Samsung Galaxy S2 Tips and Tricks

Samsung Galaxy S2 is a flagship smartphone from Samsung. Even though Galaxy S3 is on the way to launch, Galaxy S2 is the most popular high end smartphone from Samsung.  Here are some Tips and Tricks on Samsung Galaxy S2 compilation from different forums and users. You are welcome to share any tips you might know.

Samsung Galaxy S 2 tips and Tricks

Tips and Tricks for Samsung Galaxy S2:
Adding shortcuts in Touchwiz user interface of Galaxy S2: In the home screen, press the screen in the blank space where it is free from icons.  The phone will pop up a menu which consist of lot of options which includes shortcut options.  Using the shortcut option you can set shortcut for your favorite app.
Factory Reset of Samsung Galaxy S2: There are three ways to reset Samsung Galaxy S2 to factory defaults. First one through dialer, second one through settings and the final one by Recovery mode. Let us see one by one.

Factory reset through Dialer:  In dialer enter 2767*3855# and dial. Your phone will reset to factory defaults.

Factory Reset through setting: Go to settings from Menu, and select Privacy, Factory data reset.

Factory reset through Recovery mode: Power off the phone, press and hold Vol Up + Home + Power. Use the Vol keys to navigate the menus and Home to action.
Adding contacts to Home screen:  Hold down on any home screen blank space, select shortcuts from options, then you chose contacts then you choose a contact to stick them on the home screen, or you can choose direct message/dial and then a contact to do the same with that feature. 

Fixing Home screen and apps disappear on start up: Some users are reported that, by going to settings-> accounts->and Sync. Uncheck both background sync and auto sync will solve this issue.  

Sort videos by list : Access the movie through your file explorer instead of the gallery, that way you can see the name of the movie on the file.

Increasing call volume:  When max volume is set, it is actually sets default setting of 87 out of 100 . For changing default setting please follow below steps.

• call this number *#*#197328640#*#*
• This will open the service mode menu.
• choose option [5] AUDIO
• choose option [1] (VOICE CALL)
• choose option [1] HANDSET
• choose option [1] Volume
• choose option [1] SRC Speech RX Volume
• choose option [5] 5_lvl : 87
• press the menu button (left side)
• choose Key Input
• enter a value between 0 and 100, I choose 100 the loudest setting.
• press ok
• now press the menu button and select back this should save (don't use the right side back key you normally use to navigate the phone or you will quit out of the settings) keep hitting the menu and back until you leave the service mode menu.
• You will also note you can change volume settings for other things like bluetooth, head sets, video call etc.

Note: This is not permanent. When phone get restarted, settings resets back to the default levels .

 Other miscellaneous tips on Samsung Galaxy S2: 

• Pinch on home screen to get homescreens overview, from there you can either skip to a particular screenshot or bin ones you don't need, that way you will have less homescreen dot markers.  
• In Applications menu, Press Menu key and then edit.Here you can move the Phone Contacts and Messaging widgets from the bottom of the screen into the applications area and replace them with other applications, or just remove them altogether to leave just the blue applications widget for every home screen.
• If you deleting all the info from the twlauncher app, then your apps drawer will sort automatically (once) however your homescreen layout will revert to default.
• Long press on the menu key will bring up the search function. 
• Press the home key and Power button together to take a screen shot. The screen shot will be saved on gallery.
• Double press the home button while the screen is not locked will auto open voice commands. For the  first time setup go to Apps and voice commands and do the tutorial and to change/setup voice commands go to settings-voice input and output.
• If you turn off Auto brightness in Settings --> Display, then long pressing the notifications area and sliding left and right will increase/decrease the screen brightness.
• If you are having trouble with the initial pairing of your SGSII to a bluetooth device, restart the SGSII and try again (this bug also present on SGSI with same fix).
• If you don't like the screen colour temperature you can change it (system-wide) in Settings --> Display --> Background effect. Movie mode makes things more drab, dynamic mode tends to pump up the colours a lot (will help with sunlight legibility).
• There is more than one speech-synthesis engine in the phone, by default it will be set in Voice Input and output to Pico TTS, but Samsung TTS is much more pleasant sounding (less robotic). Samsung TTS removes spoken street names in Google Navigation though.
• In the browser type about:useragent into the address bar, hit enter, it will come up with a list of user agents.Choose desktop to have the browser stop defaulting to mobile versions of websites.
• On both the homescreen and the apps menu you will see a row of dots indicating which page you are on. hold the dot and scroll left or right. The pages will quickly scroll until you see the page you want.
• If you hit edit on the home screen you can edit the number of screens availble, to a max of seven screens.
• You can rearrange your applications by pressing edit in the applications screen, then moving them. Also folders can be made there too.
• Long hold on Widget will expand the widgets.