How to change the dock icons on a Samsung Galaxy S2

On all of the screens shots of my home screens you'll have noticed same 4 shortcuts along the bottom on all the images, "Phone", "Contacts", "Messages" and "Applications". I've noticed some people have been asking on forums if it was possible to change them and it is indeed possible to change 3 of them. This illustrated guide will hopefully help you if you ever wish the change them (personally I like them there and find them to be most useful there).

Firstly you need to click on the "Application" icon which will open up the application draw and can easily be over 10 pages of applications in size. When in the applications draw press on the phone's menu button. After doing that you will see something like the screen on the left with three options along the bottom "Edit", "List View" (or "Grid View" and "Share app". From this menu you need to select on the "Edit" option.

After clicking on "Edit" you will see a that the bottom icons have a sort of shadow around them and that "Applications" becomes "Home". Aside from the "Home" icon the other 3 can be dragged away from the bottom and put into one of the App pages. As well as being able to remove the the "Phone", "Contacts" and "Messages" icons you can pull down other icons.

If you look at this screen shot to the left hand side  you can see I've replaced the Contacts, Phone and Messages icons with "Camera", "Gallery" and "Videos" though you can replace those 3 slots with anything you wish so you could, for example place a browser there instead of the "Messages" icon.

Again this is just one of the more advanced (non-rooted) methods to personalise your phone and give it your own touch so use it to make the phone suit what you do with it.

How to add pictures to contacts on your Samsung Galaxy S2

If you've added a contact to your Samsung Galaxy S2 manually you'll have noticed that the contacts image is just a silhouette. As we can see in the image to the right Scott lacks a picture (not complaining, he does look a lot like a hobo) but he's asked me to add one to his contact. Doing this is simple but a little bit long winded.

Firstly we need to find the contacts profile, the screen that looks like the image to the right. On this screen we need to press the phones menu button to open up a small pop
up menu on the phone (see the image on the left). On this menu you need to select the "Edit" option in the top left hand corner.

If you look to the right here you'll see the edit contact screen,
and where the contacts picture should be you can see a small (+) symbol. By clicking on this part of the screen you will open up a small pop up allowing you to select either "Album" or "Take photo".

After you select to either take the picture or use one from your album you'll need to find the picture then resize it. When you're happy with the image click on "Save" on the image screen and then click on on the "Edit contacts" screen to save the profile with the picture.

Whenever the contact now calls or texts you it will act just as contacts from Facebook doing it where you see there image on the call screen and text conversation list.

Whilst this is easy enough to do you will need to remember that you will need a picture of the contact (or a picture that you want to use for the contact) and that doing them in bulk (for lots of contacts) can be relatively time consuming.

Copying your contacts to your SIM card with a Samsung Galaxy S2

If you've got a Samsung Galaxy S2 mobile phone and want to copy your contacts from your phone onto the Sim card you may find yourself getting a little bit lost. Here we are going to guide you threw the process of "exporting your contacts".

To start this press on the "Phone" icon on the bottom of your phone to open up the "Keypad". At the top of the screen you sill see tabs. "Keypad" (the one you've landed on), "Logs" (the history of all your calls and texts), "Contacts" and "Favourites". At this point you need to click on the "Contacts" tab. Here you will find a list of all your contacts, which in some cases can be a huge amount if your contacts have been synced from Facebook. At this point you need to click on the menu button and you will see a menu pop up at the bottom of the screen. The menu will have an option saying "Import/Export contacts" which is the option you need to select.

To put the contacts onto your SIM card you need to select the "Expert to SIM card" option (whilst to get contacts from your SIM card you need to select "Import from SIM card). The next screen you will see if your contact list with tick boxes for you to select a number of contacts to export. When you've selected all your contacts click on "Export" and then "OK" and you're done the contacts will now be on your SIM card.

If the contacts from things like facebook you won't really need to export too many as you will likely be replacing the phone in the future with something else you can sync to your facebook account (or even google accounts) which means the future will see you being able to move numbers with out needing them on your SIM (in fact you can even use various apps for the job now).