The Nokia Lumia 800 has finally gone on sale after much hype. It’s a huge launch for both Nokia and Microsoft, the former having begun the process of phasing out its use of the Symbian OS, and the latter hoping that it can finally gain a foothold in the mobile world.

Windows Phone is a great OS, as polished as any other smartphone platform. However it is also very new, and its success may depend on how well its users adapt to some of the new concepts it introduces.

If you’re new to the Lumia 800, or any other Windows Phone device, check out our collection of tips, tutorials and apps below to help get you started.

Customise the Windows Phone home screen

Keep your Windows Phone up to date

Use the Maps app in Windows Phone

Get started with Zune Desktop

Set up and use email in Windows Phone

Switching from Android to Windows Phone

Top 10 Windows Phone apps

Best news and sport widgets

HTC News
The news widgets included with HTC phone sis a top pick. Colourful, easy to read, and powerful, the widget lets you select multiple news sources. Many news reports include a thumbnail.

New York Times
This ultra-simple widget from the New York Times, has one major draw: a quick way to see headlines, culled from the largest newspaper in the world.

Last Earthquake
No fuss or muss here: the Earthquake widget shows a quick summary of the most recent earthquake in the world.

SportsTap
SportsTap uses a trendy and colourful design to show the latest sports headlines. You can pick your favourite team, and large scroll arrows let you see additional scores.

Google Scoreboard
Not to be bested by Yahoo’s Sportacular, the Google Scoreboard widget features a more extensive array of sports – including Rugby and many leagues of football. The interface is also quick and easy to use.

Pulse
Pulse is a well-designed news reader that shows a row of pictures with quick news headlines. Select the widget, and you’ll see the full Pulse app with multiple stories on the page.

Google Reader
The Google Reader ties into your news feed on a computer browser so you can select the sources and see a one-line summary. It’s robust but not as colourful as Pulse.

FeedR
FeedR is a highly textual news widget that shows more info than Pulse or Google Reader, but without the graphics. For those who just need the facts, it presents more info on a small space.

Huffington Post
This simple widget shows a thumbnail pict and a quick news summary. There are two versions – small and large – but both are designed for a quick headline and not too much text.

Yahoo Sportacular
This app used to be an indie app but is now part of Yahoo. As a widget, you can view the score for your favourite team. Select the widget to see scores for all favourites.

ESPN SportsCenter
With just a bit more flair, but also a large ESPN logo on the widget, the Scorecenter widget provides the score for your favourite team.

Engadget
This gadget blog tends to report tech news fast and furiously. The widget flashes tech news headlines quickly. Selecting any story takes you to the full app.

With the Blackberry reliant on always-on data for its Push email services, including the extended social networking angle in the shape of Facebook and Twitter. The battery is more likely to take a hit when working for extended periods away from the office with no access to a mains point. So you’ll need to ensure that there’s enough left in the tank to make calls or to get you home at the end of the day (GPS). In this tutorial we show you how easy it to conserve battery life by following these simple steps.

Step 1: Adjust your backlight
The first step is to head to the main menu and look for the options icon (spanner), select this by pushing down on your trackball/pad and then scroll down to find the Screen/Keyboard sub-menu. Inside this menu look for the Backlight brightness field. Now highlight the number and with the trackball/pad choose a lower value. However move to step 2 before saving.

Step 2: Adjust your backlight timeout
Whilst in the above screen from step 1 you can also adjust your backlight time out. Simply use your trackball/pad again to scroll to where it says ‘Backlight Timeout’ and reduce the timeout to suite. The Automatically Dim Backlight option can also be left on to improve battery life. Once you are happy with your selection press the menu key and click save.

Step 3: Enable Auto on/off
The best way to conserve battery power is to simply turn the phone off and the Blackberry has a handy Auto on/off setting that you can use to do just that. Head to the options menu and then scroll down to access the Auto on/off menu. Once inside you can specify what times to turn on and off the phone during weekdays or weekends. Press the menu key to save your changes.

