In the second part of the article, we will talk about a little more complicated things. For example, about finding a lost smartphone, recovering a forgotten password, working with antiviruses, the problem of quickly draining the battery, distributing mobile Internet and installing Flash.
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Contents
Content:Instead of a preface
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Part one. First start
Part two. Smartphone interface
Part three. Installing Applications
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Part four. Google services
Part five. Safety
Part six. Tips and tricks
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Part four. Google services
Google Play Sections
The Google Play Store isn't just about valuable fur apps for your Android smartphone, but also many other interesting things.
First of all, it is worth noting the Google Music service, which for a relatively small monthly fee allows you to get unlimited access to a huge number of songs of various genres. Moreover, you can listen to them both online and offline, having saved the necessary songs to your smartphone in advance. One of the most interesting features of the service is the radio mode, which will select the songs that suit your taste.
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In addition, sections of Google Books and Google Press are gradually gaining popularity in our country.
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Play Games
However, all this has only an indirect relation to the topic Android of smartphones. Unlike the Play Games service, which was created specifically for fans of mobile games. Its main plus is the synchronization of game progress in the cloud. Now you should not be afraid to lose all game achievements after flashing or changing your smartphone, and you can safely play the same game from your tablet and phone.
All that is required from the user is to enter the credentials from the Google account when starting the game and, if desired, download the Google Play Games application itself.
The main thing is that the game you choose supports this Google game service. There are most of these games now, but annoying exceptions still occur.
In the Google Play Games app, you can always see what your friends are playing, compare your progress and show off your new achievements. And some games that support multiplayer can be played with friends together.
And if you don't know what to play, you should take a look at the list of recommended games or browse a selection of the most popular gaming applications.
Google now
Another very interesting Google service, which has become a kind of business card Android. Google Now is your personal assistant that will find and display all the information you need on the screen even before you ask him a question. For example, it will warn you that due to traffic jams it is better to go to the meeting earlier. Will remind you that because of bad weather today it is better to take an umbrella with you. It will tell you when the match of your favorite football team starts, and if you missed it, it will tell you how the meeting ended and what the score is now. Will inform you that new materials have appeared on your favorite sites. Shows how much you walked this month and how much you cycled. And all this is just the beginning.
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In addition, Google Now includes voice search functionality. Just ask a question and the virtual assistant will try to give you a comprehensive answer.
You can read more about the capabilities of Google Now on the official Google website.
Google Account
Gradually, almost any owner Android of a smartphone starts using one or another Google services and applications. All of them are linked to the main Google account and are displayed in your personal account.
First of all, here you can find out how actively you use this or that service. For example, the Google Play app store. What devices are attached to it Android, how many programs and music tracks have been purchased, how many playlists have been created, and so on.
You can also find more interesting things here. For example, location history. The map of your movements will be displayed on Google Maps, and you can view it for any day.
In addition, from your personal account, you can literally go to the settings of any service in one click. For example, set up circles on Google Plus, share documents from Google Drive, or change privacy settings on YouTube.
Part five. Safety
2-step authentication
Of course, one account for all branded services is very convenient. Moreover, it allows you to enter many third-party Android applications and games without having to register a new username and come up with a password. But only if an attacker manages to find a password for this account, he will gain access to a very large amount of personal and very important information. But stealing passwords is not uncommon these days.
Reading the news about hacked accounts and 'leaked' passwords, most people deep down are absolutely sure that none of this will ever happen to them. But in practice, no one is safe from password theft or hacking attempts. And all this can spoil the nerves very pretty.
Fortunately, the password cracking problem has a simple and elegant solution. It's called Two-Step Verification.
You should not be afraid of a complex name, because in fact, we are talking about a very simple system, which has been used for a long time by many resources, from banks to social networks. The bottom line is that in addition to the login and password to log into your account, you will now need to enter a special code that will come to your mobile phone via SMS. Even if an attacker somehow finds out your password, he will not be able to get to the phone anyway. And, failing to find out the confirmation code, you will be left with nothing.
If we talk about security, then this scheme does not raise any questions. An additional layer of protection can really save you a lot of trouble. But what about usability? Few people like to wait for an SMS message and manually enter a long code to check their mail.
Fortunately, this is not necessary at all. When you sign in to your account, you can mark your computer as Trusted. And you will no longer need to re-enter the confirmation code on it. At the same time, your account will still be protected – when you try to log in from an unfamiliar computer, the system will again require you to enter the code.
