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Googles latest version of its Android software takes it up to version 4.0 and higher, which is commonly known as the Ice Cream Sandwich update of the mobile OS.
The big selling point is that it unifies the experience across all hardware, so users of phones running ICS see largely the same interface, albeit with some layout changes for the bigger screened devices.



Of course, theres still the issue of manufacturer skins to take into account. While Android 4.0 offers a basic and seriously updated feature set, some tools and features may be missing or accessed through different means when using the same OS on phones made by different companies.

So Samsungs Android 4.0 update, which were seeing arrive on its Galaxy S II right now, looks and works differently to the Android 4.0 youll shortly see arriving on HTCs exciting new One Series of phones.

Which makes compiling a list of tips that work on all versions of the OS out there rather hard. But enough of our moaning. Here are a few useful shortcuts to getting the most out of your Ice Cream Sandwich serving, whenever the metaphorical waitress decides to bring it to your metaphorical table.

1. Add quick controls to the browser

One of the options buried beneath the Labs section of Android 4.0s web browser is the Quick Controls option. This adds a pop-out menu to the browser, which pulls in a little semi-circular collection of shortcuts to the main browser features, removing the URL bar and giving you more screen to play with. Also, holding down the Back button is the Android standard way of bringing up the bookmarks and history tool, too. But thats been around for years.

2. Long-press to uninstall

Long-pressing on an app within the app drawer lets you drag it to a Home screen, but it also pops up a couple of menus along the top of the screen. App Info gives you the boring technical stuff about how much memory its taking up, or you can fling it off the other way to uninstall it.

3. Flying Android screensaver

One odd undocumented little secret within Android 4.0 is this strange little collection of flying Androids, which you can... look at. Look at for as long as you like. To activate it, head into the phones About screen and hammer away at the Android Version tab and itll all happen.

4. Save your eyes with inverted rendering

Inverted rendering is a posh way of saying it makes the pages black and turns the text white, so it looks like youre reading the internet from 1997. It also supposedly saves battery, plus is easier on the eyes if youre reading in the dark. Its under the browsers settings tab, within the accessibility area - and theres a contrast slider, too.

5. Set a custom rejection text message

When your Twitter action is rudely interrupted by someone actually telephoning you, theres a polite way to give the caller the boot. Android 4.0 lets users ping a rejection text message to callers - and youre able to customise this too. Just answer a call and ping the lock screen notification up to access to custom rejection messaging area.

6. Stop app icons automatically appearing

One of the many new ICS features is the way Google lets apps automatically add shortcuts to themselves on your Home screen when theyve finished installing. Its useful, but if youre a control freak and wish to remain 100% in charge of your Home layout, head to the Google Play apps settings tab and untick the Auto-add Shortcuts toggle.

7. Theres a Settings shortcut in the Notifications pane

That little settings icon in the ICS notifications area isnt just art to fill the space. Its a shortcut to your phone or tablets settings area. So use that instead of giving it a Home screen icon slot all to itself.

8. Manually close apps

Googles lovely new recent apps multitasking menu also lets you close apps quickly, should you suspect ones gone rogue. A Long-press within the Recent Apps listing lets you visit the apps info page, from where you can easily force close it.

9. Remove the lock screen

Its possible to entirely bin your Android 4.0 lock screen, making the phone instantly turn itself on when you press the power button. Its a security nightmare, but if your phone lives entirely on your desk and you demand instant access without any unlocking, head to Security > Screen lock and select none. Then be very careful.

10. Folders in the dock

Androids new official love of folder formation makes it dead easy to combine app shortcuts and make folders, simply by dragging one icon on top of another. You can make these groups of apps even easier to access by dragging a folder onto the ICS floating dock, meaning you can squeeze stacks more content on to each creaking Home screen.

11. Take photos while recording video

The Android 4.0 camera app that arrived with the Galaxy Nexus has one cool little extra feature - the ability to fire off still photos while recording video clips. Simply tapping the screen takes a shot at full resolution, which is saved to the phones gallery while the videos still happily recording away.

12. Bin animations and transitions

Hidden within the Developer Options section of the Ice Cream Sandwich software are quite a few nerdy ways to adapt your phone. Most wont be of any use to those who are just using their phone as a phone, but if you want it to feel faster, or at least look a little different, the scrolling, zooming effects on windows and menus can be edited in many ways.

13. Take a grab of your phone

Screen grabbing of your phones display is finally in Android. On the Galaxy Nexus, its activated through holding the power button and volume down switch. On HTCs new models its done by holding the power button and pressing Home. Other phones had different techniques for doing this before Ice Cream Sandwich, but its good to see this now becoming part of the standard Android feature set in Android 4.0.

