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Applications for pumping the phone. How to improve signal reception in gps navigator on android

Screen brightness

The screen eats up the lion's share of the battery charge. First, turn on adaptive brightness control, if such a function is provided in your smartphone. In the absence of this feature, manually set the brightness to the minimum acceptable level for you.

Wallpaper

Want your battery to last longer? Then decisively and forever say "no" to animated wallpapers.

If the smartphone has an OLED display, then installing black wallpapers will help to extend the operating time. Read about why and how it works.

Time before display turns off

You can leave your smartphone on the table, and its screen will be wasted for a few more minutes, wasting precious battery power. Reduce the time before the display turns off when idle. Usually 15-30 seconds is enough. Experiment and find the best time for you.

Order in applications

Taking in hand another smartphone, you can experience a feeling of great surprise at the amount of garbage in it. Remember the correct sequence of actions with applications:

Option one: installed → did not like → deleted.
Option two: installed → do not use → deleted.

The problem for users is that they often ignore the last point. As a result, the device turns into a real dump. What's bad about it? Many applications like to live their lives. They hang out in the background, run their own processes and eat up precious memory, which increases power consumption and slows down the system.

In addition, unused applications are updated and share data, which leads to increased consumption of mobile data and even more reduction in battery life.

Come up with a monthly Smartphone Protection Day. Take some time to analyze your current collection of applications, remove irrelevant ones and search Lifehacker for more advanced analogues of existing ones.

Automation

Every day, a smartphone user is faced with a routine. Small, but necessary actions, if there are a lot of them, take a lot of time and annoy. Send something somewhere, copy, send, postpone, and so on and so forth.

The problem is solved using the IFTTT (If This Then That) automation service. What can he do? Everything. On the this moment More than a million applets (recipes) - ready-made tools for automating one or another action or task - have been created and made available in IFTTT for free.

Physical protection

Becoming more and more sophisticated, smartphones are losing their strength. If the old Nokia 3310 can play football and hammer nails, then the new iPhone or Google Pixel is much more gentle. You need to take care of the safety of your expensive electronic assistant in advance and purchase a protective case. This is especially true for outdoor activities and travel.

Plan in case of loss

The loss of a smartphone is a real tragedy. And this situation is accompanied by the loss of important and private information. In this case, Lifehacker advises using cloud storage. Now they are perfectly optimized for mobile devices and implement all the necessary functions in automatic mode.

We hope that these tips will help you use your smartphone more efficiently.

See also No. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17/09

Smartphones. When in 2007 the firm Apple launched its smart cell phone ( iPhone) is an iPhone, then its touchscreen display made a real sensation.

This unit only worked in wireless local network American firm AT&T, and other network providers began to conjure manufacturers of their cell phones it's faster to type something like this. The race began, resulting in many variants of touch screens appearing in 2008, averaging $200. provided a whole range of operations beyond just telephoning and sending texts, and also had an operating system, as a rule, the third generation. Smartphones more and more functioned in the so-called 3G-local networks (networks of the 3rd generation), providing faster browsing, receiving and forwarding electronic messages. However, the main trump card is still the touch screen. Now every provider has an "advertising" version of the smartphone, but they all struggled to compete with the iPhone. A lot is squeezed into the small body of a smartphone: there is a digital camera, a camcorder, and music player. Soon it will turn into a tiny wallet-sized computer - the so-called netbook ( netbook). Smartphones can provide a range of connected functions, including email forwarding, web browsing, GPS- navigation, and, of course, telephone connection. And how many more new ones will appear with the transition to fourth-generation networks!

Smartphones, such as Apple iPhone(above) and Blackberry Storm(below) are an assembly of individual boards.

In displays smartphone companies and Apple, and Storm capacitive are used ( projected, mutual-capacity) touch screens. The current from the battery passes through the control electrodes formed on the film substrate. These electrodes are located across the signal electrodes formed on the adjacent substrate. When an electrically conductive object, such as a fingertip, touches the display surface, the interelectrode capacitance * changes and therefore the readout signal. Most touchscreens only work when touched at one point, but the ones discussed work at two.

Do you know that?..

The accelerometer was included in the composition of the smartphone, so that he felt the change in position from "portrait" to "landscape". But there were other options as well. For example, by shaking your gadget, you can “refresh” the list of nearby restaurants while driving around the city. On the contrary, having properly fixed the smartphone, you can take a photo in low light.

