Android can do a lot for you-but you have to know where to begin. Compared to the iPhone's cut-and-dried interface, the Android operating system gives you ample room for customization and control. Here's a step-by-step guide to making the most of your Android phone's many features.
The Desktop
The first thing you'll notice about Android is that its desktop differs somewhat from those on other smartphone platforms. You have a lot of freedom to customize the Android desktop-and you aren't limited to four simple rows of perfectly aligned square icons. As a result, you can customize the Android desktop to reflect your interests, and you can make it as full and dynamic as you like.
The Android desktop is composed of multiple homescreen panels. Depending on the version of Android that your phone uses and on whether your device has a specialized overlay such as MotoBlur, you may have five to seven home-screen panels.
When you power up your phone for the first time, you'll see the main homescreen panel. This panel is typically centered, and you can access additional panels on either side of the main one by swiping your finger left or right. What goes on the homescreens is up to you. You can fill the space with any combination of shortcuts, widgets, and folders.
As you'd expect, short-cuts are small icons that let you load apps or other functions on your phone; they function much like the ones you see on a PC desktop. You can set a shortcut to do anything from opening a program to linking to a specific Web page to initiating a phone call.
To add a shortcut, simply press and hold your finger on any open space on your home screen, and select Shortcuts from the resulting pop-up menu. From there, select Applications (to add an app), or Direct dial or Direct message (to create a shortcut for calling or texting a friend), or Bookmark (to open a Web page), or Directions (to activate turn-by-turn navigation to a specific destination).
Widgets are dynamic programs that operate directly on your homescreen. They can perform any number of functions-giving you the latest weather, for example, or letting you play music from either your personal collection or from the Internet. Should you want more, you can download additional widgets from the Android Market.
To add a widget, press and hold your finger on an open space, as you would to create a shortcut (above). This time, though, select the Widgets option from the pop-up menu. Even if you haven't downloaded anything from the Android Market, you should have a handful of options built into your phone. Start by adding the Power Control widget; it creates a handy dandy one-touch toggle control for you phone's Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, data syncing, and screen brightness.
Folders are a good way to keep your content organized while simultaneously expanding your homescreen space. A folder lets you group multiple shortcuts in a single space. When you tap on a folder, a box pops up showing all of the shortcut icons inside that folder. You can fill one folder with one-touch dialing shortcuts to all of your favorite contacts, and another, perhaps, with various phone-number lookup utilities. Folders help you add many useful things to your homescreens without eating up a lot of space.
To add one, press and hold your finger on an open space. Select Folders, and then New Folders. Then drag and drop as many shortcuts into the folder as you wish. To give it a custom name, tap the folder once to open it, and then hold your finger along the top bar until the Rename folder dialog box appears on your screen. To move any shortcut, widget, or folder, simply touch and hold your finger to it. After a couple of seconds, it will seem to lift up from the screen. You can then drag it anywhere, including to another panel and drop it wherever you like. As you drag and drop, you'll also see a trash symbol at the bottom-center of the screen; slide any icon down onto the trash symbol to remove it from the homescreen altogether.
Getting Around
Android phones have four standard keys: a Back button, a Menu button, a Home button, and a Search button. These keys will help you navigate through your phone more easily, no matter what program or process you're running.
Pressing the Back key takes you back one step to whatever you were doing prior to the beginning of your current step. It works in Web navigation, e-mail navigation, or navigation to a previously open program.
Pressing the Menu key brings up a list of options relevant to the area of the phone you're currently using. When you press it on the homescreen, it permits you to access your phone's settings and other customization options.
The Home key has two functions: If you press it once, it takes you back to your home screen. If you press and hold it, it allows you to multitask and switch to other programs you've recently used.
Pressing the Search key produces different results depending on where you are in Android at the time. From your home screen, it brings up a Quick Search Box that you can use to search the Web and your phone at the same time (Android will return the most relevant results from either domain as you type). From within an app, the Search key typically starts a search specific to that program-enabling you to search exclusively within your e-mail, for example, or within your contacts list.
