How to use the Navigation App on Android

Smartphones really do seem to have a never ending list of uses and whether you've got a band new Samsung Galaxy S2 or a or a really old HTC Wildfire you'll be able to use it to navigate your way around a town, city or even the country thanks to the Navigate app. Firstly you will need to find the app which resembles a blue triangle (see the screen shot to the right for an example of how it may look in an app draw).
After opening the app you will be asked to allow the use of GPS. The GPS will need to be turned on for the navigational purposes so turn it on when prompted.

After turning on GPS you will see a screen like the one to the left. What you need to do is click on either "Speak destination" or, as I've done in the screen shot "Type destination". Once you've got your destination in the search bar press on the magnifying glass and your phone will figure out (via GPS) the best route for you to get from where you are to the destination)

When your phone has worked out your route you will be be shown a map like the one to the right for you to follow and thanks to the GPS being enabled you can actually track your progress (with you being the blue "dot" and the checkered flag being the destination). If you wish to zoom in for a better accuracy you can use the magnifying the magnifying glass in the bottom corner to zoom in however a more useful function is the directions screen. To access the directions screen you need to click on the little "list" icon.

The directions screen is wonderfully simple telling you the road you need to go on, the direction and the distance. Though this isn't the end of the wonders of the Navigation app. If you click on one of the directions
you'll get a screen like the one on the right which shows your actual progress through that stage in a sort of "birds eye".

From the screen to the right you have 3 options. You can go back to the directions screen (press on the list icon), you can go to the next stage (press the arrow along the top) or you can go to street view (press the man at the right hand side).

 Street view gives you the most detailed image of where you are looking at and is a great way to check that you're in the right place, going in the right direction. From the Street View you can again scroll through the stages of your route by pressing the arrows along the top of the screen.

Although the app may be trying to help drivers (and it does with a number of it's more advanced functions) it can also help those lost in a new city who are looking for something like a landmark or a hotel (and using street view really makes that simple).

It needs to be noted that using navigation will use up data (whether it's mobile data or Wi-Fi you will need to be connected to one or the other) and as it's running GPS you may find that your battery will run down quicker than usual so don't use it for prolonged durations with out the ability to change the handset. Whilst you should be able to get a few hours out of a full charge, a car charger will be needed if you are trying to cover the country whilst using the app.

How to change the home page on the default android internet browser

 Although I'm not a huge fan of the default android browser (preferring to use either Skyfire or Opera mini) I do use the default browser on a more than regular basis, mainly to keep a track of this blog whilst I'm out.

As a result of playing with the browser  I've decided to explore what you can do with it and one of the first things I did was change the homepage from the default Vodafone "myweb360" to the much more useful google.com. This guide shows how I did just that starting with the screen on the left (to get to this screen press menu and then press on more).

On the screen on the right you need to scroll down to Settings which will open a screen like the one on the left here. At this screen you will notice a lot of options, the one that you need to click on is rather unsurprisingly "Set home page". As you can see in this image the home page has been set to "http://myweb.360.com".

By clicking on the option you will get the chance to set a new home screen as you can see in the screen shot to the right here. You can type in any page that you want to open when you open the browser or a new window. If you're already on the page you can easily click "Use current page" instead of typing in the web address.
After opening a new window you will see the new home page in effect just as you can see here. This is very simple to do and although it's not enough to make me an out and out use of the default browser it is a very useful feature that you may wish to make the most of if you are stuck into using the default browser.

Guide on how to rename a song on a Samsung Galaxy S2

 Songs are really tricky little things to get quite right, we've all got that blighter that has just got the wrong title for some reason or another and we've added the track to out phone, wrong title and all. If you really want to correct the name it's surprisingly easy by using your phone to correct the title.

Firstly we need to go into the "My files" application, to find this you will need to search through the Application drawer. As you can see in the image to the right it looks like a folder with some files in though it should be easy enough for you to find.