Mobile mini computers ( Mobile Internet devices – MIDs) will generate more interest if their touch screens can be enlarged. Now they are optimized for one function, for example, video recording that can be uploaded to the network, or video games, and two can play, being from each other at any distance within the roaming. This concept was proposed by the company Intel, she also promotes it. A processor called atom, which enables the netbook to work with the network.

If the user changes the position of the smartphone from vertical to horizontal, the accelerometer sends a signal to the processor, and the image on the display also becomes horizontal. In the company's smartphones STMicroelectronics a micromechanical device, including a mass freely suspended on springs, changes position. The movable capacitor plate associated with it moves relative to the fixed plate, tracking the direction and speed of movement in the planes X and Y. Similarly, with the help of the second freely suspended mass, the movement in the plane is monitored Z.

By pressing the company display key Storm the microcontact closes. When the finger is released, the contact opens.

To be continued

scientific american, 2009, February, p. 80–81.
Per. from English. N.D. Kozlova

* See, for example, "Physics" No. 21, 23/2008. - Ed.

Upgrading Android

9-05-2014, 08:53

Mobile phone

The main reason why buyers prefer Android mobile devices is the ability to change a large number of standard and system platform options. Next, we will get acquainted with the main features of the "green robot" as an independent and individual solution.

In addition, we will consider hacks with which you can fully interact with the device.

"Live wallpaper

Adding Widgets

The widget is a small window that is located on the home screen electronic device. Thus, you can easily view up-to-date information about a particular development. As a result, quick access to music player, calendar events, Twitter feed and more.

Widgets make it easier to work with your Android device and open up a lot of possibilities.

Using the new keyboard

Finding a lost device

Protecting passwords

So, we figured out the most interesting methods of "pumping" and personalizing your own Android device. Thus, you can get the unique features of the platform.

It is hoped that after this you will look at own gadget differently.

Upgrading Android

9-05-2014, 08:53

Mobile phone

Some Android device owners are convinced that editing mobile device options is a complex and risky task that only an advanced group of users can handle. Needless to say, this is absolutely not the case. A large number of third-party software developers have made this process very simple and safe. Many interesting default options are used in Android. Next, we will get acquainted with the attractive features of the operating system from Google. This will allow you to get a device with individual qualities.

Create your own ringtone

Recently, the ability to set your own ringtone was considered the only feature of a mobile device that could be edited by users. There is nothing surprising in the fact that modern smartphones have such an opportunity. Owners of Android devices can easily edit the melody. In this case, you can use hundreds of applications, but we advise you to pay attention to the Ringdroid utility. It's about the simple solution assigned task.

"Live wallpaper

Distinctive Android capability, which is loved by a large number of users, are live wallpapers. "Green Robot" allows you to install on the "Desktop" of your own device not an ordinary static picture, but an animated image. At this point in time on the World Wide Web, you can easily find a large number of such decorations for the "Desktop".

Desktop personalization

Worker android screen allows you to quickly access the main functions of your mobile device. It is also possible to customize it using icons, or you can edit it entirely. appearance Android main panel. Popular utilities for manipulating the Android desktop are launchers. A lot of such software is located in the catalog Google Play. With the help of launchers, you can customize the "Desktop" to your personal preferences: edit notifications, use new shortcuts, a large number of other options are available.

Adding Widgets

A widget is a small window that is located on the home screen of an electronic device. Thus, you can easily view up-to-date information about a particular development.

The result is quick access to the music player, calendar events, Twitter feed, and more. Widgets make it easier to work with your Android device and open up a lot of possibilities.

Installing the file manager

Many people do not know that modern mobile gadgets are not much inferior to desktop computers. If you need to drive frequently own files saved on a memory card or during internal memory mobile device, you can do this by installing a special program. A common file manager for the "green robot" is the Astro program. In this case, functions like Finder for Mac OS X and Explorer for Windows are available. If to speak in simple terms, you can delete, move, archive, and send files from your own mobile device using email.

In addition, the Android device can be used as an FTP protocol, transfer / receive files using WiFi connections. You just need to download a special program.

Information about Internet traffic and available software

The battery of an Android device is the main energy source. Because of this, it is important to consider her condition. The main cause of battery drain is active applications. It is known that individual programs are functioning in the background. This means that it is not easy to complete their work. In this case, you need to use a special tool - the application manager. This utility allows you to remove various unused applications. Also, due to third-party software, it is impossible to determine the exact information about downloading files from the Internet. As a result, it will be easier to determine the cost of Internet traffic of your own mobile operator.

