• Shortcut to Call, WhatsApp, Hangout, SMS....

Are you tired of opening your Phone-book frequently to call your besties?
Do you feel wasting of your time in phone-book or in inbox to find your friend?
Don't worry. Solution is here!!
You can make shortcut icons in your Android phone, just like you make in your desktop.
You can make icons of any of your friends from your phone-book on your Android Home Screen. By them, you will be able to Call or Message directly to your friend.

Just follow these steps and save your time from searching contacts in your phone-book.
There are two different ways to do this.


Let's see the 1st one....
► Open your phone-book/contact list in your Android.
► Go to your favorite contact. 
► Press & Hold that contact, it'll open menu-list. Select "Add to Home-screen" from that list.
Or if you open that contact details, press Menu & select "Add to Home-screen".
► It will open a small window with three different options.
► 1. "Contact" will create an icon on your home-screen. That will be for to see contact details directly with Call Numbers, WhatsApp, Hangout, Google map direction, SMS etc.
     2. "Direct Dial" option will create an icon, which will enable to call instantly to that number. If there are multiple numbers, it will ask you to choose any one number.
     3. "Direct Message" option will let you to send message for that contact number.
► Go to your home-screen and start your talk/chat instantly.

Now let's see 2nd way to create shortcut icon....
► On your Home Screen, press Option & press on Add.
► After that, go to "Shortcuts" option.
► Then select any option from "Contact", "Direct Dial" or "Direct Message" and select your contact after that.
► Your shortcut icon will be created on your Android Home-screen. Enjoy!!

Other related post for Icon & Calling features....
► Access contact details by its Icon
► Set your Custom Ringtone for incoming call
► Different use of Volume Keys

• Gallery Cache - Big Threat of Storage

          Hey friends, here I come to know about a great enemy of storage in Android. There are many factors which are responsible to occupy more unnecessary space in SD card or in Internal storage. But here I will talk about Gallery Caches & Thumbnails. These are the cache and thumbnails files of our images & videos, stored in Android Gallery. Gallery uses these files for preview of images & videos but after deleting such media files from gallery, their cache & thumbnails are still there in our storage. So, it is necessary to delete such caches otherwise, after long period of time, there will be 100s of MB or GB of storage will be unnecessarily occupied. So, feel free to cleanup these files without losing of any kind of data.

I am using Gingerbread in my Android device. And I found these gallery caches & thumbnails under this location "../mnt/sdcard/Android/data/com.cooliris.media/cache/" in my file manager. I hope, this path will be same as I have mentioned above,  in all other Android versions. Here, com.cooliris.media is a folder, created by Default Android Gallery. Here, some folders like "com.cooliris.media", "cache" will be hidden. So, change settings in your file manager or in system to display hidden files & folders. Generally, these caches will cause storage problem after long time as during long time-period, useless files will be increased.

So, follow these steps to remove caches and to free up memory:
 ► Go to your File Manager and open "cache" folder as given in above path.
 ► In this folder, there are many others folders like "hires-image-cache", "local-image-thumbs", "local-video-thumbs" etc.
 ► All these folders contains different caches & thumbnails as per their folder name. So, check the size of these folders and delete all files in them and get large amount of free space. You will not loose any images or videos in your Gallery.
 ► Enjoy lots of free space!! 

Other posts related to Gallery & free up memory from cache files of User Installed Applications.
► Free up memory from Application Caches
► Reset Application & Free up memory
► Make Android more Faster and Smoother
► Gallery Image Sliding Fun

• Long Battery Life

Draining out phone battery is one of the biggest problem of smartphones. Using internet, internet surfing, chatting, wifi etc are greatest causes to the battery problem. But don't worry, in this post, there are all possible ways or tips are mentioned by which you can save your smartphone's battery life at some level. So, just go through these following tips.