14. Long-press dotted words

When typing on the Android 4.0 keyboard, you may see some suggested words appear with the "..." icon beneath. Doing a long-press on this one will pop up a much bigger window of suggested words, letting you bail out on some of that tedious typing a little quicker.

15. Add additional faces

The ICS face unlock feature, as found in the Galaxy Nexus, lets you unlock it by scanning your face with the front camera. Which is great, but what if you havent shaved for a month? The software can actually store multiple images of your face, so you can do left parting, right parting, shaved, unshaved - or even add a trusted a friend to the visually verified user list.

16. Experiment with GPU settings

Another hidden little gem found within the Development options tab is the hardware acceleration Force On toggle. This makes ICS attempt to boost the performance of any apps that dont already use the feature. It may also break them in the process, though, so its something of a trial and error fiddling exercise to do on a very rainy day.

17. Type like an adult

Make a stand for grammatical standards in this day and age by long-pressing on the stock Android 4.0 keyboards full stop button. This brings up such doomed punctuation as commas and speech marks, plus even a semicolon for the extra brave mobile typist.

18. Nick wallpapers off the internet

Found a lovely photograph of some stars, a pretty computer generated planet or even the mighty Professor Brian Cox himself? Long-pressing on any image in the web browsers lets you instantly set it as your wallpaper, without the hassle of saving it, finding it, and setting it the long way.

19. Limit background process

If you fancy an even more serious bit of fiddling, the same ICS developer area contains the option to "limit background process" demands by the OS. You can use this to stop your phone or tablet storing so many apps in memory. Whether this has any effect of the actual battery life of us users is up for debate, but again, its something to play with and see if it suits your phone use patterns.

20. Quickly access Notifications

Heres a simple yet huge change Googles made in Android 4.0 - the Notifications pane can be accessed from the lock screen. Press power, touch the Notifications area, then scroll down to read your latest messages. Obviously its a bit of a security risk and lets anyone access your messages, so best be careful.

Want to get the most out of your Motorola Moto X? You’ve come to the right place. We’ve been investigating every feature and secret of the phone to find out the ways to get that little bit more out of it. It’s not quite ready for primetime fresh out of the box.


Here are our top tips, tricks and secrets of the Motorola Moto X.

How to get the Nexus 5 interface on the Moto X

One of the slight disappointments of the Moto X is that it does not have the Google Experience interface used in the Nexus 5. Instead, it has the plain old ‘normal’ Android KitKat interface used in the Nexus 4.

There is a way to unlock the Google Experience UI in the Moto X, though. You just need to download a special apk installer file that acts as a loader for the launcher (which is actually already on the phone). Android Police has the file. And we’ve tried it. It works.

Transfer it to the phones internal memory then use ES File Explorer (or another file manager app) to find and run it. Once installed, when you press the home button youll be given the choice of which launcher UI to use.

Don’t try to remove the back cover

One of the key design differences between the Moto G and the Moto X is that the X has a non-removable backplate, despite being pretty similar in terms of how it’s made. Having foolishly tried to see if the back does come off our Moto X, we can confirm that the rear is glued down.

It’s part of the reason why it feels a bit nicer in-hand than the Moto G, without any of the creakiness of that cheaper one.

How to turn off Active Display

The Moto X’s OLED display means the phone can use its Active Display feature without killing the phone battery. However, it does have an impact on stamina.

You can turn Active Display off completely in Settings > Active Display. There’s a tick box for the feature that acts as a global switch for the notification.

How to customise Active Display notifications

If you don’t want to kill Active Display completely but do want to reduce the amount of battery it drains, you can manually select the notifications that make Active Display fire up. This handily lets you remove any email accounts that are mostly spam, and any notifications you simply don’t care about.

We recommend turning off game notifications as they are mostly nonsense messages to try and get you playing again. You’ll find the checklist of Active Display apps in Settings > Active Display > Manage notification types.

Get the Google keyboard for faster typing

One of the first tweaks to make with the Moto X is the keyboard. The Android keyboard that comes pre-installed just isn’t quite good enough in our book. However, the very similar Google keyboard (free from Google Play) is. It offers gesture typing, the one big omission from the ‘Android’ version.

If you don’t like either, other keyboards worth checking out include Touchpal (free), Swiftkey and Swype. However, we’re happy with the Google tapper.

Essential apps to download

The Moto X is not loaded with apps fresh out of the box. Part of its strategy is to keeps things simple, virtually guaranteeing good performance and a nice, clean UI.

It does mean you’ll need to download a bunch of apps to get going, though. Our top picks include Whatsapp, Facebook, BBC iPlayer, Spotify, Flipboard and TuneInRadio.  They’re all free (although some offer paid-for premium versions).

