10 helpful Android tricks and tips

Android phones just keeps being the best among other smartphones with different operating system like the iPhone and the windows phone. This is because of it's ability to be customized be the user. It gives the user access to some developer options. You can change your phone's launcher, speed, manage apps and do many other things.

Unfortunately, some android users don't know the abilities of their phone. I decided to put together 10 tips and tricks of an android phone.

1. Get detailed information about your phone status
  You can get useful info about your phone's detail, battery details, usage statistics and WLAN details just by dialing *#*#4636#*#*.

2. Disable app notifications that you don't really need
Most third party apps just keeps filling your phones with notifications which may not be useful to you. This notifications actually drains your phones battery. They act as battery leach. The good news is that this app notifications can be disabled (for Android Jelly Bean 4.1 and above)

Step 1: Go to your notification bar, long press on any unwanted notification.
Step 2: A message box with App Info written in it will appear. Click on it(App Info)
Step 3: You will be redirected to the App Info of the app then you untick Show Notification and click ok.

3.  Disable background data for some less important apps
If you may have noticed, most times immediately you turn on your mobile data, you will receive notifications from some apps. These apps run in the background even when they are not in use and they make use of your mobile data. If the notification is less useful, then it's high time you disable such apps from using your data and draining your battery.

Step 1: Go to your phone settings
Step 2: Click on Data Usage
Step 3: Click on the app that always sends you notification you when you turn on your data
Step 4: Scroll down and click on restrict background data

4. Turn on Airplane mode to speed up charging
Many newly produced smartphones comes with a quick charge feature. For those phone without this feature, you can speed up charging by turning on Airplane mode. It turns off cellular network which uses huge percentage of the battery thereby increasing charging speed.

5. Avoid usage of phone while it's charges
I must confess am fond of this act. Using your phone while it's charges reduces your battery life(performance). It kills your battery gradually. Hmmm.. that explains why my battery don't last as long as it used to.
It also keeps you from danger of exploding phones(No offence Samsung Note7) Some phone batteries explodes when the phone is being used while charging. If you fall in this category like I do, you gotta stop using your phone during charging.

6.Use cloud storage service to backup your photos, videos and other important data on your phone.
  Your phone might get stolen, misplaced or even get destroyed. If such happens, you will definitely loose all the files on your phone. Thank God for the programmers who invented the cloud storage. Your can store your files on the internet using the cloud storage service. Using it as a backup for your files. Some cloud storage service include Google drive, Mega and many more.
Not only does the cloud have a silver lining it now has a silver storage.

7. Make your phone's operation slow or fast
The best feature of the android phone is that it is customizable. Just as you get to change your phone display you can also make your phone's operation fast or slow by turning off the animation scale or increasing it to 10x.

Step 1:Go to settings
Step 2: Click on About Phone
Step 3: Click on the build number seven times. You will get a message saying ‛you are now a developer'
Step 4: Return back to system settings, Developers option will now be added to list of settings
Step 5: Go into Developers option, you then click on animation scale(turn it off to make your phone operate fast or increase it to 10x to make your phone lazy)

Note: It only makes your phone's operation fast or slow, it doesn't make everything about your phone fast, if your phone is slow due to low RAM after you make this change, it will still be slow.

8. Use the volume button to take pictures.
If you love taking pictures with your smartphone then this one is for you.
You don't have to keep hitting the virtual button on your screen to take a picture when you can just press either or the volume keys to capture your photo. This feature work for both front and back camera. Now you can take a perfect selfie without tapping the screen of you phone.

Note: It works only higher android versions(lollipop and above). This feature also works on the iPhone.

9. Capture and image on your phone ( Screenshot)
Most of you already know about this feature while some may have heard of it but cannot screenshot with their phones. For those who don't know about this feature, it means to capture an image displayed on your phone. You may be browsing and you see a picture or some text you like, you just screenshot it. I use this feature to save pictures on Facebook and Instagram.
How to screenshot

Step 1: This is actually the only step. To screenshot, you just hold the power button and the volume down button at the same time.

On iPhone, press and hold the Home button along with the power button.

10. Take a break from PlayStore and visit other app stores like Amazon store.
Most premium apps on Google Play store always comes with a price. To download them, you got to buy them. If you like free download like I do, you can visit Amazon app store to get some premium apps free of charge.