► Do not charge battery frequently. Charge the battery only when it shows low battery warning. Let the battery to be charged fully if possible. 
► Use Task Killer application. It'll stop unnecessary processes & apps and let the processor free. [! Some task killer apps also consume more battery power. So choose appropriate app from the market. ]   
► Wireless related processes need more battery power. So, disable Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi and other related wireless processes after their use. Don't let them active unnecessarily. 
► Properly close/exit the application after their use. Otherwise minimized applications will keep consuming battery from background processes.    
► Screen Display Consumes more battery power. More Brighter screen will consume more battery. So, keep Lower Brightness if possible. Or download an app that will allow you to create screen brightness plans according to your routine and need. 
► There are generally 2G & 3G networks available in every smart phones. Around 50% of battery power is consumed by Network Signals. (you can see this in battery info graph.) And if Network mode is GSM/WCDMA AUTO or 2G/3G Auto, it will use more power. So kindly choose Only 2G/GSM Mode or Only 3G/WCDMA Mode.  
► More Applications - More Power consume. Applications keep their few processes active all the time. It will not only use more battery power, but also slower the device performance especially in average processor of device. So, Uninstall unnecessary applications.  
► Internet/Data Packet Service/ Wifi services keep internet related processes and applications always active. So Deactivate Data Access/Wifi when they are not in use.   
► Heat is biggest enemy for battery consumption. Hot/Warmer Temperature will increase the flow of chemical reaction in Battery as per general science knowledge. So, it may be harmful to the battery after longtime. So, don't put cellphone in a pocket or on hot surface for long time.

After this tips, if you want to make your Android device more smoother & faster than Click here.

• Reset App & Free up Memory

Here, I am going to post about resetting an installed application. By resetting your installed app, it will become like a newly installed app! Along with this, it will also create free space in your storage by removing unnecessary stored data & caches. In case, if you want to reinstall any application, want to free up storage from that app or want to start application from beginning with default settings & data, this post will be useful to you.

When you open details for any installed app in your phone, there are two options named "Clear Data" & "Clear Cache". Here, Clear Data will be used to reset Android application. Just follow these steps and start using application from beginning by resetting it :  ► Go to "Settings" in your Android.  ► In settings, open "Applications" menu.  ► Open "Storage use" under applications menu.  ► There will be list of your installed applications. So, click on any app to view details & settings of that application to reset.  ► Press "Clear Data" in that opened page.  ► done !!

For example, in Google Maps, if you want to use Google Map with all default settings with no user data as when it was newly installed  or  to remove all the saved maps, want default settings etc. as a fresh installed app, just follow above steps like these :  ► Go to Settings in your Android phone. ► Open Applications.  ► Than open Storage use.  ► Under that page, Find & Press on "Google Maps".  ► After that press on "Clear Data".  ► done!!  All the unnecessary storage of this app will be removed and you can start over this app again from beginning.  ► See the following photos for better understanding.

[! Clear Data option will reset all settings of that application to default and delete all user's stored data. ]
[! Clear Cache option will not reset all settings & data, but remove caches, logged in data, extra memory used by app etc. ]

Other posts related to free up memory from cache files from Gallery & User Installed Applications.
► Free up memory from Application Caches
► Cleanup Large Amount of Caches from Gallery
► Make Android more Faster and Smoother
► Gallery Image Sliding Fun

• Widget Problem

Widget is an icon on device's home screen. It let us access some of functionality of applications directly from home screen. We need not to open that application from menu list. Generally widget can be added to the home and sliding screen by two ways.

1. ► Home screen Menu ► Add Widget ► Category
2. ► Press and hold on home screen ► Select widget

But, sometimes there are problems with widgets that they don't appear in the "Add Widget" list. This problem mostly occurs because of installation of particular app in the memory card. Some apps do not support their installation in memory card for widget. So to solve this problem, move app to the device/phone storage. After this, if the app is containing any widget, it'll appear in the "Add widget" list. Some applications also support their installation in memory card for widget. So, such apps do not need to move them into device/phone memory.

• Gallery Fun / Trick

This is a small kind of fun or you can say a trick to see photos without opening a folder in the gallery. This can be done in default Android Gallery. I have Gingerbread 2.3.4 and I don't know that if this will work in other newer versions or not.

But anyway, let's try this fun here : ► Open pre-installed Gallery in your Android phone. ► Put two fingers on a folder and than quickly drag both fingers far from each other. ► Hold this kind of finger position and images of that folder will start sliding automatically. ► Or you can keep holding folder by one finger and can move other finger in the screen.

► If images stop sliding because of end of images than just slightly move other finger to the first one and images will start sliding again in opposite way. ► See the Video - Android Gallery Slide of this steps to get an idea for easiness. Click here to see the video. Or see directly below.