Gadgetory

if you're lucky enough to call yourself a new Nexus 4 owner after the holiday season then here are some tips and tricks for you hey it's Joshua of agar from Android authority what's going on everybody and these are my 10 tips and tricks for the Google Nexus 4 alright let's go ahead and jump in but first a quick disclaimer some of the tips and tricks you might see in this video you may have seen before and at the same time some of them pertain more to the jelly bean 4.2 operating system than the Nexus 4 device itself however I can guarantee that there is something in this video for everyone so let's jump in this first tip is about the Nexus 4 in particular though protect your investment it's no secret that the Nexus 4 is a rather fragile phone even small drops from a short distance are enough to shatter even the corning gorilla glass on the front or the regular glass on the back this is a sexy phone but that does come with a little bit of a price so it's best to be as careful as possible with it me personally when I'm actually using my Google Nexus 4 I'm usually pretty careful with it I've yet to drop in I have yet to have any scratches on the body but when I'm not using the phone I prefer to put it into this particular sleeve there are a lot of different cases out there by a lot of different companies and this crew Menna by SGP spigen is my choice this next tip allows you to cut the cord the key Wireless standard is built into the nexus 4 meaning that you don't have to use the included power cord in order to charge your phone this allows you to use various mats made by energizer or even the one made specifically by LG now unfortunately the Nexus wireless charging orb is still not available but there have been reports of it showing up on websites overseas so hopefully this really cool dock will be available in the u.s. very soon but now we're going to expand our lock screens one of the best pieces of functionality added into jelly bean 4.2 happens right when you'll wake up your screen these lock screen widgets or rather not really widgets but screens are one things that you can swipe among to open various apps like the camera app you see here however you are able to add to what's already built in there and it's only a matter of time before more applications add lockscreen functionality in this case I open up the messaging screen so that I can see all of my text messages for in a glance you are able to use this as an easy way of seeing all of your info right away or to go right into different apps immediately some of you may already know how to do this but still worth mentioning let's capture your screen built into every Android smartphone is the ability to capture whatever it is on the screen at any given time all you have to do is make sure that your screen is displaying exactly what you need and you just have to hold down the volume down and the power buttons together and a flash should appear on your screen showing you that something was taken afterwards you will see in the notification drop-down that your screenshot was saved and you can view it just like any other picture taking the screenshot of what's on your screen is really handy because if you happen to have some sort of information let's say from an email or let's say this list of stories from reddit for example that you just want to be able to save but there's no real way to be able to do it easily you can always just take a quick screenshot of what you're looking at and now you have a picture that is easily viewable whenever you need it and now we're going to take advantage of a way that Google is just trying to make your life that much easier set your phone right quick it probably is no secret already that the notification drop-down has been expanded in the new jelly bean 4.2 just hit this button on the side and you will be given access to all of your mostly used settings there is a button there to get to just the settings screen itself but as you can see here I'm able to access Bluetooth my mobile data and my wife I immediately just from a quick press it'll go straight to the page in the settings that's really nice but there's an even easier way to get to the settings page that's by using a two finger swipe it may seem like a very basic feature inside of the Nexus 4 but it saves those precious seconds and allows you to really change the settings on your phone really quickly so just use a two finger swipe and you go straight to your settings rather than having to pull down the notification drop-down and hit that button in the corner let's get things tidy by keeping your screens clean I'm actually going to start with a rather obscure feature that's found inside of the Play Store there's an option inside of the settings that allows you to auto add widgets or in this case icons for any newly installed applications on the phone this might seem like kind of a cool feature to have but in all the reality it is really annoying think of it you get your Nexus 4 you put your Google Account which has already been used onto this new phone and all those applications that weren't already installed are now installed and their widgets and icons populate all of your home screens if you have a lot of apps this becomes tiring very fast in this case I'm going to use pulse as my example by disabling that setting I now don't have to worry about it being on the home screen right away I can just grab the icon and take advantage of another feature that keeps screens clean and that's the folders these folders are actually sent down to my dog making room for things that are more important on my home screen take advantage of these options because they really help to keep things clean but now it's time to unleash your inner shutterbug or to use a term that I'm not particularly fond of your inner Instagrammer the camera inside of the jelly bean 4.2 operating system has been updated and makes the Nexus 4 camera experience that much better the 8 megapixel camera found in the Nexus 4 is already a big improvement but the interface has been overhauled in the camera app that does away with traditional menus for touch and swipe settings and that just makes the whole experience fun the gallery itself has been given some extra features as well as when you hit this little icon on the bottom left you're given access to a bunch of new settings like the filters and the ability to crop add a frame or even change the exposure of a photo in order to get a whole new look this simple picture that I took inside of the camera app has now been given a vintage filter and some rounded edges for the frame pretty neat stuff another feature built into the new camera is the photosphere it might make you look a little bit silly as you're trying to go around the grid and align the dots however what comes out of it are Street View like pictures that have a very nice perspective and a kind of fun to look at in this particular shot I try to get just the area in front of me and what turned out was this nice I'll be at some why imperfect shot still pretty fun to use this one was actually quite new to me teacher found how to pronounce your name built into the pupil application are a number of different fields for contact cards and this one is phonetic name if you use Google Voice Search and you find it hard for Google to recognize a hard to pronounce the name in your contacts you can spell it out here the way it would sound to it but for my brother as you see here I just put a nickname and added the word brother because Google Voice search will find it all the same now I don't have to say call Ryan which gives me the wrong contact call Ryan instead I can say call brother and it will get me straight to the one that I need call brother pretty handy stuff but speaking of Google Voice Search let's move on to Google now which it is built into which is where we make our phone or personal assistant if there's one thing I want to drive home in this video it's this use Google now more often it's an impeccable piece of software that allows you to see information you didn't realize you wanted to know right away yeah there's the weather right there but above it was the score for the Lakers game unfortunately well they lost again but the voice search is just as impeccable just by using my voice I can activate voice search by saying Google within Google now after that I can say any number of commands like setting alarms setting appointments or opening apps from within the phone like Gmail other than that Google now is just a great place to start any search whether you use your voice or the text box at the top it's a great place to consolidate all the info you're looking for and it's just a wonderful tool so use Google now more often after all of that I just want to remind you in my final tip it's okay to daydream one of the more obscure features found in jelly bean 4.2 is the daydream function but still really useful I'm going to illustrate this real quick before I explain it by using the photo frame feature in daydream essentially what will happen here is I pick a few pictures and after the phone is supposed to go to sleep when it's plugged in it'll become a nice little photo slideshow on the side daydream is a function that is available whether the phone is docked or charging so remember to go into the settings and pick the one that is right for you I pick either because let's face it not all of us have a dog but we hope to someday daydream allows you to make your phone either a clock there's this beam flinger screen that allows you to play with the phone when it's not quite in use but it's in the middle of daydreaming but there's also the photo frame that I showed you earlier so imagine every night you plug in your phone you put it on a stand like this or maybe you are one of the lucky ones who has a dog once the phone is about to go to sleep it turns to whatever you set it to and it continues to be useful even when you're not using it it's one of the great little features that might seem a little scare but turns out to be really useful it's just another reason why the nexus 4 is a great device and so there you have it the Nexus 4 is one of the hottest devices out on the market right now and that's illustrated by the fact that it is almost perpetually sold out if you're one of the few people that got your hands on the Nexus 4 over the holiday season I hope this tips and tricks video helped you out do you have a tip or trick that you want to share with us at the Android Authority community feel free to leave one in the comments below or head over to android authority calm your source for all things Android