Using the new keyboard

Due to the fact that almost all modern mobile devices use a touch screen, some users find it difficult to enter text using their own gadget. This problem can be dealt with using third party keyboard. The corresponding program can be downloaded from the Google Play Store. For example, the most popular green robot keyboard is called Swype. This application is installed as standard in various modern Android devices. With Swype, you can enter text in a non-simple way: you only need to swipe over the letters that a word has. After that, Swype will automatically show the appropriate options.

Finding a lost device

Having lost a mobile device, the user has a lot of negative emotions. The question is not only that the device was lost, for which they paid a lot of money. In this case, the person lost personal information that was located in the device's memory. The Google Play App Store offers various tools. With their help, you will be able to find a lost smartphone. For example, the most common program can be considered Prey. Known to be completely free utility. It can be installed on Android gadgets. When a mobile device is stolen, the former owner will be able to track it using personal computer the location of the smartphone and return it back.

Protecting passwords

Due to the fact that at the moment a large number of Internet scammers have divorced in the world, they are trying to gain access to personal data. You can advise yourself to use better passwords and not save them in simple places. When you work with a lot of web services and services, it will not be easy to remember the passwords you use. In this case, you need to use one of the various password managers. 1Password and Lastpass are the most popular designs for saving user passwords.

Manipulations with built-in system options

By default, Android has many different options, but are used third party programs to work with advanced system settings. You need to download the Spare Parts utility from the Google Play catalog. Thus, it will be possible to edit the font, increase the animation speed, and so on.

We get superuser rights on a mobile device

Considering the fact that Android is an open operating system, it is not surprising that the developers have made this platform as secure as possible. Undoubtedly a plus, but an advanced user audience can get root access to Android. Thus, a large number of advantages will be available, of which we note advanced options, the ability to increase the speed of the device, and so on.

Installing a modified edition of Android

You can always install a modified firmware created by third-party developers on an Android smartphone. These modified editions of Android mainly feature improved design, advanced options and a lot of settings that are not found in regular versions of the "green robot". The most popular edition of Android can be considered the Cyangen Mod firmware. To date, almost two million owners of mobile devices use this firmware.

So, we figured out the most interesting methods of "pumping" and personalizing your own Android device. Thus, you can get the unique features of the platform. It is hoped that after this you will look at your own gadget in a different way.

Today we will make quite a working, albeit quite simple in terms of functionality, mobile phone.

Here is a list of the features that our phone will support:

- Receive and make calls
- Receive and send SMS
- Keep notebook
- show time
- Wake up at the appointed time

The phone will work in GSM networks and use a regular SIM card. It will be built on the basis of the hardware and software included in the Arduino GSM Shield kit (you can buy it on Amazon, ~$90 for a new one, and $70 for a used one). However, the Arduino GSM Shield is just a bunch of bare boards, not much fun, we need a real phone, with an interface, buttons, microphone, display, etc. A detailed description of hardware and software can be found on the open source project hosted on GitHub (Hardware and Software)

Why am I doing this project? Partly because it's fun, and partly because, although phones have become ubiquitous over the past 10-15 years, a very small percentage of people guess and understand how they work and how they work. On the surface, they seem complicated, but in fact they are assembled just like an electric kettle or microwave. And since phones are ubiquitous and popular, the world is full of companies that produce the components we need.

After spending a couple of evenings at the computer, I came across places where you could buy all the elements at fairly low prices in small quantities, and you didn’t need additional equipment to assemble them, only your, I hope, skillful hands. I may have oversimplified something, and of course it will take a little effort to assemble the phone, but trust me, assembling it is much easier than getting a degree in physics.

Over the past year, I have collected several versions of such a phone, and used them as my main device. Plus, I held classes with other electronics lovers, in which we also collected different variations of this phone. You do not need to have any special knowledge in electronics, but the ability to configure software, solder small components, have skills in laser cutting - all this will come in handy. Although if you haven’t done this before, try it anyway, but be prepared for the fact that it will be a little more difficult. Although, I would still advise starting a project only if you already have skills in soldering and working with things from Arduino, or you can find someone with experience.

Step 2: Soldering the Electronics

Although the phone has a lot of small components that are mounted to the board, nevertheless, with a little getting used to, it is quite possible to solder all this by hand.

Although the process of soldering most components is not complicated, there are some points to pay attention to:

Capacitors: be careful with the polarity of large capacitors (1000 uf), they can explode if soldered on the wrong side. For reference, pay attention to the orange stripe.