Step 4: Turn off your GPS
Another way to save battery life is to turn off your GPS location service and turn this back on when required. Once more you need to head to the options menu and scroll to Advanced options and select this. Locate the GPS sub-option and enter this. Next to where it says ‘GPS Services’ highlight the option and push down on the trackball/pad to change this to Location Off. Press the menu key to save the changes before exiting.

Step 5: Turn off Data/Wi-Fi
The biggest drain on your battery life will be Wi-Fi and mobile data, so if you are simply making calls you can disable these to prolong battery life. Head to the main menu and look for the ‘Manage Connections’ icon. Select this and you’ll see the Wi-Fi option listed. Highlight this and push down on the trackball/pad to remove the tick – thus turning it off. Data services are held under the Mobile Network Option so choose this to quickly turn off the data services. Press the menu key to save any changes (before exit move to step 6).

Step 6: Turn off Bluetooth
Another source of constant battery drain is Bluetooth and you’ll find the option to turn this off in the steps shown in Step 5. Essentially all you need to do is scroll to where it says Bluetooth and once again push down on the trackball/pad to disable it. Press the back button to exit and return to the main menu.

Step 7: Close down running programs
Similar to a lot of smartphones the Blackberry can perform multi-tasking operations. Unfortunately a lot of the programs don’t close properly, so you’ll find these can be running in the background zapping battery life. To ensure they are closed properly go to the main menu and press the menu key. From the drop down menu choose ‘Switch Application’. This will then produce a list of all the programs currently running. Using the trackball/pad move to the required application and select it. Now press the menu key and choose close to exit the application.

Step 8: Keep an eye on data-enabled applications
Applications such as Facebook and Twitter can send notifications to your phone, which of course uses data to do so. With this in mind it’s a good idea to check the settings of each applications to control how often updates are sent. Taking UberTwitter – as an example – launch the program and press the menu key. Now go to options and run through the wizard until you get to ‘Timeline Refresh Delay and adjust the time to suite. Note if you prefer you can also un-tick the option ‘Add location to every tweet’ and use your cell tower for location, this way you are not using the GPS which will help reduce power consumption (though at the cost of accuracy of course).

Step 9: Download 3^rd party battery monitoring software
The default battery icon is not allays the best method of visualising your phones battery life, so instead you could download an alternative from the Blackberry App store. Simply launch the App Store and do a search for battery status. You’ll then get various paid for apps and one free program called battery watch which is what we installed. You can launch the software via the download folder – held under the main menu – or move the icon to your home screen if you prefer. This will then provide you with quicker access to battery status.

As part of setting up your new Windows Phone device, you’ll almost certainly have either created a new Windows Live ID or used an existing one – such a thing is a fundamental part of using Windows Phone online. Which means you’ll automatically have email access to a Hotmail Inbox – the default is to have this on one of the foremost homescreen tiles. But what about your Gmail account? What about your company email? What about your old ISP email account? Don’t worry, these are easy to add and access too.

Step 1: Hotmail is a given
First things first though. Your Hotmail email account will be in place, tap on the homescreen ‘Hotmail’ tile to get to this, your Hotmail/Live.com/Live.co.uk mailbox. You’ll probably already be very familiar with swiping this view up and down (to read other messages) and left and right (to view just ‘unread’ or ‘urgent’ items), which is good because this is the application that will consolidate all your email.

Step 2: And there’s more…
On the right hand side of the toolbar you’ll see a small panel with ‘…’ on it, the shortcut symbol for ‘More’. Tap it and you’ll see two things happen. Well, three including the toolbar floating up the screen. The existing toolbar icons gain descriptions, which may be helpful if you’ve always wondered what the icons meant! Most importantly though, extra functions come into view, including the interesting ‘add email account’.

Step 3: Email account types
Tap on ‘add email account’ and you’ll see a variety of other common email account types – we’re going to add a Gmail one, a corporate account and a legacy ISP account, all of which are handled here.