The entry-level Nokia Lumia 620 might be the new kid on the block, but it’s attracting a lot of attention and with great hardware and a tantalisingly low price tag, it’s no surprise that sales of this small Windows Phone 8 handset could well make a big impact on Nokia’s market share.


If you’ve already joined the Lumia 620 camp, or are considering switching, take a look at some tips and tricks which can help add even more functionality to this pint-sized powerhouse.

How to earn money with your smartphone
10 best Nokia Lumia 620 Apps

Quick launching the camera

The camera on the back of the Lumia 620 is a plucky little 5-megapixel snapper with a great pulse LED flash. You could choose to unlock your phone, swipe to your apps menu and open the camera from there, but simply holding down the shutter button on the lower right side of the phone until it vibrates pulls you straight into the camera app and ready to take a snap whilst cutting out the middle man.

10 tips for taking better photos with your phone

Customise your lock screen

With Windows Phone 8, Microsoft added a lot of additional functionality to the lockscreen beyond changing the wallpaper image. Depending on the app you have installed, the lockscreen can be set to show things like images from your Facebook albums, real-time sports scores or Bing photography. To change your lockscreen, head to the Settings app, chose ‘lock screen’ and pick an option from the ‘Background’ drop-down menu. What’s more you can also choose which apps show detailed or minor information from the same settings screen.

Windows Phone 8 tips and tricks

Integrate Facebook Chat

The messaging app on your Lumia 620 isn’t just for text messages and one additional function lets you pull your Facebook Chat in so all your real time message are in one place. To set it up, make sure you’ve entered your Facebook details into the ‘email+accounts’ section of the Settings app. Once you’ve filled that in head back to the messaging app and flip the ‘use Facebook Chat’ option on in the settings menu. Then you’ll be able to set your status online and chat with your facebook buddies without ever opening Facebook.

Resize tiles

One of the great aspects of Windows Phone is its aesthetic, the clean tile design really helps the OS stand out from iOS and Android. To make the most of your homescreen, you can choose between two or three tile sizes (depending on the app). To resize a tile, press and hold until the icons start to ‘float’ and dim behind the icon you were holding your finger on. By tapping the diagonal arrow in the bottom right of the selected app you can toggle between small, medium and large tiles.

Filter your contacts

The connected nature of Windows Phone means that the People app can show more than just your standard phone contacts, it can also pull in email contacts from Hotmail, Outlook and Gmail or social network friends from sites like Facebook and Twitter. Sometimes all those contacts in one place can be a little confusing, so it’s nice to have the ability to filter out the unwanted entries without deleting them or logging out of any accounts. Simply go the the People app, open up settings, choose the ‘filter my contact list’ option and check or uncheck the tick boxes behind your linked accounts to filter out certain groups.

Create a group

Speaking of groups, sometimes you want to have quick access to a specific bunch of people; perhaps your immediate family, close friends or work colleagues. With Groups, you can perform simultaneous actions like emails or texts, view posts on social networks and even recently uploaded or tagged photos with your favourite people in. In the People app, swipe to the ‘together’ screen, hit the addition icon at the bottom of the screen and choose Group. Once you’ve named your new group hit the addition icon on the ‘edit group’ screen and choose your desired contacts.

Browse photos by person

If you’ve stored your Hotmail, Outlook, Live and/or Facebook details on your 620 then you might have noticed that the Pictures app shows your photo albums from the likes of Facebook and SkyDrive without you ever having manually added them. The same can be done with your contacts too. In the Pictures app, choose ‘people’, ‘choose contact’ and pick a name, your Lumia will then pull in any albums it can find based on their contact information and display them next alongside you forever more in the people section of the Pictures app.

Get exclusive Nokia apps

Owning a Nokia Lumia handset entitles a user to some unique apps exclusive to Nokia’s Windows Phone range. The Nokia Collection appears in the Windows Phone Store app and offers up a vast array of apps and games from Nokia Transit to Angry Birds Space. Some titles are free but some cost money, so check before you download.

Tap+send

Despite its entry-level status, the Nokia Lumia 620 features the rather premium feature of NFC. Dubbed ‘Tap+send’ this feature lets you tap your 620 to compatible tags and even other devices as a means of sharing or downloading content and even connecting to wireless accessories like speakers and headphones.

To make sure you have Tap+send switched on simply look for it in the Settings app. Alternatively, switching it off should help extend battery life.

Changing cases

One of the great things about the Lumia 620 is that if you’re not happy with the colour you bought it in, the back cover simply snaps off and is replaceable with one of five alternative coloured shells. Colours include: cyan, magenta, green, white, black and blue. To change the cover on your Nokia Lumia 620, hold the lower portion of the body on the sides with on hand and push the against the rear camera to pop the shell off the phone’s back. It’s then simply a matter of snapping on a new case from the base first.