Polarity: other components with polarity: including super capacitor, diodes, ATmega1284P microcontroller, M10 GSM module, socket SIM cards, microphone. Components without polarity: microphone, buttons, small capacitors, resistors.

Step 4: Solving Communication Problems

The phone has many components that are responsible for working with the network, their incorrect settings can lead to problems with connecting to the network. If Connect is lit on the display without disappearing, you can be sure that something has gone wrong.

Below I will give some of the most common reasons for this behavior. If you don’t see anything on the display at all, then you need to check the soldering points of the components, and make sure that the software has risen as it should and without errors.

What to check:

Did you forget to insert the SIM card?
Is the SIM card socket properly soldered? What about a 22 ohm resistor (the one that connects the SIM card socket and the GSM module)? Is everything ok with the GSM module?
Is the antenna soldered correctly?
Is the 0 ohm resistor soldered correctly? (the one on the M10 GSM module and antenna connection)
Try to get out of the room to a place with a definitely good signal.

Debugging

You can continue debugging the phone by communicating with the GSM module from the computer using the microcontroller as a proxy. To do this, download SerialProxy to your phone via cable, open it on a computer and specify the data transfer rate equal to 9600, and as the end of the line - “carriage return”. After a couple of seconds you should see: "READY
AT
OK". This indicates that the GSM module is ready to receive AT commands. A detailed description of the commands can be found in the documentation for the GSM module.

Basic commands:

AT- test command, should return OK.
AT CREG?— checking the status of registration in the network. Response of the form: "CREG 0,N", where N can be 0 (device not registered), 1 (registration passed), 2 (network search), 3 (registration request denied), 5 (registration passed, roaming)
AT CPBS="SM"- choice phone book sim cards.

Step 5: Using Your Phone

So the very joyful moment has come when you can start calling friends and friends 🙂
At least I hope it worked out for you! However, there are still just a couple of moments left.

Phone unlock.
On the first successful start, the phone will be locked, its screen will be blank. To activate, press any button, the date and time will be displayed on the screen, now press the top left button - hooray, the phone is unlocked.

Phone lock.
To lock your phone, press the top left button. In this state, he will still receive SMS and calls.

calls.
To make calls, just dial desired number and press Call (everything is as in regular phone), to delete the entered digits, use the * button.

Step 6: Making the Body

I made the case from veneer on a laser cnc. You need to be very careful with the dimensions so that the board fits into the case and, of course, that the places with the holes coincide on the back and front. The case diagram can be found on GitHub (link).

Well, it seems the device for dialing to the moon is ready 🙂

learn about the most interesting instructions once a week, share your own and participate in the drawings!

An ignorant user of a Chinese or just an inexpensive phone, anticipating the pleasure of communicating with a desired gadget, almost always gets a crooked stock software, unfinished applications, sometimes inadequate battery consumption, and in addition it is quite likely to get hold of a bunch of viruses. Fortunately, in Android, a lot can be changed and a lot can be removed. This is what we will do.

1. Prepare the ground

First, unlock the bootloader and install custom recovery (TWRP). This is different for every smartphone. So it's better to use Google. Next, download the SuperSU root manager and flash it using custom recovery (turn on the smartphone with the volume up key pressed, then the Install button and select the SuperSU ZIP file on the memory card).

If there is no custom recovery, you can try to get root permissions with the help special programs: Root Dashi, KingRoot. However, these tools can break the system so that you have to overwrite the system (firmware) partition. Still, it's better to wait, while simultaneously studying forums in Russian, English, German, Chinese and other languages \u200b\u200b- everything where there is a topic for discussing your device.

When the recovery is installed on the device, be sure to make a backup of the entire system. He will greatly help you out if, as a result of subsequent manipulations with the device, you get a brick.

Making a backup in TWRP recovery (and there are no others now) is easy. Boot into recovery by turning on the device while holding down the volume up key, then press Backup and swipe the slider to the right. When the operation is finished, just reboot the device: Reboot → System.

In the event of an emergency situation (the smartphone does not boot, the coconut does not grow), boot into recovery, click Restore, select a backup from the proposed ones and again swipe the restore slider - the system will return exactly to the state it was in at the time of the backup.

Install BusyBox

Quote from Wikipedia: "BusyBox is a set of UNIX command line utilities used as the main interface in embedded operating systems". In other words, it is a set of console Linux utilities, which significantly extends the standard command line Android.

As a regular smartphone user, you are unlikely to use them, but many tools (for example, for tuning the kernel) require it to be present in the system. So, we install BusyBox from the market, run it, close the pop-up window and click Install. All that remains is to close the program. No reboot required.

