgetizer”, here). The word is underlined by Android and there are no suggestions shown.

2

Next time you need to use the word, just type away and, even if you slightly mistype the word, as here, the correction software successfully retrieves the right spelling from the User Dictionary. Cool, eh?

3

Long press the word in the suggestions line and you’ll see a popup message confirming that the word has been saved (you can also long press the underlined version and pick ‘Add’ from the menu offered).

Can I upload pictures to Facebook?

Uploading a photo to Facebook

Start the Facebook application and on its front screen, notice the camera icon, top left. Tap on it and then on ‘Choose from Gallery’ (or ‘Capture a photo’, if you’re being really spontaneous).

Yes, of course. Social networks are gradually being integrated into almost all Android phones and the implementation will vary slightly, but in any case there’s an official Facebook client in the Google Play Store and this is the best place to start. Install it in the usual way and sign in – don’t worry, it’ll remember your details. The interface is beautifully simple – just a timeline and a search icon. Tap on a friend’s name to see their updates and then tap on ‘Menu’ to access their profile, photos, and so on. Uploading photos of your own is really easy.

2

Choose any image from your snaps on the phone or from one of your social accounts that Gallery presents and tap on it. You’ll see this form. Tap out an accompanying message or description for your photo.

3

When done typing, tap the ‘Upload’ button and your photo will start uploading in the background. Give it a minute,, then simply ‘Refresh’ your Facebook timeline. Your photo is live!

“Social networks are gradually being integrated into almost all Android phones”

What’s the difference between an app and a widget? The very name ‘widget’ implies something small. And that’s effectively what widgets are – small computer programs that occupy a small amount of home-screen space, usually serving up information or offering a couple of buttons to perform some vital function. Widgets can be various sizes, usually expressed in multiples of the size of an icon on-screen.

1

So, ‘1x1’, ‘2x1’, ‘2x2’, ‘4x1’, ‘4x2’, etc. You’ll discover these various dimensions as you start to add widgets to your own phone – fitting widgets around each other on a home screen can often seem more like a tile puzzle game! In contrast, applications run full-screen on your phone, and on their own (ie you can’t see the home screen behind and around them). Widgets and applications do have lots in common and, in fact, are often linked at the hip, in that an application will ‘come’ with its own widget. So you install the application from the Play Store and lo and behold – there’s a new widget of the same name available to add to your home screen. One good example of this is the official ‘Twitter’ application, as shown here.

Get installing!

1

Head into the Play Store and look for Twitter. You’ll spot the official app, so ‘Install’ it in the usual way. Wait a few seconds until the top notifications bar shows that it’s fully installed.

2

Long tap on a blank area on a home screen and choose Widgets. Pick Twitter (large). You’ll see a large (4x2) widget appear and, once signed in, will provide you Twitter updates right on the home screen.

3

To sign in, tap on the widget and you’ll be taken to the fullscreen app. You can also get to this full app by tapping on your phone’s Android application list icon and picking Twitter from the list. Android for Beginners

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Troubleshooting

10 steps to better battery life A

ndroid may be the most powerful new mobile operating system in the world and we’re sure you’re enjoying using it. But it can be a little power hungry, especially when allied to large screens and fast processors. Here’s what you can do to stop your phone from running out of charge before the end of the day.

02 Tidy up

When you get your phone, it’s tempting to load up every home screen with every widget under the Sun. But each of these is effectively a program that uses up processor power, RAM and (usually) data too, all of which will ultimately hit your battery to some degree. Prune your widgets down to the ones you actually need and your battery will thank you.

01 Avoid 3G

This sounds counter-intuitive, given that you bought your phone for its high-speed data. But if you’re spending much of each day in an area where there’s little or no 3G coverage, your phone can use most of its power just trying to connect to a 3G cell tower. Look in Settings>About phone>Status if you’re not sure how good your local network is – if ‘Mobile network type’ is set to ‘GPRS’ then there’s no 3G and you might as well go into Settings>Wireless and networks and scroll down to Mobile networks. Tick the box marked Use only 2G networks – and see a huge improvement in battery life!

