Jan 08, 2012

4 Things Every Android User must Know

Android is open source and fully customizable mobile platform. It offers a full stack: an operating system, middle-ware, and key mobile applications. It is estimated more than half of the smartphone market belongs to Android. I recently purchased Samsung Galaxy Ace and got a chance to use Samsung Galaxy Note also. I decided to share my experience for new Android users.

1. During charging, if you are not able to unlock device or work with touch screen, immediate unplug the adapter from the device. It's due to unstable power supply or problem in charger. Make sure you are using original charger of your device.

2. You can login to Android Market and see your installed app in My Library page. You can purchase and install app from your PC. It will be installed automatically if auto sync is enabled in your device. I like this feature because searching is more convenient on PC than mobile.

3. Many Android web sites provide QR codes to applications in the Android Market. QR code is a 2-D bar code that can be scanned by a smart phone's camera and transfer information.

techbrij qr bar code

Advantage of QR Code:

a. Suppose you are searching in android market with 4-5 friends on your PC. Now you find a great app and every one wants to install. One way is to sign-in one by one and push to their device. It is time consuming. Another way is to use 'Barcode Scanner' or 'Google Goggles' to download apps directly to their devices. No need to sign-in individually on PC, It saves bunch of time.

b. Suppose I have to share an application to user in the post. What can i do? One way to put download link of app but same issue for multiple users as discussed above. So modern way is to use QR code.

c. Offline Marketing:

QR Code can be printed out or placed on the back of business cards so that your app or information can be scanned to someone’s phone in seconds.

You can create QR code easily using this Firefox add-on.

4. Maximizing Battery life:

Here are the basic tips to increase the battery life

android power widget

a. Turn off features like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS etc which are not being used

b. Reducing its brightness to the lowest acceptable level

c. Disable or uninstall Applications which you aren’t Using.

d. Use Static Wallpaper instead of animated wallpaper.

e. Set proper scheduling for sync apps like for Facebook set "Refresh interval" as high as possible.

Please share your opinion or other tips related to Android.