It is also worth noting that for the convenience of users, the company has provided several additional options with which you can get a code even if your phone is outside the network coverage area. For example, you can print out special backup codes in advance or install a special generator program on your smartphone that can create them yourself.
Connecting two-step authentication will take you just a couple of minutes. All that is required is to go to the next link and follow the directions.
You will need to log into your Google account, enter your mobile phone number, choose a convenient method of receiving codes (this can be either SMS or voice calls) and enter the received confirmation code.
After 2-Step Verification is enabled, you will need to sign in to your Google account again on all computers and mobile devices where you use it. Pay attention to the exclamation mark icon that appeared in the smartphone notification bar. He says that the connection with the Google account has been lost. Pull the curtain of the notification bar down, click on the message that appears, re-enter the password for your Google account and click 'Sign in'. Wait for the SMS message, enter the secret code and do not forget to check the 'Remember code on this computer' box – this will save you the trouble of re-entering these data after restarting the device.
If necessary, a similar procedure will need to be done on the computer where you need access to Google services. Just remember that you should tick the 'Remember code on this computer' box only if you really trust its owner.
The main pitfall of 2-Step Verification is connecting your Google Account to some third-party email clients like Microsoft Outlook, an email client on smartphones BlackBerry, or an iMac computer. Unfortunately they only support username and password and don't work with verification codes. Therefore, instead of a code for such applications, a special password will be used.
It is not at all difficult to create such a password, you just need to follow the next link and indicate the name of the service (mail, calendar, etc.) and the type of client. Application passwords are generated automatically, you don't have to remember them.
On the same page, you can edit the list of trusted devices or change the phone number.
Whether or not to use additional protection is up to you. But, in my personal opinion, 2-Step Verification is a necessary and useful thing. If possible, always link accounts of payment services, mail and social networks to your phone number. It is better to let these precautions turn out to be superfluous than one day an attacker on your behalf will deceive your friends and relatives. For example, by sending a message from your e-mail address with a request to urgently transfer money to the account.
Antivirus
Of course, speaking about the security and protection of a smartphone, one cannot ignore the topic of mobile antiviruses.
I must say that at first, antiviruses on Android did more harm than good. Quickly realizing that the new mobile OS was becoming extremely popular, antivirus vendors immediately released mobile versions of their applications, blindly copying the main functionality from the desktop versions. Such antiviruses worked on the smartphone all the time, taking up precious megabytes of RAM and 'eating up' a significant part of the battery charge.
The situation has changed these days. Antiviruses have noticeably curtailed their appetites, having ceased to literally consume battery power before our eyes. Many of them scan applications only during their installation, or allow you to start scanning mode manually. Moreover, more and more often antivirus is becoming just one of several functions of a system utility. And besides an antivirus scanner, it offers users a whole bunch of interesting things.
Do Android smartphones need antivirus software? There is no definite answer to this question. Disputes on this topic have not subsided for many years, but the parties have not come to any common opinion during all this time.
On the one hand, in itself Android is a fairly reliable system. Problems generally begin when the human factor comes into play – that is, the user himself.
Viruses are not taken out of thin air – having succumbed to the primitive tricks of scammers, users install them on their smartphones with their own hands. And then they also agree to give the malicious program the right to send SMS and make calls. And in this case, no antivirus will save the user. In any case, until he learns how to shock. If a person has decided to give a damn about all the system warnings, believing in outright nonsense and downloading a malicious application to his phone with his own hand, then an extra message about the danger will no longer fix the matter.
The first rule for any inexperienced user sounds very simple – never download applications from third-party sources. The craving for freebies does not lead to good – by saving a couple of dollars on the cost of the application, you risk soon losing tens of times more. Blind faith in a miracle is even worse – the link to update to Android 5.0 cannot hang on the advertising banner, and the message about the million you won will never appear in the status bar of your smartphone. It would seem that these are completely obvious things that any adult should understand. But no, there are always those willing to take the risk.
Perhaps someone thinks that antivirus is such a magic wand that will allow you to install anything and from anywhere without fear of infecting your smartphone. This is not so – there are no guarantees here and cannot be. There is always a sword for any shield, and this must be clearly realized. And no antivirus will ever provide 100% protection against all problems. If you specifically install on your phone do not understand what, then sooner or later it will in any case lead to trouble.
