The Android phone has a highly refined interface, similar to the iPhone, which also makes it user friendly and easy to use. It is also imperative to take into account that according to research, more Android phones are being sold and enjoying popularity in the market these days with an ever increasing number of technophiles craving to get their hands on it, as compared to Apple’s iPhone. But it may come off as a surprise that as these eager Android users muck around, there are some extraordinarily exclusive features that they may be unfamiliar with. Nonetheless, it should be duly taken into account that due to various mobile phone manufacturers who have varied functionalities of the Android OS interfaces the tips that are to follow may not be helpful and thus functional for all different kinds of Android smart phones. The tips may also vary in terms of one version of the OS to another Android OS version.
Receiving Calls
Firstly, what is the basic and the most primary of the functions of a phone? Obviously making and receiving calls. In terms of answering the calls, usually a user would just simply swipe the screen to the right in order to answer the call, while there are two other options available regarding the same. The user can ignore a call by swiping the screen to the left or swipe it down to send a text message to the sender. In the latter case a default text message saying “I’m busy right now. I will call you later” is sent on. Still, the user can go to the phone’s settings if the default text message needs to be changed as per the user’s requirement.
Home Screen
Another significant feature of the Android platform is the availability of multiple home screens. A user can have from five to seven home screens that he/she can move along simply by swiping through them. In case the user requires to see them all at once just pinching the screen would show all at once and touching the one needed would take it to full screen view. Unlike the iPhone, Android offers another useful feature of contact icons. A user has the ability to put a contact’s icon even on a Home page for quick dialing and easy access. All the user needs to do for this is press and hold anywhere on the Home screen, making sure there is not an icon already where they are holding, there will appear a dialogue box in which the user can add widgets, folders or shortcuts to the Home screen. Pressing the shortcut button and from there on the Contacts one will lead the user to add a contact’s number.
How to manage so many apps?
Android devices are known for the ease and number of a plethora of apps that the users can enjoy but the more the apps are used the more limited system memory is taken up by them. Sometimes the user finds the device to be slow for no good reason, ignoring the fact that there are multiple apps running in the background, which the user opened at some point in time. Like for most of the other basic issues the Android OS gives you a solution for that as well. All you need to do is press and hold the Home button which will make the task manager appear. The task manager that just appeared will help you get rid of the apps running in the background that you don’t want taking up extra space in your device. You can quickly go to the app you used recently or as already mentioned you can close down all others you don’t want to use. However, as with all the utilities that the Android OS has to offer there can also be potential risks with regards to your device and the personal information that it carries. Android OS while known for its utility is also infamous, or has been as such up until the new Jelly Bean update, for its vulnerability towards Android Spyware, cell phone trackers and other malware of all sorts. So maximize the functionality of Android but beware for all those demons lurking all around the web.
Author Bio: James Clark has been in the business of providing quality information on Mobile Phone Spy for a while now. He’s an expert at all things spyware, but his main forte is iPhone spyware which has captured the interest of many. Cellspyexpert is spy software for Android, and for the latest and greats tips and tricks readers flock towards James.
I enjoyed rinaedg through Pro Android Media. The book gives you a good understanding of the media capabilities of the Android platform, covering images, audio, and video. Web services, from the point of view of media consumption and publishing, are also explained. Each media section starts out by explaining how to display the media using the built-in Android applications or your own custom Views, and then proceeds to cover advanced concepts such as browsing or streaming the media. Additionally, each section covers how to capture the media and potentially edit it on the device. Pro Android Media assumes a basic knowledge of Android programming, though it makes sure to touch on the basics of a concept (intents, activities, etc.) the first time it is introduced. The first 3 chapters cover Images: displaying, capturing and editing. Chapter 1 uses the built-in camera intent to capture an image. In doing so, the chapter refreshes on some of the basics of Android programming (intents, content providers, URIs, etc.), in a way that provides a friendly refresher to the novice Android programmer but doesn’t take up much of the chapter. Chapter 2 has you build a camera application for more flexibility, such as time-delayed photography. It covers capturing and saving images, both internally and to the SD card. Chapter 3 delves into image editing and browsing. This includes scaling, rotating, mirroring, flipping, color corrections, etc. It doesn’t necessarily cover the math behind the concepts (though links to appropriate Wikipedia pages), but introduces you to the APIs you would use for various image editing tasks. Chapter 4 covers Graphics: How to deal with raw Bitmaps and drawing concepts such as using the Canvas for shapes, lines and text. Chapters 5 8 cover Audio: playback, background audio and network streaming, capturing, and synthesis/analysis. There are examples showing how you can retrieve, store and query the metadata of media on the device. Audio recording can be done via three separate (and increasingly complex, though more flexible) interfaces, and the book gives examples of each and why you’d need to use one over the other. In Chapter 8, you build a DJ scratching interface using the touch screen, as well as an audio visualizer (FFT). One great inclusion is the state diagrams for the MediaPlayer and MediaRecorder. These interfaces aren’t extremely complex, but having the diagrams helps you get a good feel for the interface. Chapters 9 11 cover Video: playback, browsing and streaming, and capture. Chapter 10 covers advanced video concepts such as streaming video from the internet and gives an example of playing from YouTube’s servers. The video chapters are finished off by covering video capture, and there are good (though brief) explanations of the capture profiles, codecs, settings and encoders you can use. Chapter 12 finishes the book and covers media consumption and publishing using Web Services. It felt a little out of place initially (this chapter’s concepts are likely covered in most general Android books), but I was thankful that they included it as it is a great compressed summary of what interfaces you might need if you want to interact the web. It gives examples of how you’d use JSON, REST and XML web services, as well as how you can incorporate the user’s geolocation in your API calls. There are examples of how to interact with Flickr and Blip.TV, both consuming/browsing media and uploading content to them. The overall writing style is easy to read and to the point. The example code is solid and well explained, often inline, which helps with understanding. It’s not a long book, nor does it need to be. The book is great for someone who has been tasked to implement some specific interaction with media in their Android app, yet doesn’t know the right approach or interfaces to use yet.