Poor battery life isn’t the only frustrating aspect of Android phones and tablets. Robert Irvine highlights six common annoyances and explains how to fix them.
TOO MANY NOTIFICATIONS
Although it’s useful that your Android device alerts you when you get a new email, when a Facebook friend ’checks in’ somewhere or when a calendar appointment is imminent, the cumulative effect of all these text and audio alerts can soon drive you potty.
The easiest way to stop notifications from a specific app on your phone or tablet is to go into Settings, Apps, tap the offending app and untick 'Show notifications’.
Alternatively, if you want to receive certain alerts but not others, launch the app, tap its Settings menu and find Notification Settings (or similar) to review the individual notification options. For example, in the Facebook app (left), you can turn off notifications for close friends’ activities but still get alerts for their birthdays. Some apps, especially messaging ones, also let you specify whether they should merely display a text notification, also make a sound (which you can choose from the default options) or make your device vibrate.
The new Android 5.0, otherwise known as Lollipop, introduces a handy feature called Interruptions, which serves as a ‘do not disturb’ mode for notifications (and calls). You can set your device not to bother you between certain times of day, while making exceptions for ‘priority interruptions’ from selected contacts. It’s ideal if you’re in the habit of keeping your phone next to your bed and don’t want to be woken at 3am by some idiot inviting you to play Candy Crush Saga.
PRE-INSTALLED BLOATWARE
Most Android phones and tablets come with apps that have been pre-installed by Google, the manufacturer and/or the mobile network, many of which you will never use. They can sometimes be uninstalled in the usual way, but on devices from certain companies including Samsung, LG and Sony, they can’t be removed unless you ’root’ your phone or tablet. Since rooting invalidates your warranty and can leave your phone vulnerable to malware, or even render it completely unusable, it’s a big risk to take.
A safer solution is to install the free app Disable Bloatware - Hide Apps (bit.ly/disable359). It doesn’t require root access, but it lets you remove unwanted apps from your app drawer and home screens by hiding rather than uninstalling them. Scroll through its list of ‘hide-able’ apps, then tap one you want to get rid of and choose Disable. Click OK to bypass the warning and OK again, if prompted, to replace the app with the factory version. The app will disappear from your screen. You can restore it again by tapping its name in the Hidden list and choosing Enable.
Pre-installed widgets and shortcuts are usually easier to remove, simply by swiping them off the edge of your screen.
AUTOMATIC SCREEN ROTATION
Some Android apps automatically switch your phone or tablet’s screen from portrait to landscape mode, which makes sense when you’re playing a game, watching a film or typing a document. But sometimes this forced rotation is more of a hindrance than a help, especially if your device is oversensitive and keeps switching back and forth between modes.
You can stop this from happening by turning off the auto-rotation feature on your device. Go to Settings, select Display and deselect the option ‘Autorotate screen’. However, this is an all-or-nothing setting that will stop the screen rotating even when you want it to.
A more flexible option is to install Smart Rotator (bit.ly/smart359), which controls the screen orientation for individual apps, so that some can rotate the display while others can't. Smart Rotator tells you the default orientation for every app installed on your device. Tap an app to change its auto-rotate setting from Portrait to Landscape (or vice versa) or select Auto to let your screen adjust automatically.
SEPARATE VOLUME LEVELS
It can be tricky to manage the sound on your Android device when your ringtone, music player, games, notifications and alarm clock are all competing for your eardrums. Pressing the volume buttons on the side of your device only controls the general sound level, so to adjust individual settings, you need to go to Settings, Sound, Volumes. A better idea is to install a widget that gives you instant access to all your volume controls in one place.
One of the best options is Volume Control Widget (bit.ly/volume359), which features separate slider bars for your alarm, multimedia apps, voice calls and ringtone. Drag them to the left or right to adjust their volumes and choose normal, vibrate or silent for your ringer (which also changes the settings for system sounds and notifications). This should prove especially useful when you upgrade to Android 5 Lollipop, which - for some reason - removes the silent mode from phones.
DATA-HUNGRY BACKGROUND APPS
Some Android apps, especially email, social-networking and messaging tools, continue to run in the background even when you’re not using them, which consumes excess data, wastes memory and saps your battery life. You can stop this happening by going to Settings, ‘Data usage’, Settings and deselecting ‘Auto-sync data’, although this means you’ll have to update the apps manually or you won't get any new content. Alternatively, choose ‘Restrict background data’ and your apps will only sync when you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network.
If those options sound too heavy-handed, you can still use the ‘Data usage’ page to find out which active apps are consuming the most data. Tap a greedy app and select ’Restrict background data’ to prevent it from updating over your mobile network. You may also see a ‘View app settings’ button that gives further options for reducing data usage, such as setting how frequently an app should sync and whether it should download attachments automatically.
AUTO-CORRECTION MISTAKES
Although the built-in Android keyboard is generally very good at detecting and correcting your typing errors, occasionally it changes a word you’ve spelt correctly to something entirely different. If this presumption is starting to irk you, go to Settings, 'Language & input’ and tap the slider icon to the right of your default keyboard. Choose ’Text correction’ (or similar) then Auto-correction and either change the setting to Modest or turn it off altogether.