Android provides a plethora of ways to unlock your phone—a
PIN, a password, a pattern gesture, or a typical, insecure swipe. But
did you know that you can unlock your Android phone with your face? Here’s how to set it up.
Before
you turn on face-unlocking, you need to set a secure unlocking method
for your phone, if you haven't already. Go to Settings, scroll down, and
tap Security, then tap Screen lock. Select from either the Pattern, PIN, or Password unlocking methods, then follow the onscreen instructions to set up your unlocking method of choice.
Once you return to the Security settings screen, tap Smart Lock, then enter your PIN, password, or unlock pattern when prompted, then tap Trusted face.
Once you so, you’ll be presented with some information about unlocking
your phone with your face. Read this information carefully, and when
you’re ready to proceed, go ahead and tap Set up.
At
this point, Android will suggest you find a well-lit—but not overly
bright—indoors spot: Doing so will help Android pick up your facial
features. Once you’ve found such a spot, tap Next.
Success!
Your phone will now begin the process
of identifying your face. Hold your phone at eye level so that your face
is within the ring of dots onscreen: Once you have your phone
positioned properly, the dots will begin to turn green. Hold still until
all the dots turn green and a checkmark appears onscreen. When it does,
tap Next. And you’re pretty much set.
For
better results, you may want to show Android how you look under
different circumstances—hair up, hair down, clean-shaven, with a beard,
with a hat on, whatever. Doing so can help it better recognize you, even
if you’ve changed your appearance somewhat.
To do so, navigate back to Settings > Security > Smart Lock > Trusted face and tap Improve face matching. Move to a room with different lighting–or change your appearance in some way—then tap the Next button, and repeat the process of adding a face. You can repeat this process as many times as you want.
Note that using your face to unlock your phone is potentially less secure
than a regular password, because anyone who closely resembles you—like
your celebrity doppelgänger–may be able to unlock your phone. Still,
you may find it to be convenient—or at the very least, a neat trick to
show off to your iPhone-using friends.
Have you (ever) lost your Android smartphone or tablet without having a device tracking app installed? Then you should read this! This could be your chance to get your precious device back.
There are a handful of phone recovery or anti-theft apps on the Google Play Store which can be a lifesaver in case you lose your phone or, even worse, it gets stolen. But many people might only realize that there are such apps AFTER it got lost or stolen. Then, it usually is too late and you have to face the ugly truth that the phone is gone for good.
How to track your Android phone or tablet after it got lost or stolen
But don’t burst out in tears just yet. There’s still hope for your phone to find its way back to you! There are a few ways to remote control and track your phone even if you haven’t installed a recovery app before it vanished. Let’s have a look at the various ways to get your Android smartphone back to its rightful owner!
1. Track your lost Android device with Google’s Android Device Manager
Requirements:
Your device is connected with your Google account.
Your device has access to the internet.
Allowed Android Device Manager (ADM) to locate your device (turned on by default). This can changed in the Google Settings app.
Allowed ADM to lock your device and erase its data (turned off by default).
Android Device Manager is a Google’s official and easy-to-use tool to track your Android phone or tablet. The best thing about it is that you don’t need to install an app to be able to track your devices. The only requirement is that your device is connected to your Google account, turned on and connected to the internet. Besides tracking, letting your phone ring and wiping your phone (which has to be enabled manually), Android Device Manager doesn’t offer more options to remote control your phone. Hopefully, Google will work on that and offer more features, such as taking pictures in case it got stolen and you want to know who took it. In case there’s no laptop around when you lose your device, you can also use someone else’s Android phone to track it. Instead of using the mobile browser, you can also use the Android Device Manager app. If you the other phone doesn’t have it, simply download it here. You can sign in using the guest mode and your Google account credentials. Now you should be able to track your lost device, let it ring or wipe its data.