168


03 Timeout

While in the ‘Display’ page, note the option ‘Screen timeout’ and then tap it. This gives options for how soon the display should turn off after your last tap or keypress. Set this to as short a time as you can stand (eg 30, or even 15, seconds) and you will drastically reduce the amount of display power that’s usually wasted.

04 Brightness

On your Android phone’s home screen, press the Menu key (or the button that’s usually marked with a few short horizontal lines) and then tap on Settings and once again on Display and then one last time on Brightness. Tick the box that is marked ‘Automatic brightness’ and tap OK. This will a) save power overall and b) avoid dazzling you when you use the phone at night.

06 Constant data

Partly related to the 3G point mentioned earlier, another huge drain on your phone’s battery is when you’ve got a data connection running, ie your phone is ‘online’. Even when you think your phone is idle, if it’s connecting up constantly, all day every day, then the almost constant internet hookup means that your battery is going to be hammered. Either toggle syncing by using the Sync icon on the Power Control widget or go into Settings>Accounts and sync and untick ‘Auto-sync’ if you don’t need to keep all your Google and social data updated all the time. You can always refresh any of these manually, when needed. A slight pain, but you’ll see a huge jump in battery life.

TIP:

As with any other electronic devices powered by Li-Ion or Li-Poly rechargeable batteries, don’t ‘stress’ your phone too much. Avoid leaving it in the full sun or outside in the snow and never, ever leave it stored for any length of time with a drained battery. Doing so can kill the battery for good.

08 Wallpaper

The animated (and often interactive as well) wallpapers in Android are great for showing off to your friends, but once that’s done, switch back to a traditional still wallpaper. The animated versions use a lot more of your phone’s processor and therefore drain more from its delicate battery.

10 Power

control

Make a beeline for Android’s Power Control widget, if it’s not already on one of your home screens. It’s a strip of five icons, letting you switch Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and Syncing on and off, plus the fifth one switches to minimum brightness and then back to ‘auto’.

05 Data hogs

Watch out for other applications which try and go online all the time. The generic email application (ie not the Gmail one) is notorious for checking on email and establishing connections often – if you use it for checking an ISP or Hotmail account (for example), then go into your account and change the ‘Email check frequency’ to something less damaging to your poor battery. Watch out for games and apps that include online adverts too, as these will also keep a data connection active. Opt for the paid up, ad-free versions, if available – for the sake of a few quid, you might be able to stop them going online altogether. Assuming that the app or game isn’t supposed to be online, of course – eg for online game play!

07 Disable GPS

Download Android’s Power Control widget, and start using it! It’s a great way to switch Wi-Fi or Bluetooth off when not using them. You can also disable GPS if, for example, you want Google Maps running, to look something up, but don’t need to know your current position. GPS is a huge power hog, so watch out for other applications which try to use it – they can usually be satisfied by a fix from Android looking at the local cell towers or scanning for local Wi-Fi networks, and both of these methods use up minimal power. The Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS radios all use significant power, so take control over when they’re turned on!

09 JuiceDefender Look this utility up in the Play Store, many people swear by it. It essentially automates a lot of the advice in this list, though it does require a bit of tech understanding to really get to grips with. Grab it for a rainy Sunday afternoon and then give it a try during the course of your usual working week.


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Troubleshooting FAQs Is there any

reason why I need widgets at all?

Not necessarily. It may well be that your Android phone comes with lots of widgets (see “What’s the difference between an app and a widget?” elsewhere in this feature) on its home screens, each often taking up most of a screen on its own (eg in HTC Sense and Dell Stage UI) and showing far less information that the application you almost always end up clicking through to in the end. It’s an entirely reasonable suggestion to simply ditch these over-size widgets and replace them by far smaller shortcuts that simply take you to the app. As a bonus, your phone may well run faster and use less battery power and data, too. But don’t write off widgets altogether.

Replacing a widget

1

Faced with huge widgets like this, which offer very little functionality, why not long press and drag them to the home screen trashcan? Replace it with a simple shortcut to the application of the same name.

