New Nexus 7 owner with a question or two

[jblank]

Greetings, just got a Nexus 7 32gb and love it! Sold my iPad for it so I could have only one ecosystem to buy into (have a Galaxy S III as my phone) and so far I can't see myself going back to anything Apple. Couple questions though:

1) It comes with like 5 blank pages, no icons on them, and these are simple to remove on the GSIII, but I can't figure out how to delete them on the Nexus.

2) As this device only has 1GB of RAM, I would like to monitor it closer and make sure that when it gets low, I know it, and can quickly close apps that are running. Does anyone know of any notifications or widgets that bring RAM usage onto the screen so I don't have to go into Settings everytime?

3) The wife is getting annoyed at being woken up by email notifications in the middle of the night. On my GSIII, I just have to swipe down from the notification bar and there is a "mute" feature. I can't find one on the Nexus 7 and I really don't want to have to turn my volume down every night. There has to be a better way.....right?

 

[Griff88]

I can't help with 1 and 2 but there is a separate volume slider for notifications so you could just "mute" them during the night rather than muting all sound from the tablet completely.

 

[jblank]

Yeah, kinda want the "quick and easy" route, lol. I figure somewhere, there is some "mute" setting, I just gotta find it.

 

[Griff88]

Yeah, kinda want the "quick and easy" route, lol. I figure somewhere, there is some "mute" setting, I just gotta find it.

If you hold down the power button for about a second you get the option to put the tablet into "Silent mode".. Maybe that's more suitable for your needs?

 

[jblank]

Ah, that will be perfect. I don't have it with me here now, but I will test it when I get home tonight. Now if I could just get some help with #1 and #2. Thanks Griff!

 

[mathelm]

I am by no means a android expert, but it's my understanding that it does such a good job at managing ram that it's not an issue. But if you go to the play store and type in something like "ram manager", it comes up with several apps. I personally have ES Task Manager installed, but have never "had" to use it, even though I do from time to time...

I don't know that you can dump the extra pages, but double tapping the home button brings up the main (center) one....

 

[jblank]

Does that ES Task Manager come with a Widget? I would kind of like to monitor the memory usage anyway, so even if I decide to let the OS control the memory, I still would like to monitor it on the main screen.

 

[mathelm]

Yes, I believe it does. Small one...

 

[retsaw]

The Nexus 7 uses the stock Android launcher for the home screens which doesn't allow you to add or delete the home screens, but you can install a different launcher if you want extra features, Nova Launcher will let you do what you want, but there are other launchers.

 

[mr_nobody]

2) As this device only has 1GB of RAM, I would like to monitor it closer and make sure that when it gets low, I know it, and can quickly close apps that are running. Does anyone know of any notifications or widgets that bring RAM usage onto the screen so I don't have to go into Settings everytime?

Android is designed to operate with memory full...there is no advantage to clearing out memory manually. Android will auto-close apps as needed...

 

[jblank]

Oh, ok. Well, it's not a huge deal, I'm just anal about my devices being as tidy as possible, and I hate having all that extra space/pages. I thank you for the information though.

 

[jblank]

That's interesting. I still would like to have a widget on the front screen to monitor it (it just is the tech in me coming out lol). I am a convert from Apple and am still learning Android. Love it though, thanks for the information!

 

[jmaudi0]

elixer widget can display ram usage and tons of other "techy" info you may want.

 

[mr_nobody]

Oh, ok. Well, it's not a huge deal, I'm just anal about my devices being as tidy as possible, and I hate having all that extra space/pages. I thank you for the information though.

If you want to get rid of the extra home screens (I always do this on my devices) just install another launcher like apex or nova. There are free versions and by default they will be pretty much identical to stock EXCEPT you can easily blow away the extra screens. Well worth the effort, IMO...

 

[B. Diddy]

Yeah, kinda want the "quick and easy" route, lol. I figure somewhere, there is some "mute" setting, I just gotta find it.

You could use a widget like Power Toggles, which is a highly customizable widget bar, including a volume mute.

 

[jblank]

Cool, gonna check that out this evening.

 

[jblank]

If it doesn't change things too much, I might look into it then.

 

[flacousa]

Before I go to bed I swipe down on right side of the screen and tap the airplane, no more annoying e-mail alerts

Sent from planet earth

 

[jblank]

Hmm, ya know, I didn't think about that. Good battery saver as well I would imagine.

 

[B. Diddy]

Airplane mode doesn't save you a whole lot of battery if you only have the wifi version of the Nexus 7. If you keep your wifi and Bluetooth on all the time, Airplane mode will shut both of them off, but that's about it. If you have the HSPA+ version, Airplane mode would also turn off the mobile data, which would be more of a battery savings, but you can do all of this with Power Toggles, just with more fine control