Blog Category: Tips n Tricks

Have you ever been a victim of unwanted notifications? Notifications take a very central role in Android devices. With our phones growing from mere text and call to social media and instant messaging, our phones are more of a communication tool than ever. We really rely on these notifications to get us through a day and not miss the important messages in our lives.

Unfortunately, Google introduced a form of advertisement called Air-Push. This pushes advertisements to our devices through the notification bar, which occasionally causes a notification tone to ring. When we look at our phones expecting an important message from a friend, a co-worker, or a loved one, we end up looking at an ad or a message from the developer of an app instead.
I know what you might be thinking. “Why not just uninstall the app that is...

There are literally thousands of apps in the Play Store to choose from. Sometimes, these apps may have one or two nifty features we want, while other features are only available in a similar app. We end up installing a lot of apps to make sure all our bases are covered when we need it. The fact is, these apps are becoming variedly useful. Many apps can do similar things or also respond to similar actions. Why, sharing a photo from the gallery is sure to unleash a load of apps that can take the action initiated by your gallery.

While it may be necessary to keep all those apps ready just in case that the next time you perform an action, it you will have the option to use that app, there are cases when we want only one app...

It’s not easy to buy second hand devices. You never really know how well the device was taken cared of during its service to its previous master. Nowadays, even a “lady owned” smartphone is never quite as well-preserved as they were back in the day when women aren’t so involved with high tech devices.

We use our smartphones a lot. That much we can admit. We use it online most of the time, and we pretty much drive it to the limit with the most graphic intensive games and activities. There are some that even use their phones as servers and peer to peer file sharing.
With so much that our smartphones can do, buying second hand is likely buying a well-used car. It is just a matter of how well they took care of it while using it like that. When...

We live in an app centric world. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford to buy their own apps. There are those who are still kids and can’t have a credit card yet, or there are people who may not have a credit card for one reason or another. Sure enough, the ways we can purchase apps are growing, but spending lots of money on apps is not exactly good for the wallet especially if you are just one family.

What if I told you that you can share accounts with someone you trust, like your own family members so that you only have to pay for an app once for everyone to enjoy it legally?
Well, there is such a way, and the best part is that the user can still have their own account for their own Gmail and other Google services...

In our previous post, you learned that there are cloud stored photos that can be synced and viewed through your Android device. These may be very useful for some, but for many, this can be downright annoying or downright messy in the gallery. It’s hard to keep a neat gallery when cloud synced photos are in the way.

Now we showed you how to remove these files from the gallery and prevent Android from resynchronizing these photos in the future. Of course, this is only a temporary solution. While we may have kept these files away from the Gallery, they are still out there, waiting to be managed. Who knows? If you manage those photos properly, you may not have to keep them away from the gallery.
Can I do it from my phone?
This is part no and part yes. It is...

Android features several cloud synching services all throughout the operating system. It allows you to stay connected with several services across the web such as emails, social media, chat services, and even online galleries.

It is interesting to note that many people don’t know much about the gallery synching capabilities of their Android devices. If you are like me, you probably upgraded from an older Android phone and as soon as the initial setup was complete, you were shocked to find so many photos in your gallery.
The thing is, these photos that are now suddenly lodged into your Android gallery are often disorganized. They are galleries created by instant uploads, or photos uploaded though Google+ posts. Many people don’t want all of these photos suddenly getting synched into their account without permission. While you may want to keep some of them...

When browsing online and checking out Android screenshots that people uploaded, you may often notice that their fonts are rather different. Some of them have cool curvy fonts, while others have futuristic and rigid ones. Some look cool while others look simply loony. Still, you wonder to yourself “how do they do this?” Well, worry no more because today, you will learn about adding some custom fonts to your Android device.

Custom OEM Skins
Some Android devices already have custom fonts preinstalled through the OS. One such example are Galaxy S smartphones. These smartphones usually have two or three custom fonts to choose from right from the start. These phones usually have custom OEM skins, since the stock Android experience doesn’t really offer such a font switching option by default.
For those that do have a built in font chooser, your task may...

It is becoming a very clear trend. More and more flagship devices are arriving with no micro SD support. It seems like it was just yesterday when Android users were laughing at iPhone users for having a fixed and non-expandable storage capacity. Now, both sides are in the same boat.

With more durable and slimmer design comes less space to add expandable storage. While companies like Samsung manages to keep their products slim but still hot-swap friendly, other OEMs like Sony and HTC opted to have none of the sort. Leading the charge is Google with their Nexus devices that are also famous for having a non-removable battery and a non-expandable storage space.
Why is it a big deal?
One word – multimedia. Multimedia content is slowly creeping up in size as well. As music, image, and video quality increases, so does the...

One of the greatest advantages of Android is customization. Android is open in a sense that the code is open source but also in the sense that a lot of possibilities are open to you. Certain closed operating systems have very limited ways to modify settings, as well as the look and feel of the device.

Device notification tones are one of the key customization points in a smartphone. It is not new in any case with mobile phones since feature phones also allow you to add custom notifications to some extent.
On Android, you have the option to change the notification tone, ring tone and alarm tone to your own favorite or preferred tunes. In addition, you can use these tones to further customize in app notifications so that every app would sound different which helps you identify from a distance...

Have you ever heard of Safe Mode? Safe Mode has been in PCs for a long time now. It is a state where your computer force loads only the core applications that came with the operating system while disabling access to any 3rd party applications and drivers.

What Good Does it Do?
Safe Mode is very useful on PCs since it can help you diagnose if there is a problem with the OS or the hardware itself or if the problem is from a 3rd party application. Imagine that you are having frequent crashes that lead to your PC having a Blue Screen or simply hanging up. You don’t know the real cause, but you suspect your PC may be broken. Before you go and reinstall your OS or anything like that, your best bet is to launch safe mode.
During safe mode...