Samsung Galaxy S4 mini Tips and Tricks

The

Samsung Galaxy S4 mini

may play second fiddle to company’s flagship but it’s still packed with a ton of features. Here are a few tips to help you get the most from it.

Tip 1: Improving battery life (Disable radios and use dark wallpaper)

Samsung is certainly generous in its out-of-the-box features, while the Galaxy S4 mini is packed full. However, with all the radios, sensors, and features, it’s not surprising to find that battery life will be affected, especially when you don’t use all the features of your phone in the first place.

First and foremost, you can immediately improve power efficiency by choosing a dark or ideally true black wallpaper. The phone’s AMOLED display uses effectively zero power on black pixels. What’s more by swiping from the top with two fingers you can toggle a number of the S4 mini’s features off, including NFC, Bluetooth, WiFi, Smart stay and S Beam, whilst also switching Power saving on.

Tip 2: Lockscreen widgets (Multiple widgets)

As the S4 mini comes running Android 4.2.2 – one of the latest iterations of Jelly Bean, it supports lockscreen widgets, which grant you the ability to access certain features and services without having to unlock the phone.

By default, the lock screen widgets are disabled, but if you jump to the "My Device" tab in "Settings", please open the "Lock screen" menu and check the "Multiple widgets" checkbox , Then you can use this feature.

Swiping down from the clock or welcome message, (depending on which you’ve chosen) on the main lockscreen will then let you swipe to the right to reveal additional lockscreen panes. Tap the ‘+’ and then pick from the menu which widget you’d like to show up and you’re done.

Tip 3: Silence touch sounds

The Samsung G

Thankfully it’s easy to disable by hopping into the Settings menu, tapping on the My device tab at the top, choosing the Sound options and unticking the Touch sounds tick box. You can also disable the dial pad and screen lock sounds from this menu too.

Tip 4: QuickPic

Samsung being Samsung, you’ll be hard pressed to find many true stock Android apps on the Galaxy S4 mini and this includes the Gallery app. Unfortunately for some unknown reason all of the latest S4 handsets including the S4 mini suffer from noticeable lag when opening this particular application, which is both a little bewildering and frustrating, but that’s why we suggest an alternative like QuickPic.

QuickPic is free to download from the

Google Play store

, is ad free and offers a lightning fast interface. The app offers a number of different view layouts and even has an Explorer mode so you can browse files and folders stored internally or on your removable microSD card.

Tip 5: Camera modes

The 8-megapixel camera on the S4 mini’s back produces decent shots when set to automatic shooting, but it’s worth toying with the additional modes to get the most out of it. Launch the camera and top the mode button in the bottom right. You can scroll through the 10 different shooting modes on the right side of the screen or tap the grid icon in the bottom left to see all 10 in one go.

Shooting modes like Sound & shot can only correctly be viewed on other Samsung devices or exported as a video.