Step 4: Adding a Gmail account
Starting with the simplest, Gmail, tap on ‘Google’ and enter your Gmail address and password.

Step 5: There will be a short delay…
After a few seconds while your mailbox is queried and mail headers retrieved, your Gmail should appear in the usual way, but this time all through the email client in Windows Phone!

Step 6: Access to your new account
But how to get to this email in future? Handily, Windows Phone saves you having to ‘pin’ anything to the homescreen by automatically adding a new tile for each email account to the homescreen. As at Windows Phone 7, it’s a ‘dumb’ panel, but this should be improved in the upcoming Mango update. You’ll also see each new mailbox appear as its own entity in the homescreen ‘applications’ list, for convenience.

Step 7: Editing your signature
Having got into your new (in this case, Gmail) mailbox, tap on ‘…’ again and tap on ‘settings’ – there’s a lot you can tweak for email retrieval! First stop is to edit your email signature, you can have multiple lines, so knock yourself out and put in any contact information you need to plus, yes, perhaps leave in the obligatory ‘Sent from my Windows Phone’ bit so that people know you’re replying while mobile and therefore many not have responded in your usual depth.

Step 8: Advanced settings and data types
Also well worth diving into are the ‘synchronisation settings’. For ‘Download new content’, if you’re offered ‘as items arrive’ then it’s worth a try. Don’t worry too much about your smartphone using extra battery power doing this – a Windows Phone smartphone is going to be online all the time anyway. Depending on the email source, you may also be offered the chance to synchronise Contacts and Calendar – worth taking if you’re a big Google fan, in this case, as all your Gmail contacts (etc.) will come down from the cloud.

Step 9: Corporate Exchange email
Another way to add an email account is to go to ‘Settings’ on your homescreen and tap on ‘email & accounts’. Tap on ‘add an account’ and you’ll see the same choices as before. Let’s get going with a corporate email account now. Assuming your company uses a Microsoft Exchange server, tap on ‘Outlook’ and then enter your email address and password. After a few seconds, you’ll be bounced towards a more corporate login page, with a field for username and (importantly) ‘domain’ – this is where the Exchange server sits – check with your IT department if you’re not sure what to put here.

Step 10: IMAP and POP3 email
If you need to access any other email account type in the world, you should find that the ‘other account’ option suffices. Windows Phone will try and pick up mailbox settings from your email address, but if it can’t then it’ll pop up an ‘Advanced’ button, taking you to a new section of the wizard. Pick the type (“Exchange” or “Internet email”), with the latter including all older POP3 and IMAP4 mailboxes – be warned that you’ll need details of incoming and outgoing mail servers and any authentication. The chances are that you have all this written down somewhere from your last set up of a PC or Mac email application? If in doubt, ask your ISP or email provider, as appropriate.

Step 11: A real pleasure
Once set up, all these accounts appear in the same way on your Windows Phone homescreen. And, with the OS’s smooth kinetic scrolling and behind the scenes multitasking, you’ll hopefully find that mobile email is a real pleasure on Windows Phone.

Created at first as a competitor to Apple’s iTunes and iPods, Microsoft’s Zune software has been through a rocky few years. But it’s now pretty mature and, with the rise of Microsoft’s SkyDrive and Windows Phone 7, makes for a well managed interface between Windows media and your shiny new smartphone. Having said all that, many of its functions are best off managed directly from the phone and, in addition, there are a few notes and gotchas to be aware of when using Zune Desktop – here are some pointers if you’re new to the Windows Phone platform and its Windows (media-centric) connectivity software.

