Gingerbread (Android 2.3) is
beginning to populate Android
handsets around the world. In
celebration, Jonathan Rosenberg,
senior vice president of product
management at Google, has made a
very cool list of tips, keyboard
tricks, and apps that he finds
helpful and fun. We’re going to past
the entire list here because it’s
pretty helpful. Some notable
improvements include the addition
of a more standard Shift key, easier
copy/pasting, 3D maps, and some
enhancements to notification icons.
It also looks a lot slicker, from what
we’re told.
Tips
- Visual cue for scrolling:
When you are in a
scrollable list (like your
Gmail inbox) and you reach
the end of the list it shows
an orange hue—a visual cue
that you can’t scroll
anymore. - Notification bar icons (Wi-
Fi, network coverage bars,
etc.) : Turn green when you
have an uninhibited
connection to Google, white
when you don’t. Hint: if
you’re in a hotel or airport
using Wi-Fi, the bars won’t
turn green until you launch
the browser and get past
the captive portal. - Voice actions : Tell your
phone what to do by
pressing the microphone
icon next to the search box
on the home screen, or long
press the magnifying glass.
You can tell it to send an
email or text message (“send
text to mom, see you for
pizza at 7”), call someone
(“call mom”), navigate
somewhere (“navigate to
pizza”), or listen to music
(“listen to TangaTricks.tk”). - Find things you’ve
downloaded from your
browser: Your downloads
are now neatly collected in
a Downloads manager,
which you can find in the
apps drawer. - Turn a Gallery stack into a
slideshow : In Gallery, when
you are looking at a stack of
photos, put two fingers on
the stack and spread them.
The stack spreads out and
the pictures flow from one
finger to the other, a
moving slideshow that lets
you see all of the photos. - Walk, don’t drive: Once
you’ve gotten directions
within Google Maps, click on
the walking person icon to
get walking directions. - Easy text copy/paste from a
webpage : To copy/paste
from a webpage, long press
some text, drag the handles
around to select the text
you want to copy, and press
somewhere in the
highlighted region. To paste,
simply long press a text
entry box and select paste.
Gmail is a bit different: you
need to go to Menu > More
> Select Text. - And Many More
Tags:
Android Tips And Tricks