Are you not able to locate your phone this way? This can happen for several reasons. The one you should hope for, is that your device is simply not connected to the internet or turned off. In that case, simply keep trying to track it until it (hopefully) connects to Google’s services again. In case it got stolen, it’s possible that the thief has disconneced your device from your Google Account. If that happens, neither Android Device Manager nor any other tracking tool will be able to locate the device, since it’s necessary to be logged into your Google Account. This doesn’t apply to previously installed tracking apps but in this scenario there are none on the phone. However, there’s one last resort but more on that later.
2. Remote control and track your smartphone with Android Lost
UPDATE: Due to Android API updates, Android Lost can’t be activated remotely on devices running Android 3.0 or higher.
Requirements:
Your device is connected with your Google account.
Your device has access to the internet.
You’re not running Android 3.0 or higher.
This is a more complicated way to track your phone. Basically, you need to install the tracking app ‘Android Lost’ on your phone and activate it by sending it an SMS (this can be done from any phone). How do you install something when you don’t have your phone with you? That’s very easy. You can install any app on all your registered devices directly from your browser through the Google Play website. Simply navigate to the Android Lost app and click the install button. The remote installation process of Android Lost is very straightforward and only requires that your phone is still connected with your Google account. However, in case of theft, you have to hope that the thief doesn’t disconnect from your account. So here’s what to do:
Step 1: Install Android Lost remotely
Install the Android Lost app remotely via Google Play in your browser and it will be installed on your phone remotely. As already mentioned, your phone still needs to be connected to your Google account. Otherwise, this won’t work.
Step 2: Activate Android Lost (not working on Android 3.0+)
If you are still in the possession of your smartphone or tablet then all you need to do is starting the app. But this is, obviously, probably not the case if you lost your phone. So, to register your device remotely, send an SMS with the text “androidlost register” to your phone. This SMS can be sent from any phone. This will trigger Android Lost to register itself using your Google account credentials. If you own a tablet, SMS might not be an option. In that case, install “AndroidLost Jumpstart” before you install the actual Android Lost app. It will jump start the registration process when Android Lost is being installed.
Step 3: Log in to the Android Lost website
Visit the Android Lost website and sign in using your Google account. After doing that, you should have access to all remote control features such as the following:
Read the latest SMS on your phone
Force your phone to play a loud alarm with a flashing screen. Perfect if you misplaced your device.
Get the location of your device
Lock and unlock your phone
Wipe your entire phone so no private data falls into the wrong hands
Erase the SD card
Use the camera to make pictures (front or rear camera) to get a nice shot of the nice person who took your device.
Note that it can take a while for the registration process to complete.
Android Lost is a great tool to get your phone back
I have to say that having the possibility to install and register this tool remotely makes it very powerful in case you lose your device. Unfortunately, The only negative thing I experienced is that the notification of a new app called ‘Android Lost’ could tell a potential thief about what’s going on. Unfortunately, activating Android Lost is only possible on Android Versions older than 3.0.
3. Plan B is the Android Lost alternative for devices running Android 2.0 – 2.3
Requirements:
Your device is connected with your Google account.
Your device has access to the internet.
If Android Lost is not working out for you and you’re phone is still running an older version of Android (2.0 up to 2.3) you could give Plan B from Lockout a try. Install the app directly from the Play Store (Link) to your device and, if successful, Plan B will send your device’s location to your Gmail address. It will send you a mail every 10 minutes with the current location. You can also use any other phone to send an SMS with “locate” to your phone to get the location via mail. As already mentioned, Plan B only works with devices on Android 2.0-2.3, so it won’t work with most devices. Also, the app hasn’t been updated in a while, so I cannot guarantee that it will work.
4. Use Google Maps Location History to track your lost Android phone (even if it’s turned off)
Requirements:
Your device is connected with your Google account.
Your device has access to the internet.
Location Reporting and Location History need to be activated on your device (can be done in the Google Settings app on your device).
Unlike the Android Device Manager, the Location History feature of Google Maps doesn’t focus on tracking down a lost phone. You can use your location data to for many different reasons such as looking up past travel routes or last night’s pub crawl tour. However, it is also a good way to locate your phone.