Step 1: Platforms and requisites
There are huge caveats before we start. Obviously, you’ve got to have a PC running Windows. Ideally Windows 7 – if you have Vista then there’s an extra ‘Platform pack’ that you’ll be prompted to install when you first try to do something interesting in Zune Desktop. Secondly, Zune Desktop (which you should grab directly from zune.net, rather than using a CD that might have come with your phone) takes a while to install fully. Allow a good 30 minutes. Thirdly, so does Microsoft Live Essentials, which is also needed, if you haven’t got it on your hard disk already. Allow another 30 minutes.

Step 2: Commercial interests
Next, bear in mind Zune Desktop’s origins and Microsoft’s commercial intentions – Zune Desktop is fully functional in many areas but is most definitely slanted towards media and towards getting you to buy (or, in some cases, rent) apps, DRM-ed music, videos and more from Microsoft’s Marketplace. You’ll probably want to do some buying anyway, so all this commercialism isn’t necessarily a problem, but we wanted to warn you anyway. Zune Desktop may act a little fast and loose with your online wallet!

Step 3: Eye candy
An hour or two (and a few cups of tea) later, you’re up and running and admiring the eye candy that characterises Zune Desktop. In many ways, it’s done to mirror the Metro UI in Windows Phone 7 itself, with sliding panes, thumbnails of your content as playback window backdrops, and plenty of drag and drop. Zune Desktop’s core modules are ‘quickplay’, ‘collection’, ‘marketplace’, ‘social’ and ‘phone’, each of which we’ll dive into below.

Step 4: ‘quickplay’
‘quickplay’ is for people choosing to use Zune Desktop as their primary media player. OK, that’s possibly unlikely, but note for now that you can right click on any media item and choose ‘Pin to Quickplay’, giving you a bookmark system for favourite videos, photos and tracks.

Step 5: Windows media content
‘collection’ is where most of your media (on your Windows PC) is catalogued, here showing the music files found. Note the tabs for videos, pictures and podcasts. It’s a competent organisational system, so have a browse around.

Step 6: Video handling
If media on your PC isn’t picked up automatically, you can drag and drop it into the Zune Desktop window or (failing that) into the ready made ‘Zune’ shortcuts in Windows Explorer. There’s another caveat to note here in that these videos aren’t the files that your phone will end up playing – Zune Desktop transcodes everything down to lower resolution and bitrate to save space on the phone. This does introduce a delay later on when syncing your phone as you’ve got to wait for this process to finish.

Step 7: Sharing a photo from Zune Desktop
If you’ve created media on your Windows Phone then it’ll appear in these tabs, ready for onward sharing. For example, to share a photo you’ve taken (here displayed in ‘pictures’), click on the pop-up icon labelled ‘Edit and share with Windows Live Photo Gallery’.

Step 8: SkyDrive upload
Your photo then gets uploaded to your SkyDrive account and you can highlight any images there and ‘Share’ them with the world. Unfortunately, any descriptions and tags from Windows Live Photo Gallery seem to get lost, but perhaps this is a glitch that Microsoft can fix. You’ll be given the chance to choose to share at full resolution (recommended, as this is something that can’t currently be done on the phone).

Step 9: Your photo in place
And here’s the uploaded image in place in your Photos stash on Windows Live in the cloud. It’s true that this whole process could involve less steps, let’s see how the software evolves.

Step 10: Podcasts too
There’s also a (rudimentary) ‘podcasts’ section of ‘collection’, where you can paste in the RSS feed URLs of podcasts you love and they’ll be auto-gathered and synced later to your phone. There’s no podcast directory, mind you, so you’ll have to look up and type (or paste) in the right addresses to get started.

Step 11: Buying and renting things
‘marketplace’ is the main place in Zune Desktop where you buy stuff, of course. For example, click on ‘videos’ and you can then browse through commercial films, view their trailers and then buy or rent them online in either desktop-optimised or device-optimised formats. Note that the ‘search’ box at the top right of Zune Desktop works right across all content types in ‘marketplace’ and is a good way to find items that match a certain name (see also main image, left).