2

Long press on a blank spot on one of your home screens and then tap Shortcuts. Now tap on Applications and then scroll to and tap on the app you’d like a shortcut to.

3

The idea is to end up only with widgets that you really, really need (such as the Power Control and News/Weather ones that are shown here below), plus a lightning fast way into your most used applications.

Google Play keeps getting stuck, how can this be fixed? On occasion, the Play Store app can appear to get stuck. Even after restarting your phone, applications may still show as ‘Downloading’ and yet nothing happens. This could be because the Play Store itself is having problems (ie the problem’s not at your end) and you may want to wait 24 hours and try again, but there are also some simple spring cleaning steps you can perform on your phone, to try and clear the blockage.

“There are also some simple spring cleaning steps you can perform on your phone” Clearing a ‘stuck’ Store app

1

In the Play Store application, in ‘My apps’, tap and hold on the offending ‘Downloading’ line and tap on the X button if this option pops-up. If this doesn’t do anything then skip to…

2

Press Menu on your home screen and then again on ‘Manage apps’ (again, this may be buried in Settings on some devices). Scroll down to the entry for Play Store. Tap on it. Now tap ‘Force stop’. Restart the Store – is it fixed?

3

If not, then repeat step 2 but this time tap on ‘Clear cache’ and ‘Clear data’. Now restart the phone and try the Play Store again. Hopefully it should now be okay.

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How can I stop my family deleting my data? We’ve all been there – you’ve got a shiny, big-screened Android smartphone and the kids want to play, try out some games and generally swipe their unwashed hands all over it. Aside from readying a tissue or two, you’re also terrified that they’ll accidentally delete some of your contacts, photos or emails. Or, almost as bad, fire off something in your name that could be embarrassing. The solution is to lock down your most critical applications – you can’t do it out of the box with Android, but it’s trivial with a third party utility such as LockMyApps; get the commercial version ‘Pro’ at a pound or so. Do note, though, that this still doesn’t stop your kids messing around with your home screen layouts, so we suggest the usual threats of going to bed without supper as suitable punishment, should they transgress…

LockMyApps in action

1

Download LockMyApps and tap on ‘Select Apps’. Now you can choose any that you want to keep from curious fingers, as shown here. When done, tap on the Back icon on your phone and then on Start service.

2

When your kids start exploring the phone and tap on an application that you have ‘locked’, absolutely nothing will happen – they will simply get returned to the home screen, unable to gain access to it.

3

After you’ve regained control of the phone, go into LockMyApps Pro, tap through the password field and then on ‘Stop locking’. You may wish to set a password as well, to stop more determined phone intruders.

“The solution is to lock down your most critical applications


171

Troubleshooting FAQs Do I need to install a task manager?

A common piece of advice in the early days of Android was to install a ‘task manager’ utility – each program that runs on your phone, even those built into the OS is a ‘task’ and the theory was that if too many were running at once, your phone would run out of RAM and would grind to a halt. RAM stands for Random Access Memory and works in much the same way as RAM on your Windows or Mac laptop – it’s the workspace for the running operating system and the more of it, the better. This is 2011 though and Android phones have plenty of RAM (typically 512MB or more, rather than the 256MB of the early models). And, crucially, Android has been found to manage the ‘multi-tasking’ of different programs rather well – there’s no real need for manual intervention unless something’s wrong. Having said that, it’s worth at least showing you some task and memory management basics – just in case.

“It’s the workspace for the running operating system and the more of it, the better” Looking at your phone’s RAM

1

There are plenty of utilities in the Play Store which show techy info from under the hood – Quick System Info PRO is recommended – and free. Don’t worry if it seems too technical, you’ll only need a few of its functions.

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2

Start Quick System Info and tap on its ‘Processes’ tab. The ‘Free:’ figure, top left, shows how much RAM is currently free. 182MB, as here, is very healthy! But it’s also normal for this to come down to a few tens of MB on a working phone.

3

Should any application start misbehaving on your Android phone, just tap on it in Quick System Info and you will be able to ‘End task’. Well, at least you know how, now! This should solve your issues.