Install Xposed

Xposed, as you probably already know, is a tool for customizing the interface and behavior of Android. The Lollipop and Marshmallow version can be downloaded from the official XDA thread. I recommend installing XposedInstaller_3.1.1.apk or more new version. It will automatically determine the version of Android, the type and bitness of the processor and, based on this data, will offer correct version setup file to download. You just have to install it and restart your smartphone.

2. Remove unnecessary and dangerous trash

There are legends about how much manufacturers like to stuff firmware with unnecessary applications. And the Chinese can slip a Trojan. But this is usually not done by the manufacturer, but by the seller. So immediately after buying an incomprehensible (Chinese) device, we reset the settings to the factory settings and cleanly flash stock firmware from the manufacturer (using standard or custom recovery). After that, we check the smartphone with several antiviruses.

Next, you should disable all the incomprehensible trash built into the firmware. We go to "Settings → Applications". Open the "All" tab (for Android 5.1) or switch to the "All applications" mode, and then press the three dots in the upper right and select "Show system processes» (for Android 6+). Opening the unknown or not desired application: Click "Disable". If the button is gray, then there are two options: the manufacturer wants his useless application to be disabled, or disabling this program can lead to serious malfunctions of the system.

The ones that don't turn off standard means, can be frozen using Titanium Backup. But be careful. There is a chance not only to get system errors, but also a cyclic reboot or an endless download. So backups are our everything. I recommend deleting programs as a last resort when there is not enough space in the / system section.

3. Change display settings

First, we change the DPI of the display using the Easy DPI Changer application. DPI stands for Dots Per Inch and means the number of dots per inch of the screen. The larger the value, the larger the elements will be in relation to the screen size.

For some unknown reason, many manufacturers set inadequate DPI values, ignoring the laws of logic. For example, the standard DPI of a five-inch Gigaset Me smartphone with a screen resolution of 1920×1080 is 480, which corresponds to a screen size of approximately 4.7 and leads to an excessive increase in the size of application controls. By setting the DPI to 443, this can be fixed.

However, it is not necessary to set the correct DPI at all. If the information on the screen seems too small for you - feel free to raise the DPI, too large - lower it.

We also need to save our eyes in the dark. To do this, install the application CF.lumen. This is the so-called night mode, or more precisely, the blue filter, which turns on when it's dark outside the window and turns off during the daytime. In the evening, the screen will turn yellow, which has a beneficial effect on vision and makes it easier to fall asleep.

4. Stretch the skin

No matter how strange it may sound, but you can change the theme not only in custom firmware and firmware from some manufacturers (hello, Sony), but also in quite standard stock Android. There are at least two apps for this: Substratum and HK Theme Manager. The first one uses the RRO resource reassignment mechanism that appeared in Android 6.0 and, accordingly, should work normally at least on the drain. The second is an Xposed module that allows you to apply themes for CyanogenMod on devices with stock firmware.

I note that, in addition, Substratum also allows you to replace the loading animation, fonts, sounds and wallpapers.

With icons, everything is much easier. It is enough to install the desired icon pack from the Play Store and a launcher that supports their use. A very good option: Pixel icon Pack - round app icons in Google Pixel style.

5. Set up a cellular network

Usually, after buying a smartphone abroad, we are interested in what networks it can work in, what frequencies it supports. Network Signal Guru will help here. This monster not only shows a lot of useful (and incomprehensible to 99% of users) information, but also allows you to fine-tune the networks connected to your smartphone.

In order to find out about the supported types of networks, just click on the three dots at the top and select Bandlocking. In this mode, after selecting the appropriate mode, you can see the supported network types in the pop-up menu. To disable them, simply uncheck the boxes. For example, if you uncheck B1 in WCDMA, then 3G networks will stop working and the smart will only switch between 2G and 4G. To turn the mode back on, just check the box again or reboot the device.

The point of disabling 3G is to force the smartphone to use 4G even in conditions of poor reception and wean it from jumping between 3G and 4G, which can lead to connection drops and, for example, cached YouTube videos. At the same time, you can’t turn on the “4G only” mode either, otherwise those who try to get through will receive a “Busy” signal (provided that the smartphone or operator does not support VoLTE, as is most often the case).

6. Upgrade Android

For tuning the system, we cannot do without Xposed, the very system that brought the concept of tweaks from iOS to Android. You should have installed Xposed in the first step, but here is a small list of recommended modules for installation. They are available in the directory of the application itself.

