One of the options
buried beneath the Labs section of Android 4.0's web browser is the
Quick Controls option. This adds a pop-out menu to the browser, which
pulls in a little semi-circular collection of shortcuts to the main
browser features, removing the URL bar and giving you more screen to
play with. Also, holding down the Back button is the Android standard
way of bringing up the bookmarks and history tool, too. But that's been
around for years.
2. Long-press to uninstall
Long-pressing
on an app within the app drawer lets you drag it to a Home screen, but
it also pops up a couple of menus along the top of the screen. App
Info gives you the boring technical stuff about how much memory it's
taking up, or you can fling it off the other way to uninstall it.
3. Flying Android screensaver
One
odd undocumented little secret within Android 4.0 is this strange
little collection of flying Androids, which you can... look at. Look at
for as long as you like. To activate it, head into the phone's About
screen and hammer away at the Android Version tab and it'll all happen.
4. Save your eyes with inverted rendering
Inverted
rendering is a posh way of saying it makes the pages black and turns
the text white, so it looks like you're reading the internet from 1997.
It also supposedly saves battery, plus is easier on the eyes if you're
reading in the dark. It's under the browser's settings tab, within the
accessibility area - and there's a contrast slider, too.
5. Set a custom rejection text message
When
your Twitter action is rudely interrupted by someone actually
telephoning you, there's a polite way to give the caller the boot.
Android 4.0 lets users ping a rejection text message to callers - and
you're able to customise this too. Just answer a call and ping the lock
screen notification up to access to custom rejection messaging area.
6. Stop app icons automatically appearing
One
of the many new ICS features is the way Google lets apps automatically
add shortcuts to themselves on your Home screen when they've finished
installing. It's useful, but if you're a control freak and wish to
remain 100% in charge of your Home layout, head to the Google Play app's
settings tab and untick the Auto-add Shortcuts toggle.
7. There's a Settings shortcut in the Notifications pane
That
little settings icon in the ICS notifications area isn't just art to
fill the space. It's a shortcut to your phone or tablet's settings area.
So use that instead of giving it a Home screen icon slot all to
itself.
8. Manually close apps
Google's lovely new
recent apps multitasking menu also lets you close apps quickly, should
you suspect one's gone rogue. A Long-press within the Recent Apps
listing lets you visit the app's info page, from where you can easily
force close it.
9. Remove the lock screen
It's
possible to entirely bin your Android 4.0 lock screen, making the
phone instantly turn itself on when you press the power button. It's a
security nightmare, but if your phone lives entirely on your desk and
you demand instant access without any unlocking, head to Security
> Screen lock and select none. Then be very careful.
10. Folders in the dock
Android's
new official love of folder formation makes it dead easy to combine app
shortcuts and make folders, simply by dragging one icon on top of
another. You can make these groups of apps even easier to access by
dragging a folder onto the ICS floating dock, meaning you can squeeze
stacks more content on to each creaking Home screen.
11. Take photos while recording video
The
Android 4.0 camera app that arrived with the Galaxy Nexus has one cool
little extra feature - the ability to fire off still photos while
recording video clips. Simply tapping the screen takes a shot at full
resolution, which is saved to the phone's gallery while the video's
still happily recording away.
12. Bin animations and transitions
Hidden
within the Developer Options section of the Ice Cream Sandwich software
are quite a few nerdy ways to adapt your phone. Most won't be of any
use to those who are just using their phone as a phone, but if you want
it to feel faster, or at least look a little different, the scrolling,
zooming effects on windows and menus can be edited in many ways.
13. Take a grab of your phone
Screen
grabbing of your phone's display is finally in Android. On the Galaxy
Nexus, it's activated through holding the power button and volume down
switch. On HTC's new models it's done by holding the power button and
pressing Home. Other phones had different techniques for doing this
before Ice Cream Sandwich, but it's good to see this now becoming part
of the standard Android feature set in Android 4.0.
14. Long-press dotted words
When
typing on the Android 4.0 keyboard, you may see some suggested words
appear with the "..." icon beneath. Doing a long-press on this one will
pop up a much bigger window of suggested words, letting you bail out on
some of that tedious typing a little quicker.
15. Add additional faces
The
ICS face unlock feature, as found in the Galaxy Nexus, lets you unlock
it by scanning your face with the front camera. Which is great, but
what if you haven't shaved for a month? The software can actually store
multiple images of your face, so you can do left parting, right
parting, shaved, unshaved - or even add a trusted a friend to the
visually verified user list.
16. Experiment with GPU settings
Another
hidden little gem found within the Development options tab is the
hardware acceleration 'Force On' toggle. This makes ICS attempt to
boost the performance of any apps that don't already use the feature.
It may also break them in the process, though, so it's something of a
trial and error fiddling exercise to do on a very rainy day.
17. Type like an adult
Make
a stand for grammatical standards in this day and age by long-pressing
on the stock Android 4.0 keyboard's full stop button. This brings up
such doomed punctuation as commas and speech marks, plus even a
semicolon for the extra brave mobile typist.
18. Nick wallpapers off the internet
Found
a lovely photograph of some stars, a pretty computer generated planet
or even the mighty Professor Brian Cox himself? Long-pressing on any
image in the web browsers lets you instantly set it as your wallpaper,
without the hassle of saving it, finding it, and setting it the long
way.
19. Limit background process
If you fancy an even
more serious bit of fiddling, the same ICS developer area contains the
option to "limit background process" demands by the OS. You can use
this to stop your phone or tablet storing so many apps in memory.
Whether this has any effect of the actual battery life of us users is
up for debate, but again, it's something to play with and see if it
suits your phone use patterns.
20. Quickly access Notifications
Here's
a simple yet huge change Google's made in Android 4.0 - the
Notifications pane can be accessed from the lock screen. Press power,
touch the Notifications area, then scroll down to read your latest
messages. Obviously it's a bit of a security risk and lets anyone
access your messages, so best be careful.
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