- Import contacts:
- Export contacts to CSV, import to Gmail contacts.
- Sign in to your phone with your Google account, if you haven’t done that yet.
- Browse to Contacts>Settings>Display options>Select “Only contacts with phones”, and also Google>Manually select all groups. Then sync.
- While you are at it, use the Email app to setup your school/office email too. Use IMAP or Exchange settings to ensure that email read status is synced to your phone.
- Install Google Keep and sync your todo lists and notes.
- Facebook and Twitter:
- Install the Facebook and Twitter apps.
- Select to import data on your existing contacts. Pictures and other address data are the automagically added to your contacts.
- Set Facebook and Twitter to update once every 4 hrs to prevent your friends from draining your battery. The Facebook sync setting could be in Settings>Accounts or in the app itself
- Home screen:
- Install ADW launcher to get a better home screen.
- Select ADW launcher to open by default when the Home button is pressed.
- Set the number of screens to 3 and apps to scroll vertically. Thats feels a lot better on phones with large screens.
- Set desktop rows to 5. There’s a lot more screenspace on large screen phones.
- Select fade app labels for some nice animation.
- If you want to reset the launcher for any reason, browse to Settings>Manage apps>ADW launcher> Reset defaults.
- Home screen widgets:
- Install Beautiful widgets, one of the best Time and Weather widgets.
- Try out some clock skins and pick the one you like.
- Tap on Time to open alarm, Date to open calendar and Weather to open a nice animated weather widget.
- Galaxy S phones have the WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, 4G, enable/disable buttons in the notification area, but you might want to place Power Control, an android standard widget, on your home screen and have better control over your battery.
- If you are disabling the GPS, enable Geo location using WiFi to retrieve current location without sacrificing battery power.
- Get your phone back if you loose it:
- Enable the security pattern in settings,
- Add a note in settings to show your name and backup phone number on the lock screen.
- Setup Google Voice if needed
- Add your email to the note on the lock screen.
- Also, enable Latitude in maps to track the location of your phone.
- Find your background:
- Download a backgrounds app
- Stylems Backgrounds shows a list of nice backgrounds, one of the oldest in the market.
- Look at Flickr Interesting photos too.
- Change phone settings automatically:
- Install Timerrific
- There are apps that use GPS or phone battery levels to change settings automatically, like Tasker and Power Manager
- Timerrific is better though. It changes settings based on time/day and is nice to the battery.
- Now you can set the phone to vibrate at office/school and turn off WiFi when not at home.
- While you are at it, install No Signal Alert, so you don’t miss important calls. Your phone will let you know if it looses signal.
- Don’t type, scan (or write):
- Install the Barcode Scanner app
- Scan any barcodes you see on the web or elsewhere using Barcode Scanner.
- The app works on Google Product Search too, all you have to do is browse to it on you phone and click on the “Scan Barcode” button. Now you can compare prices on the go.
- The Chrome to Phone extension is very nice too. Just install an extension in chrome to send anything to your phone.
- If typing is too hard, just try Graffiti for Android. It lets you write instead of typing.
- Last but not the least change your ringtone:
- Android comes with some nice ones, you can create your own too.
- Install Ringdroid. Copy any MP3 to your SD card to edit and set it as your Ringtone.
- You can assign a specific ringtone to a contact too.
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