How to Hard Reset Nokia Lumia 620

There are two ways on how to reset your Nokia Lumia 620, it can be through the hard reset or soft reset. When you say hard reset it involves on the hardware part, so you need to remove the battery of you Nokia Lumia and reinsert it. Then turn on your device normally. This should refresh the content of your device but will not remove any data.

Software reset will return your device to its default settings. Like a brand new phone, no information or data saved on your device. This procedure will erase all your data save on your phone.

If your Nokia Lumia is frozen, it is recommended to perform the Hard Reset.

You can soft reset your Nokia Lumia in two ways. By accessing it through settings or doing the hard key combination.

Resetting through the settings:

Go to Settings > About > reset your phone.

Hard Key Combination:

Use this option if your device is locked and you dont know the code.

Note: Make sure that your Nokia Lumia is turned off.

Step 1. Press and hold the power key until it vibrates then release.


Step 2. Press and hold the down key volume. If the exclamation mark will be shown on the screen, you can now release the button.

Step 3. You need to input these key combination:

Volume Up > Volume Down > Power > Volume Down.

Your phone will reset and will boot up automatically. This might take a several minutes.

How to Import Contacts From Old Phone to New Phone (on iPhone, Samsung, HTC and Nokia)

Contacts is very important for everyone of us. We cant connect to our friends without a contact number. If you have a new phone, saving contacts on the phone one by one is so hassle. But now, theres an easy way how to transfer or import your contacts from your old phone to your new phone.

Use your PC to transfer contacts to your new phone. This process is applicable in several phone brands, including iPhone, Samsung, HTC and Nokia.

You just need an Internet Connection on your PC, your old and new phone and their own USB cable.

Then you need to install the PC Companion program. This is a free application and the installation files are already saved on your new phone. This program can also be used in updating your phone software.

Please note that if you are using the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system on your PC, make sure that the AutoPlay setting is enabled.

To check your settings:

Click Start > Control Panel, then type "autoplay" on the search box. Click the AutoPlay, and mark the check box Use AutoPlay for all media and devices.

Installing the PC Companion:

• Turn on your new Phone and connect it to your PC.
• On your new Phone, tap "Install" to install PC Companion on the PC.
• On your computer, if a pop-up window that appears notifies you about available PC Software, select Run Startme.exe.
• Then click Install to start the installation and then follow the instructions to complete the installation.

If you are not prompted with a pop-up window to install the PC Companion, you can also download the PC Companion here.

Transferring your contacts to your new phone:

• Make sure that PC Companion is installed on your PC.
• Open the PC Companion application on your PC.
• Then click Contacts Setup and follow the instructions to transfer your contacts.

How to share files between Android and Windows phone OS

How to Extend Battery Life of Nokia Lumia 620

Battery Life depends on how you use your device. For Nokia Lumia 620 device, if you want to save your battery to last longer hours, you may need to adjust your settings. Follow these suggestions:

• Turn on the power-saving option on the device. Then lessen the screen brightness and the screen lock timeout. On the Home Screen, swipe left, then tap on the Gear Icon or Settings > Battery saver.

1. Be reminded that when your phone goes into battery saver mode, you may not be able to change the settings of all apps.
2. If you want to change the settings of the Battery saver, tap on Advanced.

• Turn down your device volume with the volume keys.
• Close any apps or features when you are done using it so they will not continuously running in the background.
• Turn off the network connection if you are out of range so that your device will stop searching for a network signal.
• You should use the latest version of the software update. Software updates improves some features and fixes some bugs on the previous software version.
• Turn off the camera flash.
• The camera viewfinder can be a power drain, so after youve finished taking photos, press the left arrow key.

How to Take a Screenshot on Nokia Lumia 620

Did you just created a nice piece of art on your new Nokia Lumia 620 phone? Or perhaps youve just personalized your screen and want others to know how youve come up with it.Well, take a screenshot and brag it to your friends. Heres how you can capture a screenshot of your Nokia device.

1. Press on the Power key on the right side of the phone and the Start key simultaneously for a few seconds.
2. To see the screenshot, tap on Photos, the Albums and select Screenshots.
3. Tap and hold the screenshot you wish to send and then tap on share on the options.

There you have it. Youve just captured a screenshot.

How to Scan Codes on Nokia Lumia 620

Nokias latest installment of smartphone, the Lumia 620, allows you to scan QR codes, barcodes and book and DVD covers. Your device will give you further info after you scan the codes. Heres how you can make use of this feature.

1. First, you need to tap the Search icon

2.  Then tap on the circle

3. And point the camera at the code. Make sure to keep the camera steady on the code and should be completely visible in the camera viewfinder.