After opening the "My files" you will need to locate your music folder. In my case the location is in a sub folder and to find it I need to click on "Samsung" and then "Music" (though many people will have had a more logical route to there music). After you've done this you will see a list of all the tracks in the folder (see screen shot to the left).

From here you have two options, one is by pressing the menu button and then click "Settings", "Rename" and then find the track you want to rename. Alternatively find the track you want tore name and give it a long press so a list of options comes up (like the screen shot on the right). Here you should click "Rename" and change the song title to the correct one.

As well as renaming songs you can also rename videos and photographs on your phone. To do this you need to select the correct folder (for example DCIM-> Camera for photographs) and find the file you want to rename.

3G Watchdog

 After having used 3G Watchdog since getting my HTC Wildfire (and subsequently my Samsung Galaxy S2) it seems only fair to look at one of the must have apps for any mobile internet using android phone users. The basic app is available for free from the Market and is one that you should already have (and if you don't, get it now!).

What is 3G Watchdog?
The application is currently the best way to keep track of your data usage on an Android phone. It does this by recording all your usage in a screen like the one in the image to the right hand side.

 For those who are on a capped allowance of mobile data, this is an application that will allow you to set a your plan into the app and then track how much data you are using. The screenshot to the left is the plan setting, which allows you to select your allowance, you time span, you reset date and when you want the phone to alert you that you're getting close to your limit (i.e. when 75% of your allowance is used).

As well as tracking usage through the month the app also allows you to see data usage for the last 31 days as both received and sent this is where the application can do that little bit extra.

If you're on a capped allowance, no matter how big, 3G Watchdog is a must have app that will allow you to track the usage on your phone. It adds a feature that SHOULD have been put in the phones when they were made.

How to add an appointment to your Calendar on a Samsung Galaxy S2

 So we've added all out friends birthday's to the calendar on our Samsung Galaxy S2 thanks to syncing the calendar to facebook, but now we want to add more, we want to save important meetings and appointments.To do this we need to open the Calendar application (which you will find in the App drawer or on a home screen) and find the date of your appointment. In the case of this example the date will be tomorrow (Wednesday 20th July). Clicking on that date will open the create event screen that you
can see to the left.

On the create event screen you will be able to add the details of your appointment or event. The information includes what it's called, where it is, what time, a reminder and even the chance to add who it's with from your contact list.

When you've filled in all of the relevant details you need to click on "Save" at the bottom of the screen to make sure it is saved. After doing that you will be put back on your calendar screen with your new appointment added to the date you clicked on, as you can see now with the example showing "Meeting" at 11 o'clock in Barrow in Furness.

How to sync your your Samsung Galaxy S2 calendar to Facebook

Thanks to the advancement of technology we no longer need to use paper based calendars. Modern day phones, such as the Samsung Galaxy S2 have effectively made traditional calenders obsolete, we don't need a big paper thing on the wall when we have a mobile phone that stores everything. The biggest advantage however of modern day technology is that you can sync things together and rather than adding all your key dates to every calender manually you can automatically add things from facebook onto your phone.

The image to the right hand side is of the default Calendar application without facebook being synced to the the application. To sync facebook is actually really easy and to start you need to press the menu button then press on settings and scroll down to the option of "Calendar sync" which will look like the screen on the left. Here you will need to click on "Add account" and you'll see a screen that lists a number of account options. The one you need to select is obviously Facebook.

After clicking on facebook you will have to to enter your login information and select what you want to sync, the important option here is the "Sync Calendar" option (which will be the bottom of 3 possible options).
After you do this you need to check your Calendar again and you will then swiftly notice a number of blue dots on the calendar, these are the birthdays of your facebook friends just one of many things you now become aware of due to the calender.

For some they may still prefer traditional calenders but thanks to this swift and easy way of adding your birthdays and things to your phones calender it's getting harder and harder to defend buying calenders. It's yet another reason why smart phones are slowly becoming a vital gadget and becoming a true-all-in-one tool.