What are push notifications?

Getting notified of new email

The idea here is very simple. Rather than you having to remember to check for new email, then remember to check for Twitter mentions of your username, then remember to check for updates for your phone (and so on), every single day – or even many times each day – many operations on your phone and

“Traditionally, you would ‘pull’ info from a source” on the internet can be set up with ‘push’ functionality. Traditionally, you’d ‘pull’ information from a source – the idea of push, as it sounds, is that the source pushes the information to you immediately and without you having to ask for it. Or even remember to ask for it! On an Android phone, push messages from online sources and local messages from the programs on your phone are all gathered in the ‘notifications’ bar, as shown here.

How do I know if my phone needs updating?

Here we show how to check for updates to your phone’s operating system. But if you have an Android phone and the manufacturer hasn’t announced any upgrade path from Android 2.1 to 2.2, or from 2.2 to 2.3 or beyond, you may feel somewhat marooned while the rest of the world moves on. Is there anything you can do? Firstly, contact your manufacturer (and/or network, depending on how you came by the phone!) and let them know the update is in demand. Secondly, if there’s a particular feature you have been longing for, look in the Store for later Android features (for example keyboards) being made available for older devices. Thirdly - be patient – updates do often arrive in the end. Note that we wouldn’t recommend delving into the world of ‘custom firmware’. You’ll certainly void any warranty you have and applying such unofficial software requires a great deal of technical knowledge and confidence!

1

In the top ‘notifications’ bar of the Android interface, notice the icons that appear as events, installs, and new push emails happen, finish or arrive, respectively. They’re all ‘pushed’ in that you don’t have to ask for any of them.

2

When you’re ready to view them (ie when it is convenient for you), swipe your finger down from the top of the screen towards the bottom. The notifications ‘curtain’ will descend and you can see far more detail.

Checking for updates

3

Tapping on ‘Clear’ will (naturally) clear these notifications, ie acknowledge them, but you can also tap on one, eg the ‘new email’ one, to switch directly to the appropriate application, as here, to see the new email.

1

Although your phone will eventually tell you about a waiting update, you can check for yourself at any time by going into Settings from the home screen and scrolling right down to ‘About phone’. Tap on it.

2

The ‘About phone’ screen shows the version of Android that your phone is currently on. To check for updates, tap on the top pane ‘System updates’.

3

If there is an update available, as there is here, tap on the ‘Update’ button and wait while it downloads and installs. You won’t lose any data, don’t worry!


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Glossary

Your Android Glossary

We take the jargon out to show you what all the numerous Android-related terms mean

3G

3G is the means by which you connect to the internet on your phone when not in the reach of a Wi-Fi network. Your phone contract will normally come with a bundled data allowance that you can use each month.

App

An app is a piece of software that adds functionality. They are downloaded from Google Play, and denoted on an Android phone by an icon. There are apps for virtually anything, from big names like Facebook and Twitter to more obscure apps.

Back button

Every Android phone has a back button beneath the screen. While the Home button returns you to your home screen, the back

access point to the world wide web. The browser supports almost every feature that your desktop browser does, including multiple tabs and Flash video. Third-party browsers can also be installed, if your prefer. Browser jargon: • Tabs You can browse multiple web pages at the same time by opening new ones in a new tab. • Flash Flash is a web technology that is commonly used for animations and video. • Bookmarks Keep your favourite pages bookmarked. These will be backed up to your Google account.

Dock

The dock appears at the bottom of the home screen. It may differ from one phone to the next, but generally the icons will include ones for the phone, text messaging and camera. You can customise the dock – it’s a good idea to put your most used apps or functions in it.

Gestures

n An app enables you to add new kinds of functionality to your phone

Android phones are built around a touchscreen user interface. Many of the functions you’ll access will require you to tap on the screen as if pressing a physical button, but on some occasions you’ll be using gestures such as swiping or pinch and zoom.

button will take you back to the previous screen within an app in the same way the back button in a web browser does.

