Smartphones are considered to be one of the greatest inventions ever, and it is not wrong to assume that. A smartphone can perform wonders in your palm, but under its friendly User Interface lies a long list of features which remain hidden from most of the users. In this article, we bring 10 such features, which can help you unearth the true potential of your smartphone. These features will help you in your daily life as well as that one special day when a feature is required.
10 Tips to make your phone more useful
- Background Data
Even when your smartphone is in an idle state, and you are not using it many applications run in the background, which hogs up a lot of battery and data. It is sensible for applications such e-mail and text to run which notify you as soon as you get a new message but applications such as games, music, and notes gobbling up data are not good.
With iOS, turn off background data by going to Settings—>General—>Background App Refresh, and select apps to turn off.
With Android, restrict background data by going to Settings—>Data usage. Tap on your app of choice, and then scroll to the bottom to restrict background data on cellular networks.
- Remove the Storage Issues
Smartphones are music, photos, and videos hub for many people, but storage issues curb the avid music lovers and budding photographers. Many people store most of their pics and music on their PC while a selected few make their way to the smartphones. This means to add new files in their phone, and some files need to be deleted. There is a free Android application called Gmote, which enables you to stream music from your PC to your phone using Wi-Fi, removing the storage issues you face.
- Remind Me Later
You can use the ‘Remind Me Later’ feature to skip calls on your iPhone without overlooking them. This feature helps you to ignore calls when you are busy but not forget about them altogether. Same as the auto-replies feature, you tap the Remind Me button above the slide in iOS 9, but in earlier versions, you swipe upwards and select Remind Me Later.
- Emergency Contact Details
What happens if someone finds your phone and it is locked? How will they contact you or your family? You can put your contact details right there on your lock screen by going to security in Android Settings, Health on iOS and editing the wallpaper in Windows Phone.
- Taking Pictures Easily
Who doesn’t love creating memories and capturing them with their smartphones? Pictures are an important part of the social and personal lives of many smartphone users, and we are here to help you capture them easily. You can take pictures by pressing the down volume button to hold the phone and click images easily. This removes the need for a finger on the screen to click the pictures. If you are too far away from your camera to take a self-portrait, you can click images using the volume buttons on your headphone too.
- Digital Zoom
Smartphone cameras are crammed into tight spaces so they can fit, which means necessary optics required to zoom in and out are not included. Adding digital zoom to the cameras, which is done by software and not the hardware, compromising the quality, compensates this. To capture good quality pictures, try to move closer to your subject rather than using the optical zoom.
- Low Battery
There are times when you have to for an all-important email from your work, but your smartphone is running out of juice. To overcome this issue, turn your device on airplane mode and turn on the Wi-Fi. This will help you keep in touch with work and Social sites through the Wi-Fi, but your phone will not use the battery on other applications. If someone tries to call or message you, your phone carrier will assume your smartphone is turned off.
- Translate Text
You can use the Google Translate application on your smartphone, which will instantly translate the text for you. It offers support for 103 languages and even helps you translate 59 languages when you don’t have an Internet connection. Pretty handy when you travel to a foreign land.
- Universal remote control
Your smartphone is the only universal remote control you will ever need. There are a lot of applications that allow you to convert your smartphone into a universal remote, but most devices work on Infrared Light, which requires buying an additional IR dongle, as smartphones don’t have IR emitter. After pairing with the application, your universal remote smartphone is ready.
- Thermal camera
Seek thermal is an application which helps you get a thermal image of anything around you, showing you a temperature image of your surroundings. It is paired with a small camera, which attaches you to your smartphone to help you see the heat, quite literally.