Simply owning a smartphone doesn’t mean you’re using it in a smart manner. Ok, you might be using your phone for a number of things such as shopping, banking, communications and networking. But a Smart Android User is the one who does all that, while keeping his device tidy and organized. So if you want to use your Android powered smartphone efficiently and get the best out of it, please follow these highly practical tips.
1. Categorized Folders in Inbox
Outlook inbox users might already be familiar with this feature where all your mails are sorted in different folders. This not only makes it easier for you to locate important mails, but also keeps your email inbox look near and organized. Just open the Gmail app on your phone or device and go to settings. Choose ‘Inbox Category’ and check mark the boxes next to Social Media and Promotional. Presto, all your emails will now be organized in folders.
See Also: 8 Ways to Secure Your Android Device
2. Easy Backup Using Google Drive
Why install any other backup service when you have the free Google Drive backup, powering most android devices. Google Drive also works seamlessly with most third party apps and offers limitless storage for photographs, files, media and documents etc. All you need to do is login to your Google account (Gmail account) and sync you accounts. Then simply open the Google Drive native app on your android and add any number of files on your device and be free from the worries of ever losing them.
3. Clean Duplicates
Duplicate files can exist in much larger numbers than expected on your device. Of all files, photos are the most common type on your phone. Hence there’s a high chance that your phone’s photo library would be oozing with duplicate and similar looking copies you have no use for. As easy it might be for you to accumulate these useless copies on your phone, it is the exact opposite when you try to locate and delete them. You can try the handy Duplicate Photos Fixer app by Systweak. The app automatically locates any duplicate photographs and displays the results in an organized view. This helps you easily delete the useless ones, thus recovering a significant amount of storage space.
Even if you have a phone equipped with powerful processor, you can make it even better by making some changes to the animation scales. While this tweak doesn’t essentially ‘Speed your phone up’ but makes the animation a little smoother by reducing input lag. Simple go to settings and click on Developer Options. (Please enable developer mode on by going to Settings>About>Tap on Phone Build number several times). In developer options, select the lowest animation scale for three options titled ‘Window Animation Scale’, ‘Transition Animation Scale’, ‘Animator Duration Scale’.
5. Stay Updated with Google Now
Installing your favorite news channel’s app sounds like a good idea, but the native Now Cards feature does exactly that and much more. The news and weather etc. is displayed through various cards so you won’t have to launch a special app to know what’s going on around the globe. Just launch Google app, and go to settings. There, choose Now Cards and enable ‘Show Cards’ with the slider bar. Your phone will now display various cards with various news stories, traffic and weather etc.
6. Sticky Notes
Every now and then we need to write things down and despite of living in the 21st century and owning smartphones, we still do things the old fashioned way. But did you know that taking notes on your smartphone is much easier than grabbing a pen n paper? This can be easily done with a special app called Google Keep, that works like sticky notes and can be easily used to take down important messages, numbers and to-do-lists.
7. Junk Cleanup:-
Duplicate files and photos aren’t the only useless things that take up space on your phone. Each app you install also saves a lot of data, which is formally known as App Cache. Along with that your internet history, misc. files and other temporary data saved by your phone can also be deleted to create additional space. All you need to do is go to settings>storage and from the list, click on Cached Data. Click Ok to confirm the cleanup and all this data will be removed from your phone, thus creating more space. Click here to remove app cache
Through these highly practical tweaks, you can not only make your Android much easier to use, but will also keep it running smooth with plenty of free storage. These tips will also help you keep your data and emails more organized making you an essentially ‘Smart Android User’.