Browser

The browser on an Android phone is your

174 Android for Beginners

Gestures jargon: • Swipe Hold your finger on the screen and swipe it to move between screens. • Pinch and zoom In the browser or Maps app, hold two fingers together on the screen and spread them apart to zoom in. Pinch them together to zoom out. • Tap and hold Hold your finger on the screen and leave it there. In some apps a menu will open with a list of options. This is sometimes called a ‘long press’.

Google account

When you first turn on your Android phone, you will be prompted to enter the details for your Google account. If you don’t have an existing account then it is a good idea to create one, as you won’t be able to download apps or back up your address book without it. Google jargon: • Gmail The Gmail app links to the mail service for your Google account. • Calendar All your calendar entries are backed up to your Google account. • Contacts Contacts are shared with the Gmail service and backed up whenever you add new ones. • YouTube YouTube is owned by Google – the app will log in and remember your favourite videos.

Google Play n The dock is located at the bottom of the home screen, populated by app icons

Google Play is the name of Google’s content store. It comes with three main parts: apps,

movies and books (in some countries there is also a music option). Downloads can be accessed on desktop computers as well as Android phones. Google Play jargon: • Apps Apps are available in either free or paid form, and can be downloaded to your phone. • Movies Movies can be streamed over 3G or Wi-Fi to your phone as you watch them. • Books Books can be viewed in the Google Books app, which can be downloaded separately. • Games Games have their own category. Many are quite large, and can be only bought over Wi-Fi.

This button will return you to the home screen no matter where you are or what you are doing. It’s the easiest way to exit from another app, and also an effective method of starting from scratch should you ever get lost

Home screen

The central part of the Android experience, the Home screen is the first screen you’ll see and the main location of app icons and widgets. Android phones comes with multiple home screen panels – swipe your finger to see additional ones.

Lock screen

To prevent accidental button presses the device locks when you turn it off. Pressing the

Google Maps

Google Maps comes installed on every Android smartphone, and is one of the best apps for the OS. It uses the same maps that you’ll find on your desktop, including local search, Street View and directions. It also functions as a full, free satnav app, using your phone’s GPS technology with voice guidance.

microSD card

Most Android phones include support for a microSD card. This tiny memory card enables you to increase the amount of memory on your phone by up to 32GB. This is an effective way of upgrading your phone without buying a new one.

microUSB connector

Every phone has a microUSB connector. This is the means by which you charge the device, either via a mains connector or by connecting it to the USB port on your computer. microUSB also lets you connect your phone to a PC if you wish to transfer music.

Notifications pane

Hold your finger on the top of the screen and drag it down, and you will open the notifications pane. Here, you’ll find information on things happening on your phone, such as incoming text messages, calendar alerts or system events. The notifications pane is one of the key parts of the Android system, and can be accessed using the swipe down gesture.

OS

OS stands for operating system, and is the software on any computing device that makes it function. In this case, Android is the OS, and enables you to browse the web, play games, check your emails, make calls and much more.

Home button

The Home button, typically indicated by a Home icon, appears on every Android phone.

Search

Android is a Google product, so it’s no surprise that search plays a large part in how it functions. Many new Android phones have a dedicated Google Search bar on the home screen, while some have a physical button.

Wi-Fi n Google Maps is a free and very powerful satnav and local search tool

power button will show the lockscreen, which you need to bypass by swiping your finger. Some phones add functions to the lockscreen, enabling you to unlock the phone and launch an app simultaneously.

Menu button

n Google Play gives you your pick of the latest apps, books and movies

Many Android phones have a menu button. However, many newer Android devices are now removing the physical button, replacing it with an onscreen icon in the form of three vertical dots.

Wi-Fi is the other way, along with 3G, that you will get your phone online. If your home broadband includes Wi-Fi, you can access that same connection on your phone by entering the password when prompted. You can also use Wi-Fi to go online without eating into your 3G data allowance.

Widget

A widget is an element of an app that is placed on your home screen, displaying live information about the data within that app. The most common kind of widget is for weather, where the forecast will be displayed without you needing to open an app. There are also ones for news and utilities.

Android for Beginners 175

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