How To Track Your Lost Android Phone Without Installed Tracking App

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.
• …here’s the complete feature list

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.

 By Marc Knoll on trendblog.net

Test your Android phone's performance with these free benchmarking tools

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.

3DMark

3DMark reigns supreme for PC gamers and has made impressive headway on other platforms as the de facto standard for 3D benchmarking. The free Android version includes a flashy demo reel as well as the physics and GPU tests from the “Ice Storm” module of the Windows suite, while adding a few mobile-specific queries like battery life tests. 

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.

Just the facts, ma’am.

Basemark OS II and Basemark X

Basemark is one of the most comprehensive benchmarking suites available on Android with sibling apps that cover OS and gaming separately. The code is fresh, but the approach is old-school and will appeal to longtime PC benchmarking veterans.
Basemark OS II is geared towards productivity and general use but unlike most of the other packages here, some useful features (including the battery test) are restricted to a pay version that you’ll need to contact the developer Rightware to obtain. CPU, storage, memory, web browsing, and camera tests are all included in the free version available on Google Play, however.

 

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.

Antutu 5

Antutu, the venerable Android benchmarking standby, received a major update to version 5 in October (currently at 5.2) , addressing a few gaps in CPU and GPU testing that had opened up with age. Single-core CPU performance is now included, as core counts have begun to climb faster than developers can write the software that uses them, and diminishing returns are starting to kick in.
The GPU benchmark gets a facelift also, upping complexity and adding in the Havok Vision Engine for real-world gaming results. Full support for Lollipop, ART, and the new 64-bit hardware from Qualcomm and Nvidia means Antutu 5 is ready for the very latest hardware.

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.

-Jim Norris from greenbot

How to change your Android phone's wallpaper

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.

- Nick Mediati from greenbot

How to keep your personal stuff private when lending your phone to a friend

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.

-Ryan Whitwam from greenbot

How to take a screenshot on your Android phone

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.

 -Nick Mediati from greenbot.com

Clear your app caches to clear up Android phone issues

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.

-Nick Mediati from greenbot.com

How to turn off automatic app updates on Android and install apps manually

As convenient as it is to have your phone automatically install app updates as they become available, there are some good reasons for wanting to install apps manually. You may want to conserve your data plan usage, for example, or you may simply want to keep tighter control over what gets installed on your Android device. Sometimes the new version of a popular app might be buggy, but there's no easy way to revert to the old one, for example.
No matter your reasoning, it’s easy enough to toggle this setting and gain more control over the app updating process.

Turn off automatic app updates

Start by opening the Play Store app. Next, tap the slide-out menu button in the upper left corner, as denoted by three horizontal lines, then tap Settings. On the settings screen, tap Auto-update apps.
On the next screen, you’ll be able to choose whether you want to allow apps to automatically receive updates over Wi-Fi, whether you want to allow apps to update at any time, or whether you want to manually install all updates. For the sake of this how-to, we want to turn off auto-updates altogether, so go ahead and tap “Do not auto-update apps.”

Don’t update those apps!

At this point, the Auto-update apps option picker screen will close, taking you back to the main Google Play Settings screen. Tap your Android device’s back button to return to the Play Store’s home screen (it may be a hardware or onscreen button, depending on your device).

Manually download app updates

To install any app updates. go back to the slide-out menu in the Play Store app, then select My apps from the list. Go to the Installed screen if you aren’t there already, and look for the Updates subheading, which appears when you have apps with available updates.

 

The “My apps” screen lets you manually update apps on an indivudual basis.

If you want to install updates for all apps, go ahead and tap the green Update all button. If you want to install updates one by one, tap on the app’s name under Updates, then tap the Update button on the next screen that appears. Repeat this process for all apps you want to update.

-Nick Mediati from greenbot.com

How to Unlock an Andriod Pattern?

Method 1. Unlock Lock Pattern Using Your Email:

First method includes a simple way of logging in to your Google account and then getting rid of that lock pattern.This is easiest and most recommended way of unlocking your device. So if you have entered wrong pattern for 5 times and then if it is showing you the Forgot Lock Pattern option, then you can login through your Google account and bypass the lock pattern system on your device.

Method 2. Unlock Lock Pattern Using Command Prompt:

If you have forgotten your email too and unable to log in to your google account then the second method could be handy that includes executing few lines of script in command prompt which will allow you to write any pattern and to get into your OS . As this method includes use of command lines , so it is not that user friendly but it is the most effective way for sure. It involves a few steps :
Step 1: Connect your Android Phone to Your Computer.
Step 2 : Open command prompt as administrator.
Step 3 : Now in command prompt window type the following code carefully exactly as it is and then press  enter.
adb shell
cd /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases
sqlite3 settings.db
update system set value=0 where name=’lock_pattern_autolock';
update system set value=0 where name=’lockscreen.lockedoutpermanently';
.quit
Step 4 : Now you will some screen as shown below and then you can reboot your phone and now when your will start again then try unlocking your phone using any random lock pattern and it will work pretty fine.
Step 5 : If you face any problem repeat same steps but instead of the above code try using
adb shell rm /data/system/gesture.key
and then press enter and now try rebooting your device to see if it works

Method 3. Unlock Using Hard Reset Option:

Hard Reset is an inbuilt feature of android phones and tablets and every device has it. This method will unlock your device but will remove all user’s data and settings as well. You should use this method when none of the above methods work for you and you need to unlock your device urgently. This will remove only the data from phone memory and not from the SD card available in phone.

It involves a few steps to unlock device :

Step 1 : Switch off your phone.
Step 2 : Now while turning your phone on, you need to press some specific combination of keys. Generally it is volume up + power button in many of the android devices so try them first and if they don’t work for you so here are list of some popular device combination keys or else better way is to google it.
Nexus 7 – Volume Up + Volume Down + Power
Samsung Galaxy S3 – Volume Up + Home + Power
Motorola Droid X – Home + Power
Step 3 : Now when your phone starts up and you see the logo of your phone , leave the power but but continue holding the volume up button until you see android recovery screen.

you will see some screen like shown above. Just navigate to wipe data/factory reset using volume keys and then press Power button to select it.
Step 4 : You will see a screen as shown below :

Step 5 : After you reach to Yes option , select it by using power switch and then it will erase all data on your phone and will unlock it and so ready to be used once again .
So these were possibly all methods for unlocking Android device and to Bypass the pattern lock of android device but if you know any other methods so please do comment below and I will add your method too.
If this worked for you Please share and like.