On the other hand, even the most 'law-abiding' users Android have a chance to pick up an infection on their smartphone. It is very rare for applications containing malicious code to land on Google Play. Nevertheless, there were such situations, and even more than once. Of course, as soon as the true state of affairs was revealed, Google immediately removed dangerous programs not only from the app store, but also from the smartphones of unlucky users. The only question is how many things they had done before. In theory, a good antivirus in this situation could protect users by warning in advance of the danger. In practice, a new virus that successfully passed Google filters would hardly have been recognized by the overwhelming majority of security programs existing at that time.
A one-time scan of the system can also be beneficial. If you have already picked up some nasty thing, then it is better to find and remove it using an antivirus than to reset your smartphone to factory settings. And there is nothing wrong with scanning the downloadable application once again. You can talk about security as much as you want Android, but the facts show that the number of infected Android devices has long ago reached sky-high levels.
Suspicious notifications
Alas, sometimes even the most standard application, which is not nearly infected by any viruses, can cause a lot of trouble.
For example, some apps love to clutter up the status bar with their notifications. In some cases, they are completely useless and unnecessary for the user. And sometimes even dangerous – many dishonest developers place messages in the status bar with links to viruses that disguise themselves as system ones. And here the user often gets a question – how to understand which program is sending all these notifications? After all, you don't want to delete all the software installed on your smartphone.
In fact, it is very easy to bring such an application to clean water. It is enough just to open the status bar and make a long tap on a suspicious message. A small pop-up window appears with the text 'Application Information', which you need to click on.
After that, a window with detailed information about the application that sent this message will appear on the smartphone screen. Optionally, you can prevent the application from creating new notifications in the status bar. The 'Enable notifications' checkbox located at the top of the screen is responsible for this.
Alternatively, the application can be simply uninstalled – if it offers to 'download Android 5.0', 'update Opera mini' or 'pick up the million won', this will be the best choice. Google Play has a huge set of programs for every taste and color; it will not be difficult to find a similar program there without malicious ads.
If you decide to use such an application further, then at least make sure that the installation of applications from third-party sources is blocked on your smartphone. Just in case.
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Android for dummies # 21. Viruses and antiviruses. Installing programs from third-party sources |
Hidden files
Sometimes it becomes necessary to hide not only notifications from the program, but also some files. For example, make sure that certain photos, videos or audio recordings do not end up in the general list of media files and do not appear in the player or gallery. Or hide the folder from the default file manager installed on the phone.
It should be noted right away that this is not about how to reliably hide confidential information from prying eyes. If you want to find any hidden file is a matter of technology, there is nothing particularly complicated here. What's in Android, what's in the desktop Windows files are marked hidden solely for the convenience of the user, and not at all for security purposes.
Why might this be necessary? For example, you use your smartphone as a 'flash drive', sometimes storing some graphic files on it that it makes no sense to display in the gallery. Or you don’t want album covers to be displayed in the same gallery. Or maybe it annoys you that anyone who picks up your smartphone will immediately see a complete list of all videos. There can be many reasons.
There are several ways to hide a file. The most versatile is to just mark it as hidden, after which all standard applications will no longer see it.
As you remember, in Windows for this you need to right-click on the file, select the 'Properties' item and check the box next to the 'Hidden' attribute. The problem is that Android this attribute ignores and perfectly sees files hidden in this way. There is nothing surprising in this – this is a different OS with its own rules.
The logic for working with hidden files Android inherited from Linux. Any file whose name begins with a dot is considered hidden in it. So the user just needs to rename the desired file or folder, for example, changing the name 'Photo.jpg' to '.Photo.jpg' or 'New_folder' to '.New_folder'. This can be done both through the file manager on Android smartphone and using a desktop PC.
To do this, you need to connect your smartphone to the computer using a cable, click the 'Start' button on the computer, select the 'My Computer' item and find the icon of your smartphone in the folder that opens. This is what you need to open. Most likely, it will look like this, and its name will coincide with the name of the phone model. On some smartphones, to transfer data, you need to unlock the screen (relevant if you have set an unlock password).
Now you need to find the file you want, right-click on it and select 'Rename'. It remains only to add a period before the beginning of the file name, while changing its resolution or doing something else is not necessary.
Of course, Windows itself does not consider such files hidden. If you do not want this file to be visible when you connect your smartphone to your computer, check the 'Hidden' box in its properties.
