Hackstacks » Smartphones

Turn your Android Phone to Windows Phone 7 Style

Renjith — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:18:55 +0000

Are you bored with your existing Android Interface? You can change it to the Windows Phone 7 User interface with some special apps for Android. This app can transform your Android phone Interface to a clean and elegant Metro user interface of Windows Phone 7. Some people would have gone for Android phone because of some specific reason such as its operating system as it’s from Google and you will not find any end user license agreement as others.

You will find many apps in this category in Android Market but Launcher 7 is better among all those. It has the same green tiles like Windows phone 7 OS and simple touch sensitive screen. If you want to try similar apps Metro UI lite is an alternate also you can try WP7 Notifications is a service for displaying the notifications as same as any Windows Phone 7 UI.

Conclusion: Do not expect these apps to deliver the same smooth interactive UI like Windows Phone 7. These transform pack may have bugs as well. But it will be cool in your Android phones so give it a try and experience the simple Metro Interface.

Shortcut key for displaying Blackberry Device’s Most useful Info

Renjith — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:17:41 +0000

It’s been quite some time I shared a Blackberry tip with you. So today I am sharing a quick tip to view the Help me! Page on Blackberry device using shortcut keys. Help me! Page is a page to view the most useful information about a Blackberry device. The page contains the information such as Vendor ID, OS version, PIN number, IMEI Number, Device Up time, Signal Strength, Battery level and Storage Information.

The shortcut to display Help Me! Window you have to press SHIFT+ALT+H buttons together.

Sample Help Me! page

Battery Energy Saving tips for Android Tablets

Renjith — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 15:36:56 +0000

Battery energy on smarphones and tablets will get drained very easily since these are equipped with best integration with the Internet. So a common problem raised by most of the people would be about the battery backup of these devices. Best feature of an Android device is that it has a Battery usage information page which will show the percentage of battery energy gets distributed for each service in your Android device. So if you look at this page you will have an idea as where you should be looking at to save some energy.

So here I am sharing some tips which I found working for saving the energy on your Android Tablet.

1) A bright display is always good but it can drain your battery very easily too. Keeping the brightness lower will help you to save lot of energy. (If you have ever noticed a feature of Android device is, that whenever it reaches up to the recharging level it will automatically switch to a power saving mode by reducing the brightness level that is actually provides you more working time.)
Go to Settings>Applications>Battery Use to view the summary of the battery use.

2) Next thing would be killing unwanted applications from the memory. Most of the time if you don’t reboot your device for few days there are chances that you will find many applications running on the memory of your tablet. Using a task manager app or the built in application manager can help you to kill these running applications.(Running applications can always occupy more memory and processing power which will ultimately require more energy)
Go to Settings>Applications>Manage Applications>Select the “Running” Menu to see the applications currently running in the background. Tap on any application and then tap on Force Stop/Stop to end the running app.

3) Android tablets can give you a good standby time but if you try keeping the Wi-Fi turned on, probably you will see the energy getting drained pretty faster. Make sure you power down the Wi-Fi when it is not in use. You can easily do it by changing the flight mode on. (Turning on the flight mode will disable all the radio signals)
Tap on the Time displayed on the right side bottom of the screen. It will bring up the Flight Mode settings. Slide the button to turn on the Flight Mode.

I have tested these and found helpful in saving the energy, I hope it will be helpful for you as well.

I would like to add one extra tip- is always practice to charge your tablets after a full battery discharge. By following this battery recharging cycle process can get you more battery backup and more battery life.

5 Best Mobile Security Apps for Android Tablets

Renjith — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 15:06:24 +0000

I was in search for a good security softwares for the Android Tablet. Well I was not disappointed by the options which I got it in the Android Market as I could see the top security solution provider’s product line there.(You know that Apple App Store is the #1 in providing apps but Android market has the most essential apps require for a Tablet) All of these were providing great features and protection for your device, so it is really hard to decide which product is actually require on your Android Tab. So I have decided to create a quick review for the major security products in the Market.