Step 12: ‘social’ and ‘phone’
Finally, ‘social’ is a messaging and contacts system that seems geared towards Xbox gamers and Zune music users (you’re identified as ‘PLAYER8272792′ etc.) and is probably best left alone for casual smartphone users. ‘phone’ is the final module and only appears when your Windows Phone is connected, showing the media items it currently contains. For photos, videos etc. that aren’t synced automatically, you can drag and drop content onto the phone icon at the bottom-left of the screen, which appears when the device is connected.

Conceived originally as an answer to Google Maps, Microsoft’s Bing Maps is understandably a year or two behind in development. But it’s part of Windows Phone 7, follows the same user interface style, supports full multi-touch and is still a very useful application, as you’ll see here.

From exploring the world, virtually, to finding things and businesses, and then navigating to them, albeit with a little fingerwork needed as you drive or walk, Bing Maps is well worth getting to know.

Step 1: Adding Bing Maps to the homescreen

Although it’s unlikely that your Windows Phone manufacturer has put in a homescreen tile for Bing Maps, you can easily add one yourself by swiping left and long pressing ‘Maps’ in the apps list. From the pop-up menu, tap on ‘pin to start’. You can also pin individual locations, as you’ll see later.

Step 2: Finding your location on the Earth’s surface

With a good view of the sky, with a SIM card active in your phone and with ‘Settings>Location services’ (including GPS) turned ‘On’, your smartphone should find your current location and display it quite quickly. If a different map is shown (for example, where you were when you last used it) then tap on the ‘position’ icon, central on the toolbar – Bing Maps will re-centre the map and zoom right in.

Step 3: You are… within this circle

Your estimated position is marked with a yellow diamond, but you’ll almost certainly also see a bold circle around this, at least at first. This represents the uncertainty in the position fix, usually because a good GPS lock hasn’t been possible so far. In other words, you could be anywhere within the circle. Also, note that you may see either an aerial view or a vector road map here – it depends how far you’re zoomed in. Get up very close and Bing Maps automatically swaps in a satellite photo, for extra detail.

Step 4: Multi-touch

As on the iPhone, there’s full multi-touch here and it’s worth getting to grips with the interface. Pinch two fingers in on the capacitive screen to zoom out, splay them apart to zoom in, as you’d expect. And, of course, you can drag the map around as needed to pan to a different area. If you need to move a significant distance, it’s often quicker to zoom out, pan across and then zoom in again. At any point, tapping the ‘position’ icon again will re-centre the map on your location.

Step 5: Searching for places or things

To look for a place or business, tap on the ‘search’ icon in the Bing Maps toolbar (not the hardware Search button/icon, note!) Typical searches might be, for example, “Chequers Way”, to find a road, or just “Chequers”, to find either a road name or (in this case) a pub with that in its title. Or perhaps a business type, e.g. “tyres”, to find the nearest tyre and exhaust centre for an emergency repair. Experiment!

Step 6: Search matches around your location

In each case, possible matches around your current location are shown with black flags and numbers – tap on the one whose name you want to see.

Step 7: Picking a match

Tap a named match (if it’s not the one you really wanted, tap on ‘…’ and then on ‘results list’ and pick another) and you’ll see a full page of information, with the match’s postal address, phone number, website and – crucially – an option to find ‘directions from my location’. Now, Bing Maps currently has no real time navigation features, but it certainly can have a stab at finding a fastest route.

Step 8: Navigation… of sorts!

Tap on ‘directions’ and, after a few seconds calculation, Bing Maps will go ‘split-screen’, with a zoomed in map of each junction in the route and detailed instructions for each junction in a scrolling pane below. As you drag this pane up and down (i.e. as you move through your route), the map section pans to show each junction and what you should do. None of this is real time and, watching the usual yellow diamond representing your position, it will be up to you to scroll down the route as needed. But as a rough and ready navigation system it does offer some help. And yes, Microsoft have a much better, real time version planned for Windows Phone Mango.