How to delete contacts from your Samsung Galaxy S2

So now you've got you're Samsung Galaxy S2 and all your friends numbers are on it but for whatever reason you and your friend have fallen out and you want to delete them from your contacts. To start to delete a contact we need to find them so press the "contact" app at a home screen and then find a contact you wish to get rid of. For this example we will be deleting Scott Graveson from the address book. I heard a nasty rumour that he's a fat ugly ginger virgin anyway.

When we've selected the contact you need to press the menu button on your Samsung Galaxy S2 to open up this small contextual menu. When this menu has popped up we select the delete option and then click on "OK" when the prompt comes up.

If we've accidentally selected the wrong person you will need to click "Cancel" to save your contact from being deleted from the phone. If you wish to re-add the contact have made up with them you will need to go through the typical stages of "adding a contact".

Of course simply deleting them from your contacts won't stop them from contacting you sadly but it will help stop you from leaving abusive messages on their answering phone or drunken texts.

Please note. Scott strongly denies being a ginger virgin though does accept he's fat and ugly.

Copying texts on a Samsung Galaxy S2

 Recently we looked at copying text from a website, though lets be honest you may want to actually just copy a text message you've been sent by a friend. Whether you just want a to store it in the phone or use it in an e-mail or a forum post it's something that is surprisingly simple.

To start this guide we begin at a text conversation such as the one on the right hand side here.and fine a text we wish to copy. In this case we will be using the rather mundane "What's a boxing bag? hah xxx" text as our text. You need to hold on the
selected text for a second or two and a contextual menu will appear entitled "Message options" (see screen shot on the left). The second option down is the one we want to use, so select "Copy message text". This will automatically put it on the phones clipboard allowing you to put it wherever you want.

For the rest of this we are going to pretend we want to e-mail it to someone so we've opened up a blank e-mail using the Gmail app. and have helped down on the text input
screen to open up the menu on the screen to allow us to "Paste" the selected text from the message. and as you can see in the image below, the message has been compied from the text from "Bee" into an E-mail! Viola!

 Of course you can copy things such a cheat for a game, or something poetic someone has said (and something a little bit more spectacular than we've used in this example.

How do you manually call someone with a Samsung Galaxy S2?

Sadly with being a bit "technically advanced" I've sort of ignored the simple things with this website so far so now we'll take a look at one of the most simple things we could possibly want to do with the Samsung Galaxy S2, making calls. Of course despite the Android operating system, the Super AMOLED Plus screen and it's ravenous dual core processor the Samsung Galaxy S2 is essentially, a phone and phones are there to make phone calls.
To start we press the "Phone" icon on the home screen. By default the phone icon will be shown on every home screen on the bottom left corner (if you've rooted your phone it may be possible that you've moved it). Pressing the phone icon opens a screen like the one to the left. From here you enter the phone number you wish to call. This is the "manual part" of the call (as opposed to calling a contact).

When you've completed entering the number and any area code you may need to enter press on the small green phone icon. Press on the green icon will see an option screen
popping up allowing you to either use the dialer to make the call or "SkypeOut". If you've got free minutes or wish to just make a normal phone call you will usually use the "Dialer" option though if you've got a connection to wi-fi using SkyeOut could be a better option for you.


Of course if your contact is stored on your phone you can click contacts and call through either the dialer contact tab or the normal contact app from the homescreen with the same option to call via Skype or the Dialer.

How do I copy and paste text from the web with a Samsung Galaxy S2?

 A lot of people on the internet have been asking how to copy bits of text from websites on to their Samsung Galaxy S2 cell phone. The funny thing is that the in-built browsers makes copying much more difficult than using the (much better) alternative Opera Mini browser.

If you wish to use the default browser you need to hold the screen where a word is. You will notice that you get a magnifying glass type of thing over the screen, if you release whilst on the word you'll get an option like there is shown on the screen shot to the right. If you stretch the marks apart you can copy more text though this method is somewhat slow as it seems to take longer than it should to drag for multiple words.