Here’s what you need to do. Go to the Google Maps Location History and
make sure the current day is selected in the calendar. Click on “Show
timestamps” below the calendar to see all the times your device’s
location was registered. Now scroll down and select the latest timestamp
to see the last available location.
Other than Android Device Manager, which also uses GPS for tracking,
Location History only uses cell tower IDs and Wi-Fi location detection
to collect location data. This means that the accuracy can vary
significantly.
So how can this tool help you if you’re phone’s battery is empty?
Well, before your phone died, Google might have saved its current
location. That means that you might be able to find it using the last
reported position in your location history.
The advantage of Location History is the ability to track your
phone’s location frequently over a period of time. If someone stole it,
you could make out often visited places, which could be the thief’s home
or workplace. That might help you and the authorities to catch the
person.
I recommend trying out the Android Device Manager or Android Lost
first, since they’re able to use your device’s GPS and offer other
useful features.
5. Use Samsung’s Find My Mobile to find your phone
Requirements:
Your device has access to the internet.
You need to have a Samsung account and your device registered with it.
Find my mobile needs to be set up on your Samsung phone (enabling remote controls).
If you have a Samsung device, you might be able to find your phone
using Samsung’s own tracking service ‘Find my mobile’. For this to work,
you need a Samsung account and registered your device before you lost it. So try to remember if you did that.
You did? Awesome. Head over and sign in to the Find my mobile website. Check
the left sidebar and make sure that your device is connected to your
account. Now, all you need to do is selecting ‘Locate my device’ in the
sidebar and click on the locate button. If your device is online and
remote controls is enabled, you should see its approximate location.
Find my mobile also allows you to do other things such as locking your
device, letting it ring with a message and wiping its data.
6. How to use Dropbox to find your stolen phone (Android & iOS)
Requirements:
Your device has access to the internet.
Activated “Camera Upload” in your Dropbox app.
Someone needs to take pictures with your lost device.
Dropbox can
be your last resort if all other approaches don’t bring you any closer
to finding your phone. For this to work, however, Dropbox needs to be
installed on your phone and the “Camera Upload” feature has to be
activated. This way, every time your phone’s thief takes a picture, it automatically gets uploaded to your Dropbox “Camera Uploads” folder.
So, if he or she takes a nice selfie you might be able to identify the
thief. And if you’re lucky, you can make out the location by looking at
the background of the uploaded pictures.
Should that be impossible, simply start a blog and show the
world all the pictures your thief has taken. There’s one funny tumblr
page sharing images of Hafid, the guy who stole the phone of the blog’s owner.
So far, that’s the only way Dropbox can help you. Dropbox
doesn’t give you the IP address of mobile devices which are connected to
your Dropbox account. This is only possible for Desktop PCs and laptops
until now.
I hope you are reading this just out of pure interest and not because
you lost your phone! But if that’s really the case, I truly hope that
this article will help you track it down. Either way, I recommend
installing a good tracking app BEFORE your phone vanishes. An app I
recommend is Cerberus, which is available on Google Play.
How much do you know about your phone, really? Beyond a name, a price,
and vague sense of whether it’s “high end” or not, you’re probably in
the dark. Even if you look up the stats, you don’t really know how it
performs. The only sure way to know is to run a few benchmarks.
This not only gives you an idea of how fast your phone is, but also lets
you see how it fares against marketplace rivals or older phones, and
can help you troubleshoot problems by comparing against similar phones.
Don’t worry, benchmarking your Android phone is easy and cheap. All
these tools are free, fun to use, and a few are gorgeous enough to show
off to friends.
Setup and Prep
Before you benchmark your phone or tablet, you’ll want to charge it up
completely, then kill all background tasks in the multitasking menu. You
don’t want anything to interfere with your tests, so you also might
want to put it in Airplane mode to prevent it from fetching mail or
receiving calls.
Samsung task manager from KitKat – Kill ’em all.
