Offering a slice of Samsung Galaxy S3 goodness in a smaller, more affordable form, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini is designed to appeal to a wide audience, here are some tips to help you get the best from it.
Tip 1: Home Screen Mode
From multiple homescreens, to apps and widgets, smartphones are packed with features, which can be overwhelming for novices or anyone making the transition from featurephone, to help Samsung offers two types of homescreen. Go to Settings – Home screen mode and you’ll see two options: Basic mode offers a conventional layout, but in Easy mode the homescreens are automatically populated with commonly used widgets and shortcuts – such as Favourite Contacts, Alarms and Favourite Settings. It’s a nice feature and simplifies the experience for first time smartphone owners.
Tip 2: Quick swiping
On eachscreen there’s a line of horizonal dots representing each individual homescreen. Place your finger on the dots and they will turn into a slider you can use to quickly move between screens (right).
Tip 3: Keyboard shortcuts
Save time and precious keyboard clicks by using Samsung’s swipe-style keyboard. Go to Settings – Language and input and tap the settings icon next to Samsung keyboard. Select Continuous Input and now instead of tapping each letter, simply slide your fingers over the keys to compose words.
From the same menu tap Advanced and tick Auto-punctuate and every time you double tap the keyboard a full stop is inserted into your sentance.
Tip 4: Offlne reading
If you haven’t had time to finish reading a web page, or you don’t have unlimited data and want to store a pages to read at another time, tap the Menu button and select Save for offline reading. To retrieve the page tap the Favourites tab located at the top right of the browser and select the Saved pages tab.
Tip 5: Power Saving
Worried about your battery? Use the built-in power saver to extend the battery life, by simply swiping down and tapping Power Saver. When the battery gets low features like push email will be turned and the screen brightness will be reduced.
Alternatively if you want more control over what features of the phone are affected by power saving, head to Settings – Power saving and you’ll see two options. CPU power saving limits the performance of the phones processor (but unless you play lots of intensive games you won’t notice much difference), while Screen power saving reduces the brightness and frame rate.
Tip 6: Adjust the font size
Struggling to read text? Head to Settings – Display – Font Size and choose the new size, which will be used throughout the menu and native applications – like messaging and Gmail.
Tip 7: Lock Screen shortcuts
Save time by opening apps directly from the lock screen. Select Lock Screen – Lock Screen Options from the Settings menu, turn the Shortcuts slider on and Chat On, Google and Camera shortcuts will appear on the lock screen ready to launch by swiping up. Weather updates and a News Ticker can also be position on the front page.
Tip 8: Automatic form details
Fed up of filling in online forms? Launch the internet brower, hit the Menu button and select Settings – General – Form auto-fill, tap Auto-fill text enter your details and every time you fill in a web fob, the fields are populated automatically with your details with a single tap.
Tip 9: Motion controls
One of the unique things about new Samsung Galaxy phones are its Motion controls, which enable you to a activate certain commands simply by moving the phone. Go to Settings – Motion to check the list out. Some like Double tap to Top and Turn over to mute/pause are more useful than others, but it’s worthwhile looking at the tutorials first and experimenting to see what suits you.
Tip 10: Folders
It’s easy for homescreens to become cluttered with apps, shortcuts and features, which is where folders come in handy. Tap on the required app and drag it to Create Folder choose a name for the folder, then add to its by dragging other apps on top. Alternatively press down and select Folder.
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