 Using opera mini you start with the same concept, press and hold on the screen and when you get a menu screen like the one shown on the image to the left you need to choose the "Select Text" option. From here you can select whole pages by dragging your finger along the text and this will highlight it blue. As soon as you release your
finger from the screen you will get a new menu come up with an option to "Copy". You can then do plenty with what you've copied, whether you want to use it to post on a website forums or an e-mail or even a text.

To paste your copied text you need to hold your finger in a "message box" such as the box you would enter a text message or an e-mail in. When you hold your finger on the screen you will see a pop up menu (see the screen capture to the left) with the option to paste. As soon as you select paste you will notice all the text you selected appears in the box.

To the right here you can see an excerpt that was copied into a text message using the Opera mini browser to copy and the default messaging app to paste. The actual amount of text you can copy and paste in this method does seem to be incredibly large and I've yet to stumble on the limit, though it would be fair to assume that if you wanted to copy and paste a huge amount the Samsung Galaxy S2 may have it's limits or take a moment to copy.

This is one of the many times that using Opera Mini is an advantage over using the default browser which has a number of limitations and I'd advise downloading either Opera mini or Skyfire for a number of reasons not just this one.

Edit:
Thanks to a comment by Material girl I've been playing about with this and realised that if you drag the little "quote marks" when using the default browser you can use that to highlight more than just a single world.
Thank you to Material Girl for pointing this out.

The text from the copied screen capture is from:
The Samsung Galaxy S2 review on Helium.com

How to find the battery level on a Samsung Galaxy S2

Although the Samsung Galaxy S2 does have a little battery marker in the top right hand corner close to the clock the image can be hard to really get a good measure from. Of course you can use the icon to guess but how about finding out the exact % of the battery life?

Although there is a number of widgets that's do the job of telling you just how much battery life you have left on the phone there is also the in-built information screen which has the details you'll be wanting. If you go to the settings screen (menu->setting) then scroll down the options, the bottom option will be "About phone". If you click on that you will see a sub option that says "Status" and that's what the screen to the right is which shows the phones battery level (at this point it's 67%).

E-Mail v MMS-Which is better?

When it comes to sending images, such as photographs from you to a friend via your phone there is 2 very different methods that we've looked at. Firstly we looked at sending MMS messages and more recently we've looked at sending E-mails with attachments, but which is better and why?

MMS The Pros

1. Easy-It really is just a matter of clicking attach then adding the item you want to send.
2. Direction-It goes directly to your contacts phone meaning they will get it and will likely have their phone on them.
3. "Snap and Go"-You can literally take a picture and send it with in seconds

MMS The Cons

1. Cost-Unless you have a free MMS allowance they can cost quite a bit to send, anywhere into the 35p range which adds up.
2. Limitations of Receiver-Although most phones can now receive MMS some older phones can't and those new phone which don't have packet data on won't receive them either. 
3. Limitations of Sender-MMS messages typically have a limitation in size and will often only allow 1 or 2 pictures per message.

E-Mail The Pros

1. Simple-Although not as simple as sending via MMS it's still very easy and if you follow the guide on this blog you really will never struggle with them.
2. Open Receiver-Everyone has an E-mail address as long as you know it you can send the message and know it will get to them.
3. Price-This is completely free if you have either a wi-fi connection or a mobile internet allowance which most people do have.
4. The limits have been lifted-Rather than only being able to send 1 or 2 images per messages you can actually send quite a few by e-mail at once.

E-Mail The Cons

1. Return to Sender-You need to make sure you have the right address or the E-mail will fail.
2. Time to Receive-Not everyone has access to their E-mails on their phone and may need to wait to access a PC/Laptop to actually see the image.
3. New v Old-Whilst it's very easy to do on things like the Samsung Galaxy S2 it's not as easy to do on older phones like a Sony Ericsson C902.