Make sure the ambient temperature isn’t too hot, as the difference in
results can be dramatic. If you’re running a bunch of these tests in a
short time and find the device is getting really hot, causing benchmark
scores to fall, try removing any heavy cases like Otterbox’s Defender. They act like insulation.
You can record results using the app’s online databases (virtually all benchmarks feature one), or take screenshots
of scores for reference later on. Just don’t do it during the
benchmark. In fact, don’t touch your device at all during a test run.
None of these apps take long to run. Set it down, press start, and wait.
Interpreting Results
Don’t expect test results to tell you everything. Established designs
sometimes outperform newer replacements thanks to better cooling or
highly-tuned code. Bigger devices like tablets simply have more space to
play with, allowing the use of faster, more power-hungry chips.
Also in play are manufacturer and carrier Android add-ons that make a big difference in how fast a device can feel. The HTC One (M8)
doesn’t have the fastest Snapdragon processor, yet its slickly tuned
interface makes it feel top-shelf. Samsung’s TouchWiz has the opposite
effect, introducing the occasional pause or hiccup that can make their
hardware designs seem less cutting edge than they really are.
And of course, the fastest phone isn’t necessarily the best. You have to
consider size, design, materials, camera quality, sound quality, and
much more.
The HTC One M8 punches above its hardware class due to careful OS tuning and HTC’s light touch with its Sense UI.
Gamers have unique needs when it comes to performance. Super
high-density screens are easy on the eyes, but it’s tough for small,
low-power mobile graphics processors to run games smoothly at really
high resolutions. As displays skyrocket to 4K,
selecting a device with a fast graphics processor and a slightly lower
display resolution can help keep those demanding 3D games running
smoothly.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 packs a pixel-dense screen but provides the GPU horsepower to drive it swiftly.
Most of the benchmarks here are also available for operating systems
other than Android. Cross-platform benchmarks are useful because they
provide a satellite view of where your hardware lives in the wider world
of tech. Sure, it’s nice to know if your tablet is as fast as an iPad
Air 2, but it’s just as interesting to know how it compares to a thin
and light laptop.
Benchmark information screens have detailed breakdowns on your device’s innards.
Even PC gamers who recognize this pitched battle will be impressed watching it on a super AMOLED screen in 300+ pixels per inch.
Usage is push-button simple. Results are shared online via Futuremark’s
cloud database and web comparison system. It’s easy to see where you sit
on the ladder, and although this feature isn’t exclusive, Futuremark
has been doing it a lot longer than anyone else here, so the tools
provided for comparing, recording, and sharing are mature and
well-executed.
You can compare your tablet or phone to pretty much any computing device made in the last 5 years, unless it’s a Mac.
CPU test results track with real-world usage but are geared more towards
gaming loads than everyday operations. The battery test is handy, but
has the same limited scope. It only gives you an idea of how long your
device will last while pushing pixels as hard as it can.
GFXBench 3.0
3DMark isn’t the only game in town when it comes to mobile GPU benchmarking. GFXBench
arrived early in Android’s history and delivers more detailed results
than Futuremark’s flagship. It’s also smaller; a big advantage if space
is at a premium and your phone or tablet doesn’t support removable
media.
GFXBench is all about the details, and the developers serve them up page
after page. You get more than framerates, and the numbers aren’t
abstractions. Driver overhead figures, rendering quality tests,
precision, and computing performance all get attention, taking GFXBench
beyond gaming and deep into graphics geek territory. Like 3DMark, you
also get access to a crossplatform database that extends to desktop
systems, but GFXBench doesn’t leave Mac users out in the cold.
Unlike 3DMark, GFXBench supports the Mac so you may stoke your Apple envy or release your scorn at will.
Accurate results aside, certain areas of the test look decidedly
low-rent these days. Objects, effects, lighting, and other aesthetics
are in need of a makeover.
This poor T-Rex never seems to catch a meal. Maybe he needs more polygons.