Step 9: Copying directions

Some people will prefer to have these instructions in paper form, so it’s worth noting that long pressing on any part of the directions list pops up the option to ‘copy directions’ to the system clipboard – you can then (for example) paste these into an email or Office file, as needed, perhaps for printing off from a desktop.

Step 10: Saving a location to the homescreen

With any search match or location’s details up on-screen, notice the ‘pin’ icon in the bottom toolbar. Tap this to ‘pin’ this location (along with a small thumbnail map memory jogger) to your Windows Phone homescreen. At any later point, just tap this to get back to the details screen and then tap the thumbnail again to view it on the wider map of the area.

Written by Steve Litchfield

Although some way behind Google’s Android in terms of slick OS updates – after all, the important bit here is all done via a Windows PC utility, Windows Phone 7 updates do largely work as advertised. It’s a new platform and we thought you might like to see how updates work. Both of the firmware variety and of third party applications – it’s all here. As with any smartphone OS, expect regular (monthly or quarterly) updates as the platform evolves, plus weekly updates to the various apps you have installed – depending on the developer!

Step 1: Pop-up notifications
Although, as we’ll see, firmware updates are entirely driven from a Windows desktop, it’s useful (if galling) to be notified of updates on the phone itself. Here’s what you’ll see pop up (fig 1), even as you’re using the phone as normal. Hopefully a future update for Windows Phone will bring in Android-style over-the-air updates!

Step 2: Checking manually
Although you have no control over when the phone automatically checks for updates, you can at least manually show its status. Go into ‘Settings>Phone update’ and you may see a discreet note ‘Update available’. Tapping on it doesn’t, sadly, do anything useful, apart from possible unsubscribe you from future update notifications (fig 2).

Step 3: Time to plug in
To get going with an update to your Windows Phone 7 phone, plug it in via microUSB to your Windows PC (fig 3). You’ll need to have the Zune Desktop installed, of course (see the FAQ below). Be patient, Windows may well pop up some ‘Installing….’ device driver messages, especially the first time you use this phone in that particular USB port.

Step 4: Update available
Once recognised by Zune Desktop, your phone will have its status checked and the update will be highlighted in no uncertain terms (“UPDATE YOUR PHONE”!) – we’re glad to see the detail on this screen, with version number and a list of changes/fixes – well done, Microsoft. We’ll proceed for now, though you can of course come back and do the update on a subsequent connection if you like.

Step 5: The 10 stage update!
Zune Desktop takes charge of the update and keeps you informed throughout the 10 stage process, the whole of which includes a device backup (just in case) and which should take up to half an hour (so time to slope off for a coffee). When finished, your Windows Phone 7 phone is automatically rebooted (fig 5). You’re done! Disconnect the phone and start enjoying the new firmware.

Step 6: Application update notification
Also essential on the update front is keeping up with improvements to your third party applications, of course. On the ‘live tiles’ homescreen, you may see a number printed next to the shopping basket icon on the ‘Marketplace’ tile (fig 6) – this is the number of updates available.

Step 7: Update all
Tap on the Marketplace tile and you’ll see the update count confirmed at the bottom of the Marketplace homescreen. Tap this and you’ll be in ‘app updates’, as shown in fig 7. Happily, there’s a handy ‘Update all’ button.

Step 8: Downloading and installing
Tap this button and, one by one, the application updates will be downloaded and installed (fig 8). You don’t have to wait while this happens, by the way. Although Windows Phone 7 doesn’t have multitasking for third party apps, its own built-in applications can operate in the background. So feel free to press the Start icon and do something else on the phone while your apps get updated.

