Galaxy S II: The Missing Manual

Customizing the Home Screen and Panes

HERE’S ONE OF THE many nice things about the Galaxy S II—it’s easy to put your personal mark on it. Wish there were a few more apps on the Home screen? No problem; you can easily add them. Want to change the location of apps, or move around widgets and add new ones to each of your panes and the Home screen? It’s a breeze. The rest of this section shows you how.

Adding Widgets, Folders, Shortcuts, and Wallpaper

The Home screen and all its panes are much like a blank canvas, waiting for your Picasso-like touches. Instead of paint, you can add widgets, shortcuts, and folders, and even change its wallpaper. To do any of the above, the first step is the same: Press and hold your finger anywhere on the Home screen or a pane. An “Add to Home screen” menu appears, with the following options:

• Widgets. A widget is an applet that performs a small, specific task, often grabbing and displaying information from the Galaxy S II or the Internet, although they can do almost anything. When you select this option, you see a list of all the widgets you can add—anything from the weather widget to an Internet bookmark, YouTube widget, and more. Swipe your finger to show more widgets. Tap any widget to add it to the screen.

  

  Note

  You can’t customize the Apps Menu (also called the Apps Tray) in the same way that you can the Home screen. If you hold your finger on it, nothing happens.

• Shortcuts. A shortcut is a quick link to an app or specific task. So, for example, you could put a shortcut to the Pandora Internet radio app, or to an individual contact to display contact information, or to the Galaxy S II’s voice dialing app.

  

  Note

  When you try to add widgets, shortcuts, and folders to a pane, sometimes nothing happens when you hold your finger on. That just means the pane is full. If a pane is so full with icons, widgets, and shortcuts that there’s no room on it, you can’t add to it. So if you want to add something to the pane, you first need to delete something. See Customizing the Home Screen and Panes for how to delete things from a pane or Home screen.

• Folders. Folders hold information and files, the same way they do on computers. You’ve already got lots of folders on your Galaxy S II, like your folder full of contacts, and Favorites from your browsers. When you install apps, they may create their own folders as well—the Pandora Internet radio app, for example, creates a folder of your radio stations.

  

• Wallpaper. Here’s where the Picasso part comes in. You can add a wallpaper to the background of your Home screen, just as you can add wallpaper to your computer. There are three choices here: Gallery, Live wallpapers, or Wallpapers.

  Live wallpapers are changing backgrounds, either because they’re animated, or because they grab information from somewhere, and then display it as part of the wallpaper background. So the Ocean weather wallpaper, for example, shows an ocean scene that reflects your current weather. If you choose Gallery, you can take any of your photos and use it as wallpaper. The Wallpaper choice lets you use a static wallpaper. No matter what you choose, you get to preview the wallpaper first.

Note

When you add wallpaper to your Home screen, it also shows up as the background on all your panes. And when you add it to a pane, it shows up on your Home screen.

OK, time to go crazy. You can now trick out your Home screen or pane in countless ways.

Deleting and Moving

Once you’ve added widgets, folders, and shortcuts to your Home screen, you’re not stuck with them, or with where you’ve placed them:

• To move a widget, folder, or shortcut, press your finger on it and hold it for a second or two. The pane or Home screen gets outlined, and a small highlight box appears around the widget, folder, or shortcut. Drag it to its new location and take your finger off of it. That’s where it will stay. You can even drag it to another screen in this way.

• To delete a widget, folder, or shortcut, also press your finger on it and hold it for a second or two until the highlight box appears. You’ll notice a Delete icon in the shape of a Trash can appear at the bottom of the screen. Drag the doomed item to the Trash can. When you see it turn red, release it—it’s gone.

Note

When you delete a shortcut to an app, you’re not deleting the app itself—just a shortcut to it. The app remains on the Apps Tray. If you want to delete the app itself, you have to delete it from the Apps Tray.

Tip

Some widgets can be resized or customized after you add them to your Home screen or pane. Press and hold your finger on a widget and then release it. A yellow box appears around the widget, with a triangular, gray resizing indicator on the lower right. Move the resizing indicator to resize the widget. In some instances, such as for the weather widget, when you resize, you reduce the number of weather locations on display.

UP TO SPEED: Maximizing Your Battery Charge

The Galaxy S II, despite its large screen and considerable capabilities, can go a reasonably long time on one battery charge. But if you use a lot of power-sucking features, you may not even be able to get through one whole day without having to recharge. In addition to turning off the screen or putting it into Standby mode when you’re not using it (Power/Lock Key), there’s a lot you can do to make your battery last:

• Be smart about email fetching. The more often the Galaxy S II checks email, the faster the battery runs down. Either check email manually only when you need to, or increase the interval at which the Galaxy S II checks. Launch the Email app, press the Menu button, and then select Email Settings→Email delivery→Fetch schedule. You can choose from intervals between 15 minutes and 4 hours, or manually.

• Use Power saving mode. Power saving mode turns your Samsung Galaxy S II into a power-sipper. You can have the mode automatically turn on when the Galaxy S II gets below a certain percentage of battery life. To do it, from the main screen, press the Settings button, then select Settings→Power saving mode. Make sure there’s a check next to “Use Power saving mode.” Beneath it, tap the “Power saving mode on at” button. From the screen that appears, choose at what battery level Power saving mode should kick in: 10% of battery power left, 30%, 50%, or 70%.

• Turn off antennas you’re not using. If you’re not using a Bluetooth headset, and don’t need Wi-Fi or GPS services at the moment, by all means turn them off. They use up tons of power. Go to the Settings page and launch the Power Control widget; there you can turn any of these three antennas on or off. Putting the Galaxy S II into Flight mode (Flight Mode) turns off all of these settings at once. Consider Flight mode when you know you’re not going to be using the Galaxy S II for a while (like in a meeting, or if you’re taking a nap).

• Watch out for power-sapping apps. Some, such as 3D games, can use serious amounts of juice. If, after installing an app, you notice your battery running low quickly, consider deleting it, or running it only when necessary.