Android N-ify - mod completely replaces the status bar with the one from Android 7 with all switches and animations. Plus opens up the ability to edit switches. In the settings, useful inscriptions appear under the names of the options. There is a convenient switch between the last two running applications by double-clicking the Home button.
StatusBarSleep - allows you to turn off the display by double tapping on the statusbar, as in CyanogenMod.
HideBatteryLowAlert . Removes the low battery notification pop-up. Are you constantly looking in the upper right corner?
VolumeSteps+ - allows you to adjust the number of volume steps for more precise adjustment.
Network Speed Indicator - Shows the speed of incoming and outgoing traffic in the status bar.
Advanced Power Menu + - an extended menu for rebooting the device with items for rebooting into recovery, bootloader and so on.
Statusbar Download Progress - shows the progress of downloading data from the network in the form of a thin bar above the status bar.

And of course, do not forget about the GravityBox module - a powerful tool for customizing the firmware to your needs. It is a collection of the functionality of the most popular modules + interesting features torn from different firmware. However, keep in mind that some features may conflict with other Xposed modules.

7. Making changes to the system settings

Now let's tweak it a little. system settings. They are stored in the /system/build.prop file, and, as you can guess from its name, this is a description of the configuration of a specific Android build for a specific smartphone. This text file describes what DPI the system should set, what are the settings for the memory cleaning system, how much memory to allocate applications, what mobile and Wi-Fi network settings to set on first power-up, and much more (Android version, shell version, device name , firmware build date, and so on).

A very convenient build.prop editor is built into Kernel Adiutor, but no one forbids using a regular editor (the main thing is that it allows you to open files in root mode). But do not forget that the system reads build.prop only when the device is turned on, therefore, a reboot is needed to apply any changes.

Consider the most interesting lines for us:

ro.product.model and ro.product.manufacturer contain the smartphone model and its manufacturer (company name), respectively. By replacing these lines, you can make the Play Store think that you have a different smartphone and open access to more software. Examples of the model and manufacturer can be found on the web. After the substitution, do not forget to clear the Play Store data (it is done in the same way as in the case of disabling the software, but by pressing the "Erase data" button instead of "Disable") and reboot.
hw.qemu.mainkeys. It takes only two values: 0 - show the on-screen navigation keys (those are the three buttons at the bottom of the screen, which will make some iPhone fans laugh), 1 - do not show the buttons. Unfortunately, the operation of the sub-display buttons does not depend on this parameter in any way. They both worked and will work for any value. You can read more about the struggle with buttons in the article “The Tale of the Three Buttons”.
debug.sf.nobootanimation. A value of 1 disables the loading animation, which slightly increases its speed. Setting it to 0 or deleting the line returns the animation to its place.
ro.telephony.default_network tells the system which mode to switch to mobile network while loading. The value is a number, which can be found as follows: dial * # * # 4636 # * # * in the dialer and click on the “Phone information” item. In the "Preferred network type" menu, count down to the desired mode. The count starts from 0. That is, for a 3G smartphone, the values will be: WCDMA preferred (3G preferred) is 0, GSM Only (2G only) is 1, WCDMA only (3G only) is 2, and so on. Counted up to the required - wrote down the figure in the value. Now, immediately after the reboot, the network will be activated exactly in the mode that is written in build.prop.

With the help of simple manipulation, the smartphone can be made to work in GSM or 4G only mode. To do this, you need to enable the TD-SCDMA, GSM and LTE mode. We don’t have TD-SCDMA in our country, so only GSM or 4G will be caught.

8. Change the default software

launcher

One of the most important programs that affect the user experience. The stock launcher of many inexpensive smartphones is terribly inconvenient: it is either a standard Android launcher (which is not so bad), or the product of crazy programmers. Well, let's fix the situation.