Vellamo
The hardware moguls at Qualcomm may have created Vellamo,
but they don’t play favorites; the results show no favoritism towards
Snapdragon processors. Vellamo doesn’t test everything. It’s mainly
focused on testing browser speed, but also includes a mode called Metal
that goes low-level for CPU, memory, and bandwidth testing, and a
Multicore mode that tests the efficiency of thread latency and handling.
Browser benchmarks may have fallen out of favor as stand-ins for proper
mobile CPU tests, but they can still tell you quite a bit about the
efficiency of the web browsing engine. On Android, changing up your
browser can have a huge impact on performance.
Like most of the packages here, running the main suite takes a single
button press, but some of these tests run a few minutes, so bring along
some patience. Fortunately, Vellamo happens to be a pleasure to use,
with elements of Material Design already incorporated into the user
interface ahead of Lollipop’s release, so waiting isn’t a chore.
Vellamo’s slick user interface, colorful imagery and animated results screens make you almost forget this is a browser and CPU benchmark.
Swiping left on the start screen brings up the results table, device
comparison list, and information panels, although you won’t find desktop
computers or operating systems other than Android represented here.
Qualcomm’s benchmarking largess extends only to compatible hardware.
Geekbench 3
Unlike the others, Geekbench
sneers at fashion and wears its sparse starting page like a hoodie at a
shareholder’s meeting. No starship battles occur onscreen during the
tests and no floating transparencies adorn the results window. All you
get is a progress bar that slowly makes its way across the screen from
zero to 100. When everything’s done, you get in-depth tables of results
about the speed of your CPU and memory subsystems.
After spending a lot of time with these apps, I can tell you from
personal experience that sometimes just getting the numbers straight up
is more appealing than it sounds. GeekBench serves them up quickly, too.
Not many options here, but sometimes a little is enough.
Results are broken down into Integer, Floating Point, and Memory
sections with device rankings for single and multi-core results. There’s
enough detail here to satisfy most queries about these subsystems, and
developer Primate Labs provides an online results browser to manage your
scores. When it comes to CPU testing, Geekbench is everything you need
and nothing that you don’t. That’s a handy mix.
The free version of Basemark OS II is missing the battery tests but covers the bases otherwise.
Basemark X
tests the gaming performance of the GPU using the popular Unity engine.
Several quality levels are supported: you can boost the shadow level,
texture size, and image effects to pour on the pressure for newer
hardware.
Basemark X has the same flaws as its sibling; making users pay for
features other packages give away. Useful items such as antialising,
resolution settings, and score breakdowns are reserved for paying
customers, and just like its counterpart, you can’t buy the full version
on the Play Store.
There’s plenty to like here otherwise, and Basemark X’s wide adoption
means this one is worth putting alongside 3DMark or GFXBench, even if it
means missing a few bells and whistles or shelling out for the full
version.
High-resolution textures and advanced image effects make scenes come alive in Basemark X.
Translations here and on the website are rough but serviceable, which describes Antutu 5 in more ways than one.
The results here are accurate but broad rather than deep. As a light,
all-in-one benchmark Antutu is hard to beat, which explains why you see
it cited everywhere. This lack of depth can find you looking for other
benchmarks when you need to dig down, however. The bigger packages
aren’t that complex to use or read anymore. That, and the nag to install
Clean Master every time you quit can make you wonder why you keep it around. You almost certainly do not need Clean Master.
Ookla (aka Speedtest.net)
Mobile devices aren’t all about hot hardware; they are also highly
dependent on carrier performance and phone location for their overall
perceived speeds. Even snappy devices can feel dead in the water when
you’re stuck with a flaky LTE signal. Ookla
is an internet speed meter that runs bandwidth and latency tests to
servers in any region you specify, from a nearby city to across the
continent.
Net speed tests have plenty of uses beyond the obvious. With Ookla you can see if your carrier is playing games by throttling your unlimited data rates
to dialup speed, or if your blazing new 4G phone is faster on its own
cellular network than your home Wi-Fi. The answers might surprise you.