The first product in my Android Security product pipeline is

Mcafee
Mcafee Mobile security suite is packed with multiple security features to meet any mobile security threats. The suite has McAfee VirusScan Mobile, McAfee WaveSecure, and McAfee SiteAdvisor. It has a mobile remote locking facility via web and sms also the data backup and restore can be done on the cloud space provided on secured McAfee storage servers. The data will be completely secure and even if its stolen you can initiate a remote wipe on the device.You data remains untouched by an unknown. With all these features McAfee does nt comes free but you can try the software on trial for 7 days with full features enabled.

Lookout
You must be familiar with the name Lookout as we have recently reviewed this excellent mobile security software on Hackstacks. If you have n’t covered the news check it out to read the complete features of Lookout Mobile Security here.

Norton
Norton the Symantec product is known for the best security product has extended their expertise in Mobile security for Android based devices. The Norton Mobile security provides protection against any type of virus attacks reported on mobile devices. It has excellent anti-malware protection to secure your device while browsing on the Internet. A unique feature of this tool is it locks the device itself as soon as the SIM has been removed. Also it can be used to block unwanted calls and SMS. The app is currently in Beta so you can expect more good features coming up in future.

AVG
AVG the best free tool known to be for pc’s is now available to secure Android based devices. This security tool is similar to McAfee mobile security suite and shares the same type of features but there are some advanced features ported on this software makes it versatile. a)Which are like A real time scanning for Apps, settings and media files. b) A task manager like feature to kill the running programs which slow down your device.c) Also it scans your device’s settings for any vulnerability and report you to take necessary actions.

BitDefender
BitDefender is now available as Beta. It does provides the regular features such as file scanning and Web security. BitDefender claims that the app will not hog your battery power while its running. The scanner will work as on demand for malware scanning.The app is very light so when you have this app on your device it will never slow down your device. The app is fully cloud integrated so there is no need of a periodic updates to receive malware signatures to avail you a best protection. The best feature of this security tool is the ability to do a security scan and provide you the report. The security scan will run through the installed application and give you the permissions provided for each apps installed.This feature will help you to do an audit once in a while to know the permissions of each apps on your device.

Conclusion

As you can see some features are common in all these apps but each of these apps has one or more unique features for security. So I am sure atleast two app from this list will get place on your Adroid device.

Complete Security for Smartphones- Lookout

Renjith — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:10:38 +0000

We have seen the proprietary app for Blackberry to protect your devices now we have Lookout security which has more advanced security for multiple platforms. That means Lookout can provide security for your Windows phones, Blackberry’s and Android smartphones. Once you install the Lookout app on your mobile you are provided with an Antivirus, Remote backup and Missing Device tracking facility.

A free Lookout account will give you provision for up to 2 smartphone management. It can back up your picture and contacts completely from your Lookout dashboard. In case if the device is missing you can initiate a scream on your mobile also it can do a remote phone locking and remote wiping. Your data will never reach in any stranger’s hand. The Google powered map will help you to track your mobile easily.

The inbuilt mobile antivirus will scan all the application installed and block if it found any malwares. It can even scan and block when it finds a bad application updates detected.

How to get this working on your Mobile?

1. Logon to this link from your computer
2. And select your device from the list and enter your phone number after selecting appropriate country to receive SMS.
3. Click on the link you received on the mobile to start download the mobile app.
4. After you install the app on the device, register and then activate your account.
5. You can sign in to your account login to manage your devices.

QuickTip-How to Backup Galaxy Tab Apps & Settings to Google Account

Renjith — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 15:33:56 +0000

Today we are sharing a quick tip to back up the data on your Galaxy Tab powered with the new Honeycomb operating system. The backup option on the Galaxy Tab basically does the application backup also it does the backup of the Wi-Fi passwords that are saved on the Tab as well as other tablet based settings. One great thing is you can store this backup on the cloud by selecting appropriate Google (Gmail) account in the backup option.

In Order to do the Backup on the Galaxy Tab follow the below instruction.

(1) From the home screen touch on the Apps (Right side top)
(2) Then press on Settings icon and then select the Privacy.
(3) Now under the Backup and Restore tab click on Back up my data to begin the back up.

If you have not set the Backup account you must click on the Back up Account and add relevant Google account. So that we can complete the back up by specifying relevant Google account.

Galaxy Tab 10.1 Best Videos

Renjith — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:45:35 +0000

Check it out the videos of all new Galaxy Tab 10.1

Faster Tablet

Lighter Tablet

Thinner Tablet

Official Commercials

Global TV Commercial