Microsoft’s concept for the Windows Phone 7 homescreen is of ‘Live Tiles’, the idea being that each tile is not only a launcher button for the appropriate application or ‘hub’, it’s also capable of displaying relevant information, such as upcoming Calendar appointments and latest social photo updates. Now, Windows Phone is still fledgling in terms of raw functionality, but already there’s enough in its homescreen for us all to ‘get’ the idea and to have enormous fun customising our devices to our own needs and preferences. No doubt there will be more to play with in the months ahead

Step 1: Nothing’s set in stone
First and foremost, you should note that all the live tiles provided by Microsoft (and by your device manufacturer) can be removed if you wish – there’s absolutely no need for anything you don’t use to be on a Windows Phone homescreen. Even the new tiles which appear automatically (for example, when creating a new email mailbox) can then be removed again if you really don’t want them.

Step 2: Removing a Live Tile
To remove a live tile, just long press on it and it will ‘pop’ to the extreme foreground, with a little ‘unpin’ icon in its corner. Tap this to proceed. Note that the tile itself can be reinstated again later if you change your mind, simply by pinning the appropriate application, mailbox or bookmark back to the homescreen (as you’ll see below).

Step 3: Moving tiles
In addition to removing tiles, you can also move existing ones around. Again, long press on any tile (it doesn’t have to be the one you wanted to move) and it will pop up, while the rest jiggle around in the background. Drag any tile to where you’d like it and you’ll find the other tiles move intelligently to accommodate it. Note that all the tiles stay ‘jiggling’ for you to do multiple tile moves, rather conveniently. And yes, this is all rather reminiscent of a ’tile puzzle’ game, the sort you used to play as a child!

Step 4: What’s next?
When you’re done rearranging, just tap the ‘Back’ icon and the Live Tiles will return to their normal appearance. Drag the homescreen up and down and check your handiwork. What’s missing? You’d like a few of your most used applications represented? No problem.

Step 5: Pinning an application
Swipe to the left, to bring up the usual scrolling list of Windows Phone applications (and hubs). Find the one you want on your homescreen, e.g. Office, and long press on it. Up will pop a one-item menu, ‘pin to start’. Tap this and the item will immediately be placed at the bottom of the homescreen. From where, as above, you can long press again and move it as needed.

Step 6: Pinning a contact
There’s lots more that you can pin to the homescreen. You’ll probably already have seen that any email inboxes will have been automatically added. What about adding some of your favourite contacts (e.g. your partner)? Go to ‘People’ and bring up the person’s details. Notice the pin icon in the bottom options bar  – tap this and your contact will have their own tile on the homescreen. Either with their name or with whatever you set as their photo or thumbnail.

Step 7: Web sites too
Another common thing to pin to the homescreen is a favourite web site. Bring up the page required in Internet Explorer and then tap on the ‘…’ icon, bottom right. On the menu will be ‘pin to start’.

Step 8: Site thumbnail
Tap this menu option and your favourite web site will be depicted as a thumbnail and thereafter only one tap away. Note that you can pin more than one contact or web page, the limits depend entirely on how long you want your scrolling homescreen to be!

Step 9: Map fragments even cooler
Finally, map locations are an interesting addition to the ‘pinning’ system. With a location on screen in Maps, tap to bring up the address details. You’ll see, again, the familiar ‘pin’ icon in the bottom bar. Tap it and the location will be added to the homescreen, for instant recall (and routing to) later on. Rather neatly, the graphic shown on the homescreen is a thumbnail from the map itself.

Step 10: Look and feel
You can change the way your tiles look too, both by setting their ‘accent’ colour (the shade used for tiles which don’t already have explicit colour or graphics) and by altering the background (light or dark, though note that the latter provides power savings, especially if your phone has an OLED screen). Go to ‘Settings’ and then tap on ‘Theme’ and start playing around. It’s surprising how much of a look and feel change you can pull off!

With their ever bigger displays and higher resolutions, Android smartphones are becoming the perfect travel companions, giving you your own personal multimedia player to take wherever you go. Unfortunately for Android users, watching videos isn’t as easy and as seamless as it is on the iPhone. Among other things, you’ll run into compatibility issues, while getting all your content onto your phone is a little more involved than simply plugging it into your computer and waiting for it to sync.