Bench like a Pro
Benchmarks tease out problems quicker than any other type of software,
and they’ll turn you into a hardware expert in the blink of an eye.
Don’t get too carried away, though. There’s a lot more than numbers to
consider when it comes to performance.
Speed freaks will run into the hard reality that high-end desktop and
even laptop systems are orders of magnitude more powerful than anything
in the mobile space today, despite claims of "desktop-class performance"
coming from every manufacturer from Apple to Nvidia. On the other hand,
try booting a modest desktop system with the miniscule 5 watts of power
most mobiles thrive on.
Impressive performance comes in all kinds of packages, big and small.
Just a few minutes with some free apps can help you determine if that
hot new phone really is that much faster than the one you're using now.
Modern Android smartphones come with big, beautiful displays with high
pixel density. Why not show it off with some fresh wallpaper?
To start, navigate to your Settings app. Tap Display under the Device heading, then tap Wallpaper. You’ll get a list of folders of images to browse; tap one to view your options.
Each folder has a slightly different layout, which is a little annoying. For instance, tapping the Wallpapers option leads you to a gallery of sorts where you swipe through thumbnails that appear along the bottom of your screen. The Live Wallpapers folder
shows a list of options, and you can tap on one to preview. Meanwhile,
the Gallery and Photos folders show scrollable lists of thumbnails.
The wallpaper galley picker.
Once you find the wallpaper you like, setting that choice as your wallpaper is the same no matter what—you just tap Set wallpaper.
There’s another, perhaps easier way to get to your wallpaper settings on
most Android devices. Tap-and-hold on a blank area of the home screen,
avoiding all icons or widgets. After a couple seconds, you should get an
option to change the wallpaper or add widgets.
Finding good wallpaper images
if your personal photos don’t make good wallpaper photos, check out wallpaper sites like Interfacelift and National Geographic’s wallpaper collection.
Flickr, Deviant Art, and Wikimedia Commons
are also good places to look. Many photographers and artists who use
those services provide downloadable public domain or Creative
Commons-licensed versions of their photos.
If the artist or photographer doesn’t explicitly offer a downloadable
version, however, be a good citizen and either ask for permission first,
or look for something else. Don’t just swipe copyrighted images from
the Internet. That’s just not cool.
It’s easy to keep your data private on an Android phone when it’s always
in your hand. Just use a strong password, encrypt your device, and no
one’s getting your stuff.
What about when you actually want a friend or acquaintance to
see something on your phone? You could be handing them them all your
private data. So should you hover over their shoulder, waiting to snatch
the phone away? Nah, that’s rude. You can use a few apps and file
system tricks to make sure your private stuff stays private.
Showing Off Your Photos
When someone shows you a photo on their phone, there’s always a
temptation to swipe around and look at a few more. Don’t lie—you know
you want to. This is probably one of the most common reasons you hand
your phone to someone else. To gently remind people to keep their noses
out of your business, there’s a great app called Focus.
Keep people focused on the photos you want them to see, not poking around in the Gallery.
With Focus, you to select one or more photos from your gallery app and
use the share menu to share them to the Focus app. This locks the device
into viewing only those images. Leaving the screen will ask for a PIN
code, which presumably only you will know. There’s even an option to
beep if someone tries to leave Focus without telling you, but that’s
just if you’re particularly distrustful of your friends. The free
version of Focus has ads, but the full version is only $1.
Android Gallery apps also obey the “hidden” folder rules, which is
another way to obfuscate images you don’t want everyone to see. Simply
use a file manager to change the name of the folder you want to hide.
Add a period to the beginning of the name, and the Gallery won’t display
it by default.
All Your Other Files
Let’s say you’ve got some private files on your device that you just
don’t want showing up in the gallery or other apps at all. Whatever
those might be (I’m not here to judge) you can hide them from all apps
on the device by creating a new file and putting it in the right place.
A .nomedia file is like a cloaking device for the Android file system.
