Hello Readers! I recently decided to go ahead and watch the "Android Essential Training" course on Lynda.com. I found this course by accident when I was searching for courses on Android application development. The "Android Essential Training" course teaches you how to use your Android phone or tablet, not how to develop applications.
I decided to watch this course because I think that no matter how much you think you know about a subject, there is usually something new to learn. I initially learned how to use my Android phone by playing around with it and it was reasonable to assume that there was probably at least a couple of useful features that I never noticed.
This in fact turned out to be the case. Here is a summary of some of the new things that I learned (or finally noticed) about using an Android device by watching this course:
I decided to watch this course because I think that no matter how much you think you know about a subject, there is usually something new to learn. I initially learned how to use my Android phone by playing around with it and it was reasonable to assume that there was probably at least a couple of useful features that I never noticed.
This in fact turned out to be the case. Here is a summary of some of the new things that I learned (or finally noticed) about using an Android device by watching this course:
- I learned the terms for all the touchscreen techniques.
- Previously, I was not familiar with the terms long press, pinch, and spread.
- I learned that accented characters are available by long pressing a key.
- There is a voice typing feature that can be used outside the S Voice app. I had heard about this previously, but never paid much attention to it. However, I have played with the S Voice app before.
- I learned the definition of a widget:
- They are tiny windows that dwell on the home screen similar to apps.
- They display information or are interactive in some way.
- Each widget has a size value in terms of the amount of home screen space it will take up.
- Movies, music, and books are available on the Google Play Store. It may sound silly that I have not noticed this before, but I suppose since I usually get things like movies and books through my public library, I have rarely looked elsewhere.
- Those apps on the phone that say "Play Books," "Play Games," etc. are used to play things purchased through the Google Play Store. I had previously noticed those apps and wondered why I never used them.
- You can add pauses while dialing. This is useful if you will need to dial an extension and do not want to have to take the phone off your ear after dialing to enter the extension number on the keypad.
- SMS = Simple Message Service
- MMS = Multimedia Message Service
- You can request the desktop version of a mobile site by tapping the action overflow and clicking "Request Desktop Site."
- I suppose I have not had much use for this yet, but it is nice to know.
- You cannot use Flash on the mobile web and apps that claim to be able to enable it on your phone are not to be trusted.
- I have not ran into this at all, but it is good to know!
- In the Camera app, the "flash on" setting (versus the "automatic flash" setting) is useful for taking a photo of a close subject against a bright background such as someone standing in front of a window.
- This is a much appreciated photography tip!
- It is not good to use zoom when shooting video.
- I rarely shoot video, but this is nice to know.
- We can set the image resolution for the cameras on the phone.
- The Photos app has a trash folder so if you accidentally delete a photo, you have a chance to retrieve it. Items stay in the trash folder for 60 days.
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