We've all dropped our phones, and
the moment of panic that takes over when it lands face down is almost
indescribable. What will you see when you turn it over? Will the screen
be intact, or will it have shattered into a thousand pieces? It's come a
little too late for the likes of the Nexus 6,
but the fourth generation of Gorilla Glass – Corning Gorilla Glass 4 –
is on the way, and it could make smashed screens a thing of the past.
Scratching the screen of your phone is one thing, but it does not
usually render a phone unusable. Previous generations of Gorilla Glass
have helped to all but eliminate pecky scratches from keys, coins and
other things that share your pocket with your phone, but smashing is a
different matter entirely. Drop your phone onto a hard surface and
there's a high chance the screen will break and become unusable.
According to Corning, Gorilla Glass 4 is twice as tough as its
nearest rival when it comes to protecting dropped phones. The company's
researchers developed a series of drop tests that simulated real-world
situations and then used the data from this to develop a new breed of
glass that survives a 1 metre drop onto a rough surface 80 percent of
the time.
It's not known when Corning Gorilla Glass 4 will be seen in handsets,
but the company says that testing is currently underway with a number
of customers, so hopefully it won’t be too long before extra protection
comes to our screens.
Have you destroyed a phone by smashing its screen? Would you ditch
your current phone in favour of one with Corning Gorilla Glass 4?
The Galaxy Note 4 is the best Android smartphone to get right now
and there are countless reasons why: from the extremely useful S Pen
stylus, to a great new design, to the software that Samsung has filled
it with. That being said, many of these perks make the Note 4 a battery
hungry beast and the 3,220 mAh battery capacity, though it is above
average by smartphone standards, can only go so far. Here are our Galaxy
Note 4 battery tips to help you get the most out of your battery.
Make sure of the Galaxy Note 4 battery saving modes
Enable Power Saving mode
In its most recent smartphones, Samsung has included two battery
saving features to help extend battery life: power saving mode and ultra
power saving mode. Both are useful and obviously the latter takes
saving those last milliamperes of juice to the next level. Power saving
mode allows you to stop apps that are running in the background from
using mobile networks. You can also turn on the Grayscale mode which
will remove all the often battery-sucking colors and wallpaper. Switch on the Galaxy Note 4 Ultra Power Saving mode
Ultra power saving mode goes a step further: it changes the colors of
the screen to grayscale, restricts app usage to only allow essential
apps and those selected by you, turns off mobile data as soon as the
screen shuts off, and finally turns off other connectivity features like
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Turn down the Note 4 screen brightness
If you don’t want to enable either of the features above, there are
some other steps you can take to the reduce battery consumption, some of
which are as simple as dimming the screen brightness. For this, swipe
down the notification shade and untick the Auto box, then reduce the
screen brightness to as low as you want.
Use a darker wallpaper
The biggest battery suck of them all is the screen and sometimes
reducing the brightness won’t be enough. Getting a dark wallpaper or
background will actually do wonders. Though this might sound like late
advice, since one of the key reasons to get a Note 4 is because of how
amazingly brilliant the screen is, if you are feeling desperate and
manage to find a cool dark background (or go black), then this trick
will help make your battery life just a little bit longer. Also, live
wallpapers consumer more battery.
Ensure the Note 4 isn’t always listening
Having the "Ok Google" Detection for Google Search turned to always
listening means that the phone is constantly awake waiting for you to
ask it something, which is also a small cause of quick battery decline.
You have to weigh what’s most important, battery or being able to
quickly launch a voice search by saying Ok Google. If you choose the
first, then you can easily turn this off in the settings of the Google
Search by tapping on the search bar and then on the menu button on the
bottom right corner. In settings under Voice, tap on Ok Google detection
and make sure that the box is not ticked for Always on.
Update, update, update!
In the best case scenario, updating your Android phone or tablet
should help increase battery life by ironing out any software bugs or
problems that might be the cause of quick drain. Even if you might not
be in store for an Android update, Samsung also pushes out other types
of software fix updates that are worth installing because usually they
fix existing pesky problems.
Turn off location services
Location services use up not only battery but also mobile data, so
turning it off would be a good idea for saving both of these precious
resources. Location services is found in the settings and if you aren’t
willing to part with this feature, you can select the Power saving
location service mode that will only use this feature when using Wi-Fi
and mobile networks, instead of the default high accuracy mode which
uses GPS, Wi-Fi and mobile networks.
Get rid of animations
This method, like many on the list, can actually work for a bunch of
devices, though some of them might slightly differ from phone to phone.
Disabling animations is done in the Developer options of the phone
settings. If you don’t have this otherwise hidden list showing up in the
About phone section of your settings, you need to unlock it. To do
this, tap on About Phone, and then tap on the build number until you see
that Developer options has been activated. Hit back to get out of the
About phone section and tap on the Developer options. Scroll down to
where it says Window animation scale, Transition animation scale and
Animator duration scale, and switch these all to off.
Disable vibrate for your email notifications
This is another small step which can actually take your battery a
long way, especially if you get a lot of emails like me. Having your
phone vibrate constantly can also be really annoying, but thankfully you
can switch this off. If you are using Gmail, head into the app and then
the settings. From there, select the account in question and tap on
Inbox sound and vibrate. In here, untick the vibrate box.
Turn off Bluetooth, NFC and GPS
The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 has a great quick setting menu that you get
to by swiping down from the top of the screen with two fingers. There
you’ll find a bunch of toggles that you can easily switch on or off with
a tap. They aren’t in alphabetical order so you’ll have to look around
for the various services: turn off Bluetooth, NFC, and GPS if you don’t
need them.
Beware of widgets
Widgets can be sneaky little things: depending on the nature of the
widget, they update quite often to show fresh information. Usually you
will be able to change how often the widget updates in the app settings.
For AccuWeather in this example, you can set it to not update
automatically at all, for maximum effectiveness.
There are a lot of other things that you can do with your Note 4, and
not need to give up all the cool features that it has to offer. You can
also check out our general Android tips for saving battery.
What do you do to save battery on your Galaxy Note 4? Have you tried any of the ones mentioned above?