To do this you need a file browser like Sliding Explorer or Solid Explorer.
Find the folder where the photos in question are, and add a new file
with the file manager. When asked for the name, simply input “.nomedia “
and accept. This blank file acts as a flag to the Android file indexer
to skip the folder, so nothing contained therein will appear in other
apps or in searches. The only way to access the files is to use the file
browser to navigate to it manually. If you don’t know where the files
are, they might as well be invisible. This goes a step past making a
folder hidden by adding a period to the start of the folder name.
This is actually a handy trick to know even if you’re not hiding
personal things. If an app is cluttering up your gallery with its image
assets, drop a .nomedia file in its folder and other apps will stop
indexing it. The same goes for audio and video files that show up in
your multimedia apps. Developers aren’t always cautious enough with the
files they leave on a device, but it’s an easy fix.
There are also apps that claim to be “file lockers” that will store your
files securely. Many of these apps in the Play Store are actually just
doing the .nomedia trick for you. There are some that offer a way to
encrypt your files and store them in a private directory, which is maybe
overkill if all you want to do is keep people away from sensitive files
when you allow them to use your phone. Use these at your own risk—if
something goes wrong with the app, your files could end up corrupted or
locked forever.
Apps
Maybe you have that friend who likes to post embarrassing Facebook
updates on other people’s profiles. You can stymie this social assault
the next time he or she has your phone clutched in their mischievous
claw. You can lock down any app you want to keep it secure with an app
like Smart App Locker.
Keep people from nosing around in your important apps.
There are a variety of apps that accomplish the same task, but Smart App
Locker is well supported and gets high praise from users. With Smart
App Locker you can choose sensitive apps like Facebook, Gallery,
Twitter, and banking apps, and put them behind a passcode. This app
supports PINs or pattern locks, and there’s even a sneaky mode that
makes the password entry screen look like a force close dialog.
Obviously the best way to keep people out of your stuff is never to let
them touch your phone, but that’s not terribly nice, nor practical. All
it takes are a few tweaks and you can avoid undue embarrassment.
Once upon a time, in order to take a screenshot on an Android phone, you
had to install the Android developer tools. These days, you can take
screenshots on phones running Android 4.0 or later with the press of a
couple buttons.
On most Android phones, you can take a screenshot by holding down the
Sleep/wake button and the volume-down button simultaneously. Hold these
buttons down until your screen flashes.
The process differs on some phone models, though. For example, on
Samsung’s Galaxy phones—and select phones from other manufacturers that
feature a home button—hold down the power button and the home button
until the screen flashes, as pictured above. If your Android phone has a
home button, and if the standard Android method doesn’t work, then try
this power-home button combination.
To see your screenshots, head over to the Galley app.
To view your screenshot, go to the Gallery app, then look for the
“Screenshot” album. Tap it to open it, then tap the screenshot you took
to view that screenshot. Press the Share button—represented by a
sideways V shape that connects three dots—to get at sharing options,
such as messaging and email.
It can be easy to forget that your smartphone is just as much of a
computer at the PC sitting on your desk. And like all computers, things
sometimes go wrong. Files get corrupted. Apps that worked fine a week
ago decide to crap out. If an app on your Android phone has suddenly
stopped working correctly and relaunching the app didn’t help, clearing
the app caches may get things working properly again.
To start, pop open your phone’s Settings app. Scroll down and tap Apps under the Device
heading. From there, find the app that’s experiencing problems—you may
need to swipe left or right to either the Downloaded, Running, or All
sections—and tap on it.
Once you do that, you’ll be taken to an “app info” screen that provides
some technical details including the app’s version number and how much
storage space it eats up. Scroll down to the Cache section, then tap Clear cache.
The app info screen.
Finally, go back to the homescreen and try launching the problematic app
and see if that cleared up the problem. If not, you might want to go
back to the app info screen and hit both the Clear data and Clear cache buttons. Your final resort would be to uninstall the app completely, and re-download it.
