Samsung News Geek

Android has over 200 000 apps available to it from the Android market, which is an app on the handset itself.

https://market.android.com/ gives you a preview of the 'Top apps' available that you can download from your phone.
Just tap on the Market icon in your Applications, sign in with your Gmail account and you're in!

If you've heard of Angry Birds and want to try it, make sure you have more than 5 minutes, it's addictive :( lol

The Pattern Lock. You either love this feature or you have been stung by this feature.

What is it? It's a security feature for your phone, instead of typing a password in, you draw a pattern, that you, yourself applied at an earlier stage by using the 9 dots you have to play with.

To set it up, in your Menu, tap on Settings -> tap on Location & Security ->tap on Set Unlock pattern -> enter an unlock pattern, they make you put it in more than once to make sure you get it right, once you tap on Continue, you're good to go.

If you have a pattern lock on your phone, it appears to be a magnet for children and friends who get a hold of your phone on the weekend. They see it as a fun game that they should try and solve...and lock you out of your phone...

Depending on the phone itself, it will either, tell you that you tried too many times, you need a break and to come back later or it might tell you to enter your Gmail username and password to get into your phone. You know, the one you never signed into your phone before this happened, in this case you can either visit a service centre and have them unlock it or you'll have to 2 or 3 button reset your phone (and totally wipe it), sometimes, the 2 or 3 button reset just doesn't work (like on a Galaxy 5 and 'some' of the original i9000s).

If you have actually used your Gmail account on your phone before this happened and it still doesn't like your username and password, log in to Gmail, sometimes your Gmail username is something other than your email address and you didn't even know.

I guess the moral to the story is either, make sure you have a working Gmail account on your phone or don't let it fall into the wrong hands.

MamaTeresa asked how to get pictures off her phone onto the computer, so I wrote the following;

Depending on the handset you have you can either download and install the sync program that came with it, if it's a Samsung Android phone you can download Samsung Kies from www.samsungapps.com.

If you want to use your device as a Mass Storage device and get images (and also music and documents) to your PC that way, there's a couple different ways to do it with different versions of Android, this is basically tailored to Samsung Android handsets.

For Eclair 2.1
In the Application menu, tap on Settings ->About Phone -> USB Settings -> tap on Ask on connection.
Go to the main screen of your phone, plug your device in and on the phone tap on Mass storage when prompted. Once you have done this, drag down the notification bar down from the top of the screen and then tap on 'USB connected', then tap on 'Mount'.
Once this has happened you can find a removable drive in My Computer or Computer, double click on this and you should see a DCIM folder, in that folder you will find a Camera folder and in that folder, lo and behold you will find your Photos.

For Froyo 2.2
In the Application menu -> Settings-> Wireless and Network -> USB settings -> Tap on 'Ask on connection'.
Go to the main screen of your phone, plug your device in and on the phone tap on Mass storage when prompted. Then tap on the option that says 'Turn on USB storage'. It will show up as a removable drive in My Computer or Computer. Your photos will be in your DCIM/Camera Folder

2.3 (Galaxy S)
In the Application menu -> Settings-> Wireless and Network -> USB settings ->Tap on Mass storage (Change this back to Samsung Kies if you need to later). Go to the main screen of your phone, plug your device. Then tap on the option that says 'Turn on USB storage'. It will show up as a removable drive in My Computer or Computer. Photos will be in your DCIM/Camera Folder

2.3 (Galaxy S II)
In the Application menu -> Settings-> Wireless and Network -> USB Utilities -> Tap on 'Connect Storage to PC' and plug the device in. It will show up as a removable drive in My Computer or Computer. Photos will be in your DCIM/Camera Folder

You can also insert an external SD card and copy the images to the SD card and take it with you when you want to print them at the shop.
In Applications go to 'My Files' -> DCIM -> press the 'Menu' key, you should have a 'Copy' option in there.

These Android phones are certainly Internet ready. Out of the box and off they connect (well hopefully they do).

Be careful with the Internet, if your plan doesn't include data or a have a lot of data included, you might run up a bill...a mighty big data bill.

Internet not working and you really need it to? Do you see the data network indicator next to your reception bars? On a Samsung, they are in the form of G, E, 3G and H depending what your network supports.

If you don't see those, you either;
1) Don't have coverage in your area.
2) Your account with your service provider is not setup for it.
3)You don't have Internet settings on the phone.
4) Maybe you SIM card is older than you can imagine and maybe it's time to get a replacement SIM (you can keep your old number)
5) The Data network mode is deactivated
6) Something else I can't think of right now lol.

The last option (Option 5) is really, really common! To check the Data network mode settings on some Samsungs, you can press and hold the Power key until another menu comes up and see if the Data network mode is deactivated. If it is, just tap to activate it. Otherwise, in your Menu, tap on Settings -> Wireless and Networks -> Mobile networks -> Make sure the Packet data option has a green tick next to it.

If the Data network mode is activated, the Internet still doesn't work and your network service provider says, 'we don't know where to find the settings to check them or where to add them', the settings are more than likely in the following location; in the Menu, tap on Settings -> Wireless and Networks (or controls) -> Mobile networks -> Access point name. From here you can either tap on an existing Internet or MMS profile and check the settings or create a new Internet profile by pressing the Menu button (on a Samsung it is the button on the phone with the lines) and then tap on Add new.

If you want to turn your Internet access off because you realised, uh oh, I am approaching my data limit of the month or have exceeded it, you can simply deactivate the Data Network mode by following the instructions above and deactivating the option or removing the green tick, this turns off Internet/Email/MMS. As this also turns your MMS/Picture message feature off, you can't send or receive MMS until you activate it again.
A Samsung handset running Eclair 2.1 doesn't have this feature unless you install a 3rd party app from the Android Market.

Have you ever noticed the Internet working by itself? Or your bill said that at 3.59am you used the Internet when in fact you were sleeping soundly in bed? Some apps update by themselves and emails might be getting checked every 15 minutes, this uses lots of data and also battery. To help stop this from happening, tap on Settings -> Accounts & Sync and switch off all the auto syncing. Accounts & Sync is also the place you realise you have actually setup an email you didn't realise you had or the person at the store added in, in all the excitement (i have seen this happen before lol). I am not sure if there are some apps who get around this feature.

Battery not lasting long?

I've included a few things you can change to make it last that little bit extra, some people don't want to do these because it defeats the purpose of why they bought the phone, which is true, but sometimes you need to have battery life for just that little extra time;

-If you aren't using Blueooth, Wifi and GPS, switch them off, they just keep scanning otherwise. (Settings -> Wireless and Networks)
-Some people use off market chargers, these sometimes do more harm than good, try using the genuine one that came with device.
-Check you reception, if your reception is constantly low or fluctuating it will drain your battery faster.
-Screen brightness, if it set the brightest, just know it will use more than it will if it is set lower, it really is personal preference (Settings -> Display)
-Active wallpapers can also drain the battery a fair bit, no matter how cute those fish swimming round your screen are, just know, they are sucking your battery lol.
-Auto email sync and app updates, you can disable the background data as mentioned before, on some phones it actually tells you, by doing this you will prolong battery life (woohoo lets hope). (settings -> accounts & sync).