- launcher from Asus, pre-installed on all smartphones with ZenUI. It works very fast, has many effects, is perfectly configurable, perfectly Russified, works stably and quickly, eats little memory, and the most important advantage is the complete absence of advertising and the entire arsenal of functions in free version(there is simply no charge).
Action Launcher 3 is a launcher stuffed with a huge number of interesting features. Here, for example, there is a side menu for quick start applications; the second side menu, where you can place icons and widgets that will be available from any application (a sort of quick home screen); the function of adjusting the colors of the launcher to the colors of the wallpaper; icon size alignment function; the concept of Shutter, when the application widget appears on the screen by swiping from the icon; the concept of Cover, when the folder is an icon of the application being launched, and the folder itself is opened with a swipe; and even support for quick menus, which appeared in Android 7. Externally, the launcher is similar to Pixel, but can be very different from it. The only negative is that most of the features are available only in the paid version.
Arrow Launcher is a fast and original launcher with integration with Microsoft services. The interface is divided into several screens: recent calls and messages, reminders, recent documents (including photos taken) + the ability to add different screens with widgets. Switching between these screens is the same as switching between desktops. In general, the shell is original and comfortable.
ASAP Launcher is a launcher built around a simple idea: bring all the most necessary and frequently used functions to your desktop. There is no desktop as such, but there are five screens: the main one with the current weather and a slide-out panel for launching the most used applications, the screen with the latest / most frequent contacts, the weather summary screen, the TODO list screen and the calendar events screen. Plus, a swipe from the right side of the screen opens a panel with quick settings ( quick settings just like from Android 5+, but arranged in a vertical line), and on the left - a list of all applications sorted alphabetically.
Yahoo Aviate Launcher is a launcher that adapts to you. Automatically categorizes all applications, rearranges the desktop throughout the day, making information and applications dynamic (for example, showing a music control widget right on the desktop). Able to suggest interesting places to visit nearby. Fast and undemanding to resources.

Gallery

QuickPic is a very simple and lightweight gallery. Almost no ads, convenient photo management, smooth and fast animations, the presence of all the functions necessary for the average user. Works great even on very weak devices. Able to talk about new images that have appeared on the device. As a bonus: cloud integration and a simple image editor.
Google Photos - integration with Google Drive, the ability to auto-upload photos to the cloud, unlimited storage for compressed photos, good tool to create collages, fast work. However, the main highlight of this app is neural network based search. The application uses the Google server to recognize what is shown in the photo. Therefore, you can enter in the search, for example, "beach", and the program will show you all the pictures of the beaches, even if you have not marked them in any way before. And this applies not only to beaches, but also to any other things: objects, buildings, cities, and even dog breeds.

Dialer

Dialer is the second most used program. Unfortunately, on Chinese (and not only) smartphones, the quality of its performance leaves much to be desired.

2GIS Dialer - can search for organizations nearby. With it, you can find out, for example, the phone number of the passport office or the local post office without any Google or Yandex. However, the database of numbers mainly covers cities of federal significance: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sevastopol.
Truedialer is the most popular dialer on Google Play. Two cool features: it can (in some cases) identify the caller, even if it is not in your address book, includes a huge database of "unwanted" numbers (advertising agencies, collectors), which allows you to immediately calculate them and block them.
Last updated by at February 20, 2017 .

Screen brightness

Wallpaper

Want your battery to last longer? Then decisively and forever say "no" to animated wallpapers.

If the smartphone has an OLED display, then installing black wallpapers will help to extend the operating time. Read about why and how it works.

Time before display turns off

Order in applications

Picking up another smartphone, you can experience a feeling of great surprise at the amount of garbage in it. Remember the correct sequence of actions with applications:

Option one: installed → did not like → deleted.
Option two: installed → do not use → deleted.

In addition, unused applications are updated and share data, which leads to increased consumption of mobile data and even more reduction in battery life.

Automation

The problem is solved using the IFTTT (If This Then That) automation service. What can he do? Everything. At the moment, more than a million applets (recipes) - ready-made tools for automating a particular action or task - have been created and posted in IFTTT for free.

Physical protection

Plan in case of loss

We hope that these tips will help you use your smartphone more efficiently.

Smartphone without exaggeration can be called one of the most useful inventions of recent years. Before smartphones, we used ordinary cellular phones, and therefore it was very easy to get used to a more technological descendant. Ultimately, the development of the display industry and mobile energy-efficient processors has given us incredibly powerful and easy-to-use devices. Yes, smartphones are voracious, but for this, the user gets access to almost all the necessary functions from anywhere in space literally “from the hand”.

Unfortunately, a smartphone out of the box cannot be called 100% ready to use when it comes to maximum efficiency. Below we offer a list of items, after consulting and completing which you can safely call yourself a Smartphone Power User.

Energy optimization

Anyone who recently switched from a conventional mobile to a smartphone will certainly notice a sharply reduced device battery life. This is payback for a large and eye-pleasing screen, computing power and a software shell capable of fulfilling all the whims of the user.

How to increase the battery life of a smartphone? To get started, you can go to default settings screen, since it is the screen that eats up the lion's share of the charge.