Let me remind you once again that this does not guarantee the safety of your data. For Android there are many file managers that are great at working with hidden files. And you can configure the display of hidden files in Windows in a couple of clicks.
Hiding album covers from the gallery is much easier. The standard Android gallery does not display Albumart.jpg or Folder.jpg files, but the player reads them perfectly. So you just need to rename all the album covers accordingly, and they will disappear from the list of photos immediately.
Lock screen password
As for the confidential information stored in the phone, the easiest way to hide it from prying eyes is to set a password to unlock the smartphone.
In the screenshots below, I will show you how to set an unlock password on your smartphone HTC One. On other models, the menu item names may be slightly different, but the general meaning remains the same.
First of all, you need to go to the phone settings. There you should go to the 'Security' section, and in it select the 'Screen lock' item. Any Android smartphone supports at least two types of passwords – a digital PIN and a pattern. In the first case, to unlock, you will need to enter a number, and in the second, draw a broken line on the screen. In addition, modern smartphones can usually recognize the owner's face using the front camera, but this method of locking is less reliable. Therefore, in order to avoid misunderstandings, they will be asked to add a digital password to it. If the smartphone for some reason does not recognize you by sight, then you can always unlock it using an alternative password.
What to do if you lost your smartphone?
I think almost everyone has at least a couple of times got into a situation where they could not remember where they put their smartphone. Usually the way out in this situation is very simple – you just need to call him from any other phone. But what if the silent mode is turned on on a lost smartphone? Or do you begin to suspect that it was simply stolen from you? In all these situations, the service Android Device Manager from Google will help you.
Like all other Google services, Android Device Manager has a user-friendly web interface. It is located at https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager
A separate registration is not required in it, to enter it is enough to enter the login and password from your Google account.
Google will immediately try to contact your device and display its location on a map. If the phone was not found on the first attempt, a little later you can try to start the search manually by clicking on the 'Locate' icon.
If you are the owner of several Android devices, then the desired device can be selected by clicking on the gray arrow. And in order to avoid confusion with the names of smartphones in the future, it is better to immediately change them to options that are more understandable for you. For example, 'Basic', 'Work' or 'Family Tablet'.
In most cases, this way you can make sure that the smartphone is not stolen, but is actually in the apartment. But how do you know where exactly?
For these purposes, there is a special 'Call' button. When you press it, the selected smartphone will ring at maximum volume even if it is in silent mode. Call duration is 5 minutes. You can turn it off earlier by pressing the phone's power key.
Alas, sometimes it may turn out that the smartphone has been forgotten in a cafe or public transport. And just for such cases Android Device Manager allows you to remotely lock the smartphone screen or delete all personal data from it. There is only one thing – you need to enable these functions on your smartphone in advance. This is not difficult to do. Just click on the 'Configure data blocking and deletion' button and then select the 'Send' option.
A special icon should appear in the notification panel of your smartphone, after clicking on it, the settings menu will open. It remains only to click on the 'Activate' button and make sure that both checkboxes are checked.
Now in Android Device Manager next to the 'Call' button there are two additional buttons – 'Block' and 'Clear'.
The 'Lock' button allows you to remotely lock the smartphone screen by setting a digital password on it. In addition, you can enter an additional message that will be displayed on the phone screen, and enter a number that can be called without even unlocking the device.
Using the 'Clear' button you can completely delete all data from your phone. After that, it will return to the state in which you first took it out of the box.
To remotely control your smartphone, Google allows you to use not only the web interface Android Device Manager, but also a special application. I will not dwell on it in detail, in fact, it is no different from the web interface.
In the end, it's worth saying that Android Device Manager is a simple but very useful tool that can one day save you a lot of time, money and effort. Every owner Android of a smartphone should remember about its availability. Of course, after the theft, the chances of successfully returning the phone are not very many. But there have been such cases.
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It is also worth noting that some manufacturers Android of smartphones offer similar services for their devices, often with more advanced features. And in Google Play there are many programs with similar functions.
Whatever service and whatever program you choose, remember that you need to think about the possible loss or theft of your smartphone in advance. You will not be able to lock the screen of a lost phone or delete confidential data from it if you have not activated these features in its settings. Moreover, you will not be able to use some third-party application if you have not installed it on your phone in advance.
What if I forgot my password?
