My best 10 Android Tips / Setup tasks:
Import contacts :Export contacts to CSV, import to Gmail contacts .
Sign in to your phone with your Google account, if you haven’t done that yet.
Browse to Contacts>Settings>Display
options>Select “Only contacts with phones”, and also Google>Manually select all groups. Then sync.
While you are at it, use the Email app to set up your school/office email too. Use IMAP or Exchange settings to ensure that email read status is synced to your phone.Install Google Keep and sync your todo lists and notes.
Facebook and Twitter:Install the Facebook and Twitter apps.Select to import data on your existing contacts.
Pictures and other address data are the
automagically added to your contacts.
Set Facebook and Twitter to update once every 4hrs to prevent your friends from draining your battery. The Facebook sync setting could be in Settings>Accounts or in the app itself
Home screen :Install ADW launcher to get a better home screen.
Select ADW launcher to open by default when the Home button is pressed.
Set the number of screens to 3 and apps to scroll vertically. Thats feels a lot better on phones with large screens.
Set desktop rows to 5. There’s a lot more
screenspace on large screen phones.
Select fade app labels for some nice animation.If you want to reset the launcher for any reason, browse to Settings>Manage apps>ADW launcher>
Reset defaults.Home screen widgets :
Install Beautiful widgets , one of the best Time and Weather widgets.
Try out some clock skins and pick the one youlike.Tap on Time to open alarm, Date to opencalendar and Weather to open a nice animatedweather widget.
Galaxy S phones have the WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS,
4G, enable/disable buttons in the notificationarea, but you might want to place Power Control,an android standard widget, on your home screen
and have better control over your battery.
If you are disabling the GPS, enable Geo locationusing WiFi to retrieve current location withoutsacrificing battery power.
Get your phone back if you loose it :
Enable the security pattern in settings,
Add a note in settings to show your name andbackup phone number on the lock screen.Setup Google Voice if needed
Add your email to the note on the lock screen.Also, enable Latitude in maps to track thelocation of your phone.
Find your background:Download a backgrounds appStylems Backgrounds shows a list of nicebackgrounds, one of the oldest in the market.
Look at Flickr Interesting photos too.
Change phone settings automatically:
Install Timerrific
There are apps that use GPS or phone batterylevels to change settings automatically, like
Tasker and Power Manager
Timerrific is better though. It changes settingsbased on time/day and is nice to the battery.Now you can set the phone to vibrate at office/school and turn off WiFi when not at home.
While you are at it, install No Signal Alert , so youdon’t miss important calls. Your phone will letyou know if it looses signal.
Don’t type, scan (or write) :
Install the Barcode Scanner app
Scan any barcodes you see on the web or
elsewhere using Barcode Scanner.
The app works on Google Product Search too, allyou have to do is browse to it on you phone andclick on the “Scan Barcode” button. Now you can
compare prices on the go.
The Chrome to Phone extension is very nice too.Just install an extension in chrome to send
anything to your phone.
If typing is too hard, just try Graffiti for Android.
It lets you write instead of typing .
Other must have Apps :
Music, News and TV apps are always a must.Pandora , Slacker radio or Last.FM : Freepersonalized radio
NYtimes: Award-winning journalism of The New York Times
NPR : Listen to NPR shows
TV.com: TV shows from CBS, The CW, CNET, ET,Showtime, CBS News, CBS Sports and muchmore!
Last but not the least change your ringtone :Android comes with some nice ones, you cancreate your own too.
Install Ringdroid . Copy any MP3 to your SD card to edit and set it as your Ringtone.
You can assign a specific ringtone to a contact too. Lastly I will recommend an application on google play called dumsor to all ghanaians.
