It seems that nearly everyone has a smartphone, either Android or iPhone, but in my experience, very few people use the "smart" part of their phone. I am constantly seeing people post on Facebook that they lost their phone and to send them a message to add your number back and I've had enough.
So here's the tip: Use your Google account for backing up your phone.
When you activate your Android phone you are required to sign in or create a gmail account, there's also a step that asks if you want to back up your data to Google's server, select YES! If you selected NO at the setup, you can always change it by going to Settings/Backup & Reset and selecting 'Back up my data'.
Then make sure you have your phone synced (this can be turned on is Settings/Accounts & Sync).
The next step is to take some time and put contacts into your account by either your phone or on your computer via your Gmail account.
Another thing that really sucks to lose on your phone if it gets lost or stolen is pictures. Most of us capture some of those precious moments on our phone cause its always with us. Don't lose those precious moments any more.
Here's how: since you have a Gmail account, you can activate Google+ and can have Instant Upload of the pictures you take. Cool thing is that you have unlimited amount of uploads.
Step 1: Activate Google+ on your Gmail.
Step 2: Install Google+ app on your phone.
Step 3: Go to settings in the app and enable 'Instand Upload'
Step 4: If you've already taken a bunch of pictures, you can go to settings/Instand Upload/Upload All.
Step 5: Take lots of pics and never worry about losing them again.
All-in-all, don't be a worry-body about losing your precious contacts and photos, and don't be one of THOSE people who are asking for people's number on Facebook (unless you didn't have a smartphone of course).
Hope this helps!
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Thursday, August 18, 2011
iTunes & Android
In the battle between Apple and Android, I hear a lot of people going to the iPhone simply because they have/had an iPod and they want to sync their music to their phone. Well, guess what? You can sync your iTunes to your Android phone and it works rather slick. There are a couple of apps out there that allow you do this, I'll cover the one that I use which is 'doubleTwist player'.
The reason I use doubleTwist is because its free, you can sync music, videos, and pictures to and from your phone. It will also load music, playlists, everything from your iTunes folder located on your computer, so if you rip a CD or buy a song from the iTunes store, the next time you open doubleTwist, that CD or song will be in doubleTwist too. You will of course want to download the doubleTwist app for your phone and also for your Mac or PC, which looks quite a bit like iTunes does. Whenever I connect my phone to my computer I always sync, which syncs my selected playlists from my computer to my phone, it syncs my pics and videos from my phone to my computer and stores them in my pictures folder.
DoubleTwist does have 'AirSync' which is pretty cool, but I'm pretty cheap so I haven't purchased it yet.
There are some other apps that sync your music over your wifi router such as TuneSync, iSyncer, Wifi Tunes Sync Pro, and I'm sure many more. Some of these will require a computer application also. As always I suggest reading user comments, and make sure the app has a good rating (typically 4 stars or more for me, I have high standards)
See, Apple and Android can play nice together!
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Battery Saving Tips
There are some obvious ways to save your battery and some not so obvious ways to save your battery.
I'm going to cover some of both that I have come across.
Tip #1 - Power Control Widget. This is the most basic that you'll want to do as soon as you get your phone. To add this widget to your home screen simply do a long press and add widget, scroll to the bottom of the list and select 'Power Control'. This will give you a shortcut to 5 of the most power consuming settings which includes wifi, bluetooth, gps location, sync, display. The tip is to have everything turned off until you need it. The display is typically the highest battery consumer, I usually have mine set to Automatic unless I'm indoors then its always on the dimmest setting.
Tip #2 - Task Killer. Now I don't know how much battery this actually saves but since I installed 'Advanced Task Killer' (which was about 4 months after I had my phone and my wife kept telling me that I should get it to save my battery cause my phone always died before hers, which she was right, moral of the story: my wife is always right) my battery life improved greatly. This is due to killing apps running in the background using the battery as well as transmitting data which uses battery too. I prefer 'Advanced Task Killer' because you can set a list of apps to ignore, i.e. a home launcher, messaging app, clock, internet, etc. Its helpful to set your most used apps to ignore because they will launch faster when opening them. Another thing I like about 'ATK' is that you can set the kill frequency, so you can have it kill apps frequently or not-so-frequently, I prefer frequently since most apps are always opening to send/receive data. Another setting thats nice is the Security Level where you can select more "hidden" apps to kill. Currently (as of 8/16/11) I have been using a built-in task killer that came with my home launcher (GO Launcher EX), it does pretty much the same job as 'ATK' but its got a nice little widget that you can select the apps to kill on the widget itself, kinda cool.