Sometimes finding a phone is only half the battle. After all, you still need to remember what password was set to lock it. Of course, it's great that a password-protected smartphone cannot be unlocked by an intruder. But how to be in this situation yourself?
In fact, it's okay if you forgot your password, no. After you enter the wrong password five times in a row, the smartphone will ask you to wait 30 seconds before trying again. Then it will offer a choice of two options – either try to enter the password again, or reset it.
Click on the 'Forgot your combination?' or 'Forgotten password'. The system will prompt you to enter the data of the Google account to which this device is connected. That is, the data that you entered during the initial setup of the phone.
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In the first line, enter your login (usually this is a mailbox on gmail.com, but there may be other mail), in the second line, enter your password. Please note that here you need to enter the password for your Google account, and not the PIN code to unlock your smartphone.
If you have forgotten the password for your Google account or cannot remember which mail is your login, then try using the password recovery page on the company's official website.
Another way to unlock the smartphone was kindly suggested by our reader Dmitry in the comments to the original note. You can simply assign a new password to your phone using the Android Device Manager service, which was mentioned above. The new password will 'override' the previous one, and now it will be enough to enter it to unlock the smartphone.
Part six. Tips and tricks
Where does the battery charge go?
Modern smartphones strive to discharge themselves at the most inopportune moment. It would seem that you did not do anything special with your phone, and by the middle of the day the battery charge is already at zero. How do you know where your battery power has been spent? And what can you do to avoid similar problems in the future?
You can view the battery consumption graph, as well as check which applications have consumed the main part of its charge on any Android smartphone. True, some manufacturers sometimes replace the standard schedule with their own, or even hide this graph of settings, I don't understand where.
In the screenshots below I will show how to open the menu section of interest to us using the example of a smartphone Xiaomi Mi 2.
To do this, go to the phone settings, open the 'Battery' section (it is in the 'Device' category), and then select the 'Battery usage' item.
Here is a list of the most 'gluttonous' processes and applications. If any item on this list raises questions, then you can get additional information about it using a simple tap.
I note right away that the screenshots I gave as an example are not quite typical. With any active use of the smartphone, the screen will be the first item. In my case, the smartphone lay on the table most of the time, I used it quite a bit.
You can verify this by looking at the battery discharge graph. To do this, just tap on the line that displays the operating time of the smartphone.
At the top of the window is the graph itself, below it shows exactly when the smartphone had the screen turned on, how long it was in sleep mode and how often it used GPS.
Now let's think about what can be done to solve the problem with sudden battery discharge. First of all, it is worth paying attention to what exactly it was spent on. Sometimes a third-party application may be in the top of the most voracious processes. And this is a clear reason to think about replacing it. Anyway, if we are not talking about a colorful 3D game that you spent a couple of hours on. Most likely, the problem is in the 'crooked' program code of this application, due to which your smartphone spends too much effort on solving trivial tasks or cannot go into sleep mode, being on high alert for hours.
As I wrote above, in most cases the screen is the main consumer of the battery charge. And this is completely normal, because whatever you do on your smartphone, the screen will always be on. Perhaps the only exception is listening to music.
Of course, you will not be able to completely get rid of this expense item. Unless, of course, you are going to put your smartphone on the shelf to gather dust. However, it is still possible to reduce the battery consumption of the screen. First of all, you should enable automatic brightness control of the backlight or set an acceptable brightness level manually. In most cases, the switch you want will be in the notification shade. If it is not there, then you should go to the smartphone settings, select the 'Display' section and the 'Brightness' item. Remember that the brighter the screen, the more power it uses.
In addition, you should configure the time for screen off. Here you need to strike a balance between convenience and necessity. It is not very convenient when the screen turns off automatically after 10 seconds of inactivity. But leaving it on for 10 minutes is also not an option.
Owners of smartphones with AMOLED displays should pay attention to one more point. It may seem strange to some, but such displays practically do not waste energy on displaying dark colors. But light colors, on the other hand, noticeably consume battery power. If you can choose dark wallpapers and, if possible, set dark themes for the most frequently used programs, this will noticeably affect the battery life of your smartphone.
Once again, I note that we are talking exclusively about AMOLED displays – on other types of screens this will not make any sense. You can find out which display is installed in your smartphone in the instructions of the device, or in its characteristics on Yandex.Market, or in reviews on specialized sites.