Disable automatic installation brightness and set it to the minimum acceptable value. Naturally, in the summer this value will have to be increased.
We reduce the time until the display turns off when the smartphone is idle. By default, this parameter is approximately one minute, but in practice 15 seconds is enough. Experiment and find the best time for you.
Say "NO" to live wallpapers on Android
If you have a smartphone with an AMOLED display, then setting a black background as wallpaper can reduce screen power consumption by 20-30%
Android owners can make managing key power-consuming features easier and more accessible with the Power Toggles widget. It allows you to not only control the brightness of the display in one tap, but also turn on / off other voracious things (Wi-Fi, 3G, GPS, synchronization, and so on).

If it is critical for you to notify your family/friends/partners that your smartphone is running out of battery, then pay attention to this application.

Communication strategy

Obviously, keep Bluetooth, 3G and WiFi is better when you need them. You can implement quick access to them using the same Power Toggles. In general, it is always worth choosing a less expensive way to be online. If you have available Wi-Fi - use it instead of 3G. When it comes to using your smartphone as a modem, then don't miss our analysis of the most efficient way to connect.

Putting things in order in applications

Picking up another smartphone, you can experience a feeling of great surprise at the amount of garbage in it. Yes, applications are exactly what turns a smartphone into a universal tool for everything in the world, but this business also needs order:

We accept as a rule the sequence of actions “set - did not like it - deleted it” and “it costs - I don’t use it - deleted it”. Often the last point is ignored, as a result of which the device turns into a real dump. What's bad about it? The fact is that many applications like to live their lives hanging out in the background, running their services and eating up precious memory. This increases not only energy consumption. This reduces system performance, may result in additional costs traffic (hence battery).
Introducing the monthly Smartphone Protection Day. On this day, we spend a little time analyzing the current collection of applications, removing irrelevant ones and searching the Web for more advanced analogues of existing ones.

Automation

Above, we wrote about a widget with which you can quickly manually enable and disable certain functions. If you pay attention, you will notice that the demand for these very functions is associated with other parameters. This could be location, time of day, or other condition. This is the key to automation. Android owners have access to chic tools with which they can mobile friend becomes an order of magnitude smarter and does certain things according to conditions predefined by the user. This, of course, is about Tasker and Llama, as well as their more casual brother Atooma.

Most users fail to learn how to use these tools due to their perceived complexity and time consuming nature. However, with the development of such tools, the user actually moves to a new level of handling mobile device, and in the future you will wonder how you managed to live without the same Tasker and Llama.

Information entry

If iOS users are pretty tight-lipped about choosing an alternative standard keyboard, then Android boasts at least a dozen sane keyboards from third-party developers. It's worth getting started with SwiftKey, TouchPal and Smart Keyboard PRO. It is possible that their functions will be quite enough. You can also try out the stock Jelly Bean keyboard, if the developer of your smartphone is in no hurry to update the operating system.

In addition to keyboards for ordinary users, in the Google Play Store you can find extended versions like Hacker's Keyboard . Take some time to explore the keyboards presented in the app store, and you will definitely find the best solution for you.

Operating system and updates

If your OS does not know how to do something by default, then this does not mean that it does not know how to do it at all. Among iOS users there is a large army of jailbreak fans. This procedure removes the restrictions imposed on the system by the manufacturer and opens up many new possibilities.

Camera

The apple smartphone has a great camera that can give even more original pictures in combination with specialized applications. Android flagships have also managed to get high-quality cameras, and the presence of many alternative camera applications in the Google Play Store allows you to find the best tool for photography.

In general, you should not expect the same from a smartphone camera that a good DSLR can give, but for artistic photography, a smartphone is perfect.

Keep your smartphone under control

A smartphone is designed to help a person in life, but not to control his life. Unfortunately, the simplicity and convenience of these devices, combined with social applications, make people real digital addicts. It is important to understand which of the available smartphone features will benefit you, and which ones are better to refuse.

If you feel that your smartphone is eating up too much of your time, then it's time to start taking some action.

We refuse social applications. How much do you need them? With a probability of more than 90%, you do not need them for work, since for work activities enough mail and messenger. Undoubtedly, social networks have become a part of life, but you should not allow virtual communication to replace real communication, otherwise at some point you will find yourself in the role of an adherent of the Like Cult, and it will be difficult to get out of there, because this lifestyle will have time to become the norm.
We refuse entertainment resources. This is another evil of the modern Internet, which is a terrible time killer along the way. Try replacing surfing through galleries of funny pictures with reading interesting and useful ones. e-books. Funny cats are good, but self-improvement is definitely better.

15.04.2020

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