But with our guide you’ll be able to get all your videos – both those you’ve shot yourself and any additional one you’ve bought or downloaded – onto your phone quickly and easily. We’ll also show you how to get around compatibility issues, although note that movies bought on iTunes and protected with DRM will never be able to work on Android.

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1. Connect your phone

Connect your phone or tablet to your PC via the USB cable. You can also connect over Bluetooth, but the speeds are ideal for sharing files of a larger size. When connected, you might to need to choose the Disk Drive option on your phone to see your memory card.

2. Create a folder

Once your memory card (or your phone’s internal memory) is mounted as a drive on your desktop computer, you are able to copy files to and from it. To keep things tidy, create a new folder called Movies, into which you can store all your movie files from now on.

3. Get copying

Now begin copying your movies onto your card, simply by dragging and dropping them into your folder you’ve just created. Depending on their size, it may take a few minutes to complete. When done, remember to unmount or eject the drive before you unplug the cable.

4. Locate the videos

When you unplug the cable, it may take a couple of minutes for the SD card to process before you can access it. Once this is done, open the video player on your phone and you will be able to see the new files you’ve copied onto the card.

5. Start watching

Not all video files will be compatible with your phone, so those that aren’t may show up as being unavailable. You’ll need a third-party player to access these. For those that are compatible, just tap on the video’s icon to being watching.

6. Basic controls

Although the default video player installed on a device differs from one handset manufacturer to another, one thing they tend to have in common is that they are light on features. Scrolling forward and back and adjusting the volume are about all you get.

7. Sharing clips

For videos you’ve shot yourself, you can share them with other users via a number of different means and services. Beware, though, that if you’ve been shooting in HD, the file sizes will be very large so might not be ideal for sending over the air.

8. Video formats

The formats that are supported on your device will depend on the model and manufacturer. While many new handsets are supporting a wider range of video formats, .3gp and .mp4 are the only ones natively supported by the Android platform.

Battery life remains the achilles heel of Android. In spite of the improvements we’ve witnessed over the last year or two, which have seen both the operating system and the firmware installed on devices even more optimised, the increasing power demands of the latest hardware tends to cancel out any improvements. As a result we’re still left with nightly charges to keep our devices ticking over.

There are lots of things you can do to improve the performance of your phone’s battery, including adjusting the screen brightness, preventing too many apps from syncing too often, and turning off power-sapping features when you’re not using them. But only if you turn to hacking will you be able to make potentially considerable gains.

‘Undervolting’ isn’t for the faint hearted. If the thought of merely rooting your phone brings you out in a cold sweat then move on now. The process required involved flashing an undervolted kernel to your phone. This, as its name suggests, literally reduces the voltage that the phone uses, and that reduced voltage should offer significant battery savings. The idea is that the default voltage setting is set by the hardware manufacturers to be on the high side to ensure reliable performance, and that it can therefore be safely reduced to a lower level on a device-by-device basis. You can do this by first flashing a new kernal – the part of a system that manages the communications between the hardware and the software – that supports undervolting, then installing an app to adjust your settings. Undervolting is often supported in overclocking apps such as SetCPU and Voltage Control.

The danger is that reducing the amount of power that parts of your phone’s hardware use that can have a serious knock-on effect in its performance. If you go too far you could leave the phone unstable and barely usable; and even more modest reductions are liable to make the handset feel slower than it previously did. And if you live in an area of poor network coverage then you may find your problems are exacerbated. The trick is to not push it too far, and accept smaller incremental improvements rather than going as far as you can from step one. And, of course, check out the feedback from the community on the ideal settings to use, especially if electronics is not your forte.

Inevitably, the extent to which undervolting improves your battery life is open to debate. In our tests running an HTC Desire, we did feel like we gained maybe about half a day under certain usage conditions, although others suggest there may be a placebo effect in play. Ideally you should leave your new setup for a couple of days and then re-evaluate, rather than expecting immediate miracles.