Tip #3 - Accounts & Sync. This is one that I just barely found out about just recently, after having my phone for a year and a half. Go to Menu/Settings/Accounts & sync and deselect 'Background Data', you'll get a popup warning saying something along the lines of 'Disabling extends batter life and lowers data use. some apps may still use background data.' Select OK. Since I did this I've noticed a huge increase in battery life. On a typical work day at my office, 5-10 texts, a couple phone calls, a little facebooking my battery would typically be at 50%, since disabling background data, its now 70% or better, this is over a 9 hour period. Pretty good increase! Quick tip to turn it back on is to select the 'sync' on your power control widget (refer to tip #1)
Tip #4 - Battery Widget. This is more of way to keep track of your battery level a little more accurate than the battery icon in your notification bar. I like 'Circle Battery Widget' cause its really customizable and you can easily check what is using your battery. There are a lot of battery widgets out there, be sure to do a little research and read comments about the app before installing it. I personally will only install an app if it has 4 or more stars and thousands of downloads, just to steer clear of malicious apps.
I'm going to cover some of both that I have come across.
Tip #1 - Power Control Widget. This is the most basic that you'll want to do as soon as you get your phone. To add this widget to your home screen simply do a long press and add widget, scroll to the bottom of the list and select 'Power Control'. This will give you a shortcut to 5 of the most power consuming settings which includes wifi, bluetooth, gps location, sync, display. The tip is to have everything turned off until you need it. The display is typically the highest battery consumer, I usually have mine set to Automatic unless I'm indoors then its always on the dimmest setting.
Tip #2 - Task Killer. Now I don't know how much battery this actually saves but since I installed 'Advanced Task Killer' (which was about 4 months after I had my phone and my wife kept telling me that I should get it to save my battery cause my phone always died before hers, which she was right, moral of the story: my wife is always right) my battery life improved greatly. This is due to killing apps running in the background using the battery as well as transmitting data which uses battery too. I prefer 'Advanced Task Killer' because you can set a list of apps to ignore, i.e. a home launcher, messaging app, clock, internet, etc. Its helpful to set your most used apps to ignore because they will launch faster when opening them. Another thing I like about 'ATK' is that you can set the kill frequency, so you can have it kill apps frequently or not-so-frequently, I prefer frequently since most apps are always opening to send/receive data. Another setting thats nice is the Security Level where you can select more "hidden" apps to kill. Currently (as of 8/16/11) I have been using a built-in task killer that came with my home launcher (GO Launcher EX), it does pretty much the same job as 'ATK' but its got a nice little widget that you can select the apps to kill on the widget itself, kinda cool.
Tip #3 - Accounts & Sync. This is one that I just barely found out about just recently, after having my phone for a year and a half. Go to Menu/Settings/Accounts & sync and deselect 'Background Data', you'll get a popup warning saying something along the lines of 'Disabling extends batter life and lowers data use. some apps may still use background data.' Select OK. Since I did this I've noticed a huge increase in battery life. On a typical work day at my office, 5-10 texts, a couple phone calls, a little facebooking my battery would typically be at 50%, since disabling background data, its now 70% or better, this is over a 9 hour period. Pretty good increase! Quick tip to turn it back on is to select the 'sync' on your power control widget (refer to tip #1)
Tip #4 - Battery Widget. This is more of way to keep track of your battery level a little more accurate than the battery icon in your notification bar. I like 'Circle Battery Widget' cause its really customizable and you can easily check what is using your battery. There are a lot of battery widgets out there, be sure to do a little research and read comments about the app before installing it. I personally will only install an app if it has 4 or more stars and thousands of downloads, just to steer clear of malicious apps.
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