The App Launcher
You can always find all of your apps in the app launcher. To open the launcher, simply tap the square icon at the bottom of the screen. The launcher looks different depending on what version of Android you have, and whether or not your phone has a custom overlay.
Within the app launcher, you can tap any app's icon to run the program, or press and hold it to drag it directly onto the home screen as a shortcut.
Notifications
Android's notification panel puts incoming information at your fingertips, no matter what you're doing. Notifications can come from many different places: e-mail, voicemail, text messaging, even social network and news applications. When you get a new notification, an icon will appear at the top-left of your screen. You can pull down the panel to see detailed information about the notification and then take action if you wish.
Check the settings of various applications to see what kind of notifications they offer, and then customize them to work for you.
Hi everyone,
I am trying to personalize my Asus Infinity using Apex Launcher Pro, but I am stuck trying assign action. So where is the problem. I've created text using Simple Text and I would like to assign action for this text to switch it to other screen but when I choose shortcuts >> Apex actions >> there is no any screen swicher (other actions are still there). But when from desktop I want to add screen swicher I just tap and hold >> Apex actions and ... there is Screen1, Screen2, ....but when I want to did it from other apps these screen swichers are missing. Any ideas ??
Regards
Doncieslacco
Hey
I just installed stable CM7.2 (android 2.3.7) on my Defy (jordan) and it looks great, but there's one thing I'm way to used too that's gone: pressing the home button when already on the middle desktop screen used to open the app drawer on the stock rom, which was great.
I couldn't find any way to add that back, but I found Home2 Shortcut, which allow to bind something to a double tap on home, which would be fine too. But I can only bind an application or a shortcut, and "Open App Drawer" is in neither of those (despite being in Add > Launcher Actions on the home screen). There's even stuff like "CyanogenMod Settings", but no "Launcher Actions".
Is there a way to add it to the Shortcuts list? Or any other way to do it?
Alternatively, I can also bind it to a file. Is there a file that launch the App Drawer when opened? Or a script file I can write to do that?
Thanks
Edit: I installed MIUI App Drawer and bound that to Home2 Shortcut.
Hi Guys,
Can anyone tell me of an Android app that can create Android Shortcuts (Like Contact, Direct Dial ... ) but for actual keyboard shortcuts (like Back, Undo, Home, Copy Paste)?
Let me tell you the reason behind this:
I find that these days, with screen size increasing, we need a more customizable virtual navigation bar to put to the right of the screen, because when holding a bigger fablet, you will only have 1 finger free, and that is the thumb finger, and it points up... it is uncomfortable to point it down to the base of the screen where the navigation bar usually is. Now most apps like this are too simple, and they just stick to the screen, you can't hide them on full screen apps, and you can't add custom shortcuts. And you get that awful and idiotic error "screen overlay detected". It's not like that is an efficient security measure, apps can override that. Android, just make the settings menu temporarily remove any screen overlay !
Anyway, I’m diverging. I have found 2 apps, that if combined would be perfect for that: Meteor Swipe and Menu Button.
Menu Button because it has one of the best shortcut system I have seen (back, home, menu, copy paste, media control), very customizable, but Meteor Swipe has a much better interface, with swipe to change pages and leather skin background.
If I could add Menu Button shortcuts on Meteor Swipe, that would be perfect, but I already talked to the developer, and he is not planning on adding more shortcuts, because it would be too complicated.
But the Developer of Menu Button did a very smart thing: it uses the app as a keyboard, and this allows him to use keyboard shortcuts.
Do you have any ideas for me?
Kind regards,
Daniel
Swiping up on the Watch 4 brings up the list of installed apps. I find the "app bubbles" confusing so I purchased the Launcher app which mimics how apps were displayed on the Watch 3. Is there a way to change the Swipe Up action so that it runs the Launcher app? I can set it to open when I swipe from right to left, but that hides my tiles. Right now I've programmed double tapping the home button to open Launcher but I'd like to use that for something else. Thanks.