In some cases, the phone spends a lot of energy constantly switching between 2G and 3G networks. This happens when the operator's 3G coverage in the area is very poor, the connection is constantly lost, and the phone is forced to reconnect to a less efficient network. There is only one way to solve this problem – to force the phone to 2G mode. This can be done either in the smartphone settings ('Settings' -> 'Mobile networks' -> 'Network type'), or using the switches in the shutter of the notification panel.
And if you want to reduce this column of expenses even less, then also disable the mobile Internet on your smartphone or deny Internet access to a number of programs. Although, for my taste, this is already too cardinal solution to the problem. You can also make sure that Bluetooth doesn't work when you don't need it. Usually, the on / off icon Bluetooth is located in the notification panel shade. But here it is worth noting that the latest versions of this protocol consume very little power and are unlikely to greatly affect the life of your Android device.
Another way to reduce battery consumption is to select the optimal processor mode in the smartphone settings. Although not all devices have such an option, and it can be called differently, it is definitely worth looking in the settings. And there is no need to be afraid that the phone will start to slow down in heavy applications or games – when the processor realizes that it cannot handle the load, it will automatically switch to the 'fast' mode.
Finally, the most radical way is to turn on the maximum power saving mode. Typically, each manufacturer configures the parameters of this mode independently. In most cases, applications will be prohibited from 'surfing' the Internet, the screen brightness will be reduced to a minimum, vibration will be completely disabled, and the processor will work in the most economical mode. Usually, a smartphone automatically switches to this mode of operation at the moment when its charge becomes critically low. Moreover, in most cases, this 'red line' can be moved to a more comfortable value.
How to provide mobile internet to other devices?
Unfortunately, Wi-Fi is not available everywhere. And in other places, you have to be content with mobile Internet. The only trouble is that not all devices support this type of Internet access.
What to do if you urgently need to go online from your laptop? Or if you wanted to surf the Internet from a tablet that does not have a SIM card and only supports Wi-Fi? And how do you share internet access with a friend whose mobile operator doesn't work in the area? All these issues can be easily solved by configuring the existing Android smartphone as a Wi-Fi router (access point).
Go to the phone settings again. We need the 'More' item, which is located under 'Wireless network connections' or 'Wireless networks', next to the Wi-Fi settings.
The name of the next item is slightly different depending on the model and manufacturer of the phone. It is sometimes called 'Hotspot Connection', sometimes 'Mobile Internet Sharing' or 'Wi-Fi Hotspot'. This is where you can turn on the access point mode, as well as specify the name and password for your Wi-Fi network.
If you did everything correctly, a special icon should appear in the status bar located at the top of the screen. An example is shown in the screenshot above. Now you can connect to your smartphone in the same way as to a home Wi-Fi router.
Android and Flash
Another burning question that haunts many people is how to view Flash sites on Android smartphones?
Flash and the green robot have a rather complicated relationship. At one time it seemed that they would make the perfect pair. But less than a couple of years later, they officially announced the breakup of the engagement. Although they still remained friends and sometimes do not mind spending time together.
From the point of view of Internet users, Flash is a controversial technology. On the one hand, a lot of beautiful sites are built on Flash, it is used to create browser games and play videos. On the other hand, it is on Flash that most of the annoying advertising banners are based, which have been popping up literally from all cracks lately. And Flash consumes a lot of resources, which can be very important for budget devices.
Some deliberately disable Flash support in the browser at the earliest opportunity, while others, on the contrary, cannot imagine their lives without it, believing that surfing without Flash is little better than surfing with disabled images.
In Android, Flash support was officially introduced starting with version Android 2.2, although Flash worked on some devices before. For a long time, Flash support was widely advertised and was considered one of the advantages of 'googlephones' compared to iPhone. But starting with Android 4.1.1 Flash was no longer supported by the 'green robot', and soon this application was removed from Google Play.
However, for the majority of users this went almost unnoticed – by this time, few people used a mobile browser to watch videos on YouTube or communicate on social networks. Usually, for these purposes, special client programs were used, which perfectly played audio and video even after the official removal of Flash Player from the Google application store. As for browser-based Flash games, only a few people played in them on smartphones – it was much easier to download a full-fledged game through Google Play.
However, many people still need Flash support in their browser. Luckily for them, getting her back is very easy.
