8 top Android tips

Showing off your screen
By default, your phone will have been set to use ‘Automatic brightness’, i.e. the device will keep adjusting it according to your environment. If you want to override this and show off what your Android phone’s screen can really do, then go to ‘Settings > Sound & Display’ and scroll right down to ‘Brightness’, then uncheck the option. Just be aware that battery life will be decreased slightly.

The emergency torch
Fancy adding yet another function to your Motorola Milestone? Install Mototorch LED from the Android Market: – it activates the camera flash light when needed and turns your £400 smartphone into an LED torch – it’s not going to set the world on fire, but is just the ticket when you’ve dropped your keys on a dark night. Or just to find your way back up the stairs after coming come from the pub…

Android updates
If you’ve got an Android 2.0 device and are stuck with three homescreens and really could do with a couple more, then look out for an over-the-air upgrade to Android 2.1 from your carrier or manufacturer. Extra homescreens and more pervasive voice recognition are just part of the goodies that v2.1 will bring. Android 2.2 updates are also starting to trickle out on some devices now too.

Flight at Night
You can significantly increase battery life on your smartphone by setting it to ‘Flight’ mode at night. You could, of course, just turn the device off, but then you’d have to wait in the morning for the whole OS and many apps all to load all over again. Well over half the power drain on an Android device is from Wi-Fi and 3G data, so going ‘offline’ eliminates this drain while you sleep.

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