So now the moment of truth, which is better?
Personally I'd tend to use the E-mail system whenever possible. The people I'd be sending images and things to are contacts I have the e-mail address for as well as phone numbers. Personally I think it's a bit pricey to be paying 30p a message (even though I do have an MMS allowance on one of my contracts) and I know at least 2 mobile contacts have packet data turned off anyway.

For some however, mainly those with perhaps older phones it'll likely be easier to pay the 30p or so to send the MMS rather than struggle through and send an attachment to an e-mail via logging in with the browsers that were used on the older phones. At heart though it's a personal choice, and one that could perhaps be avoided by sending them at home via something like an IM client. Personally I'd side with E-mail though it's not suited to everyone.

How to add attachments to e-mails with the Samsung Galaxy S2

We recently looked at how to send MMS messages with the Samsung Galaxy S2 to share your pictures with a friend, an alternative option is sending them the image by E-mail using either Mobile Internet or Wi-Fi. We're only going to be looking at doing it via the Gmail system (click on the Gmail icon on your phone to access this) which should open something similar to the image on the right side of page you can see). If you press he phones menu button you can open up the small menu at the bottom of the phone and from that you need to click compose.

The compose screen looks a little bit like this, though again you need to press the "menu" button to open up the small selection of options at the bottom. Here you need to press on the "Attach" option which will then allow you to add images or anything else you would like to send.

When attached you should add your subject, your recipient and any text you wish to add (looking something like the image to the right) before pressing on the "Send" icon at the top of the screen. The send icon is the one with an envelope (the one with a floppy Disk is the draft option). The actual writing of an e-mail is easy and your contacts are easy to sync with your e-mail account or even your facebook account.

The advantage of sending E-mails instead of MMS will be looked at shortly in our next piece.

How to send an MMS (or Picture Messages) from your Samsung Galaxy S2

With the help of the Samsung Galaxy S2's excellent camera we've all managed to take a photograph we want to share with a friend. With the help of our contract we may even have a free MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) allowance and want to use that, though how do we send MMS with the Samsung Galaxy S2? How do we use the phone to send picture messages?

Firstly open up your "messaging" option and then on the icon and then either select a conversation (with the person you want to send the text to) or select the new text option to get a screen that looks a little like the one you can see to the right. The part you need to concentrate on here is the little "paperclip" icon. This is the icon that, for anyone who uses E-mail should look familiar, it is after all the "attach" icon and will allow you to attach things like pictures, sounds or videos.

 After clicking on the attach icon you will open up a long list of possible things you might want to attach (as seen on the left here). If it's a picture you've taken you click on "Pictures", if it's one you are about to take click on "Capture picture" of course if it's not a picture then select one of the other options. When you've selected a picture you will be taken back to the text screen to add some textual content and select a contact.

When you've completed adding what ever text and media you wish to send you merely need to click on send and the contact should get the message inside a few seconds.

Alternatively if you've not got an MMS allowance or so many free picture messages a month you could instead send the image by e-mail via either mobile internet or Wi-Fi if you have the contacts E-mail address. We'll be showing how to do that soon.

How to change the font on your Samsung Galaxy S2

 Along with everything else you can do to personalise your Samsung Galaxy S2 (SGS2) smartphone you can also change the font. Although the selection is relatively limited to begin with there is an ability to buy more form the Market (though these do feel over-priced and aren't worth their money on the whole).

To change the font just follow this guide which starts on the right with the "Setting" screen. From here you need to click on "Display" which is by default the 4th option down.  The display settings menu, for illustrative purposes can be seen on the screen capture to the left of this paragraph. From this list of settings you need to slick on the top one, the "Screen display option"


The "Screen display option should look something like the screen on the right here, The top option, as you can see, says "Font style" if you click on this you open up a new menu which 
contains the fonts available to you. In my case I've got the option of the Default font, Choco cooky and Helvetica S (as you can see to the left).


When you change the font setting you'll notice that everything looks very different. The below example shows a text conversation with the Choco cooky font being used on the phone. As you can see the font looks a lot more fun and less serious than some of the others and can be a good way to personalise your phone.