There are two main ways. The first method is to download an unofficial Flash Player assembly from third-party sources. I categorically do not recommend this method to inexperienced users. It is under the Flash Player that most malware is still disguised, and the consequences of installing such a 'player' can be extremely sad. Moreover, in such popular browsers as Google Chrome or Opera, it may not work anyway, which makes it practically useless.
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Android for dummies # 21. Viruses and antiviruses. Installing programs from third-party sources |
The second way is to install a browser that supports Flash out of the box. And I must say that there are enough such solutions on Google Play today. Among them are browsers such as Dolphin Browser, UC Browser and Firefox. They usually do not require any additional configuration to work with Flash, and the very process of installing a new browser will take a dozen or two seconds away from you.
Phone update
At the end of the issue, I would like to touch upon the issue of updating Android the smartphone, which also worries a lot of users. Perhaps in this part of the text you can come across a few incomprehensible terms and other unfamiliar words. In this case, feel free to use our glossary of basic technical terms and slang expressions.
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Android for dummies # 12. Basic technical terms and slang |
As you know, Android, like any other OS, has many different versions. They can be conventionally divided into major and minor. Major versions contain major changes, bring a number of new features and capabilities. Minor versions usually contain minor updates, in most cases related to the elimination of found errors and vulnerabilities.
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Android for dummies # 29. Brief history of development Android |
New versions Android are released by Google. But by adapting them for a specific smartphone – the manufacturer of the device itself. Because of this, a lot of time passes between the announcement of the new version Android and the actual update of the phone. Nexus series devices and GPE versions of devices receive updates first. Then – the flagship models of the companies.
The overwhelming majority of modern mobile devices support the so-called OTA updates, that is, they can download the update via Wi-Fi. The advantage of this method is that no unnecessary gestures are required from the user. The smartphone itself will notify about the new update, and the user will only have to click on the 'OK' button. But OTA updates have one drawback – they often appear with some delay. The fact is that manufacturers are updating devices in 'waves' in an effort to reduce the load on their servers. And a situation may well arise when your friend's smartphone has already received an update, but it still does not come to your phone. This is especially true for 'gray' smartphones brought from abroad.
Many manufacturers offer an alternative upgrade path. To do this, you need to connect the smartphone to the computer using a cable, download a special program from the manufacturer's website and use it to install the update on the phone. This method is a little more complicated, but it avoids long waiting times.
You need to understand that the release of a new OS version does not guarantee that the manufacturer will decide to update your smartphone model to it. Usually this decision is motivated by the obsolete hardware of the device. But in practice, the reason lies elsewhere – to release updates for existing devices, instead of investing the same money in the development and promotion of new ones, is often simply unprofitable. Especially when it comes to budget devices. In this situation, the user has three options.
Option one – just accept the lack of updates. The first years Android developed very actively, each new update brought dozens of important and necessary functions that greatly facilitated the use of the smartphone. But those times are long over, and now something really revolutionary from new OS updates is not to be expected. And in practice, you are unlikely to lose much from not updating.
The second option is to buy a new device with a new OS version. Or buy a smartphone that is guaranteed to receive such an update. But, again, is it worth buying a new smartphone just for the sake of the next update Android is a moot point.
The third option is to install custom firmware from third-party developers based on the new OS version on the smartphone. Usually, there is nothing fundamentally difficult about this, although it all depends on the specific phone model. In some models, getting root access and flashing a smartphone is literally a 'couple of clicks', while in others it may be simply impossible. It should be noted that in most cases, the process of flashing a smartphone leads to a loss of warranty. Although, if necessary, no one bothers to return the 'native' firmware and, as if nothing had happened, take the phone to the service center.
One way or another, you do the flashing of the phone at your own peril and risk. The main thing here is to use the instructions from a reliable source (I recommend using the well-known forum of the w3bsit3-dns.com resource), follow it as clearly as possible and never cheat by saying to yourself 'ah, it will do.' Otherwise, your phone may well turn into a brick.
The more popular a phone model is, the more different firmwares there are for it. Some firmware exist only for one specific smartphone model, others support dozens of different devices. Some firmwares contain almost 'clean' Android with a number of small improvements, others radically change the smartphone interface. Despite the fact that they may have a number of advantages compared to the official firmware, they may also have a number of shortcomings. For example, the quality of images may drop or several useful functions from the manufacturer's proprietary shell may disappear. Before choosing a firmware, carefully read its description and read reviews of other users.
