Droid Incredible Tips & Tricks Thread

[Cory Streater]

Incredible owners: Please shared any hidden or little known tips or tricks that you have discovered about your Droid Incredible.

The only ground rule is that you limit your post(s) to actual tips & tricks. Please do not post questions in this thread. Please search the forums for a possible answer or start a new thread related the tip/trick in which you have a question about. To keep the thread clean, I will delete any questions. Please do not take offense to this.

Cory

 

[TBolt]

Dealing with the huge list of "My contacts" that are synced from Gmail.

I just did this - works well enough, and I hope it helps someone else.

I prefer having a more concise set of contacts on my phone rather than the huge pile of old contacts that Gmail collects over the years. So, I did this...

1. On the PC, exported "My contacts" from Gmail Contacts in vCard format
2. Connected my Incredible (phone) as a drive to my Windows 7 computer
3. Copied the .vcf file to the SD card in my phone (make sure you're copying to the SD card, not the phone's memory)
4. Disconnected my phone from the computer
5. On the phone, opened up People
6. Tapped Menu
7. Tapped Import/Export
8. The phone detected the .vcf file and imported my contacts (Note: if your phone does not detect the .vcf file, you may have copied the .vcf file to your phone's memory, not the SD card itself.)

After importing, you may want to do some clean-up. Deleting extraneous contacts is easy. Tap People > press and hold the name you want to delete & choose the "Delete contact" option when the pop-up menu appears.

After clean-up is done, I'll be sure to sync up with Verizon's new Backup Assistant service so that I won't ever have to re-create my phone's Contact list again.

Cheers!

---

P.S.: Anytime you want to delete all of your contacts, you can do so this way:

People > Menu > Delete > Menu (again) > Select All > Delete

 

[Limjelo]

Setting up Yahoo Mail

This is how I got mine to work. Not sure if there are easier ways...

Configuring Yahoo Mail

 

[Limjelo]

Deleting Multiple Email Messages

Without selecting any emails within your email folder, press menu --> delete. You can then select all the emails you would like to delete. Prior to choosing any, you can select Menu one more time and "Mark All" if you like.

 

[thedroidblog]

When you are browsing the top notification bar is gone. If you press menu, the browser menu comes up from the bottom but so does the top notification bar.

 

[mobiledevice]

If you have duplicate entries for some of your contacts, go into the people application and link them together.

 

[fillossofer]

Notification icons appear at the top left. You can drag the notification bar down to get more information on each notification and jump right to the app. When you're done, drag the bar back up to return home.

 

[lawdawg#AC]

If you have duplicate entries for some of your contacts, go into the people application and link them together.

Is this not automatic? I believe it was on my Droid with 2.1... Maybe it just doesn't work perfectly?

 

[dpu328]

Contacts

I suggest not syncing with Facebook at all. When I did, it really messed up all the contacts. It merged completely unrelated contacts. I messed with Google contacts forever and nothing transferred correctly. Once I removed facebook from sync options, I got a nice clean list of contact without errors.

 

[SailingMan]

Incredible owners: Please shared any hidden or little known tips or tricks that you have discovered about your Droid Incredible.

The only ground rule is that you limit your post(s) to actual tips & tricks. Please do not post questions in this thread. Please search the forums for a possible answer or start a new thread related the tip/trick in which you have a question about. To keep the thread clean, I will delete any questions. Please do not take offense to this.

Cory

DROID INCREDIBLE Verizon 206 page Manual stating b/g/n Wi-Fi and other great stuff.

Welcome to Verizon Wireless Support - Verizon Wireless Support

 

[slumpey326]

If you go into a contact and select Edit Contact then go into edit the person's name. It allows you to put in first and last in separate fields. It then shows your "Display Name" just below. On the right side of that "Display Name" field is an arrow pointing down. Press that arrow and it will allow you to swap how you want the name to be displayed. Either first last or last first.


To turn off the vibration when receiving a text. if you are in Messages, go to "All Messages" and click the Menu button. Click "Settings" and scroll down until you see "Vibrate" under "Received Messages."

Disable Mobile Web Pages
Open Internet Browser
Hit Menu
More
Settings
Untick "Mobile View"


Basically you turn off animations and it makes the phone feel much quicker.
Menu>Settings>Sound & Display>Animation
Set it to Animations Off. There are 3 settings: Show All Animations, Show Some Animations, and Turn Off Animations, the off options is the best for overall performance.

 

[orangedude654]

Download Advanced task killer and leave it on your home screen.
Power users especially - this is just an easy one click (closing sometimes 8 apps at a time) always there on your home screen. It doesn't kill the active background sink for updates.
Android automatically handles ram issues - but since the phone is pretty beastly it can have 15 apps open without seeing an stutter. But closing them frequently saves major battery - without any loss of performance (i promise)

When plugging the device into a computer u can drag down a tab at the top on the home screen that lets you select right there what kind of mode you want it to be in ~ sync, charge only, disc drive etc)

The android has the same text selection features as the iphone ( i didn't realize at first about the magnifier, the text selection itself, and the ability to hold down on documents and download them.

I really like having the power control widget on one of my screens due to the ability to quickly choose 3 brightness settings (one for dark, medium for most of your experience, and then bright to really combat the "outside problem"). Also it features quick antenna power buttons, as well as GPS and active background sync.

These either could be really good or obvious - but I like them.

More to come if I get good response.

 

[Groucho]

Without selecting any emails within your email folder, press menu --> delete. You can then select all the emails you would like to delete. Prior to choosing any, you can select Menu one more time and "Mark All" if you like.

You just saved me delving into the manual. Great tip, thanks!

 

[Groucho]

Download Advanced task killer and leave it on your home screen.
Power users especially - this is just an easy one click (closing sometimes 8 apps at a time) always there on your home screen. It doesn't kill the active background sink for updates.
Android automatically handles ram issues - but since the phone is pretty beastly it can have 15 apps open without seeing an stutter. But closing them frequently saves major battery - without any loss of performance (i promise)

Thanks for pointing this one out. I looked at all the App Killers but this one appears to be the safest. Gee, I replaced my Storm at about 9:00 this morning and haven't done a battery pull. Won't miss those days.

 

[threepio]

Download brightness control by curvefish in the marketplace. It lets you control your brightness in a nice app. much better than the stock power control widget on the phone. It gives you five preset buttons for brightness, 0, 25, 50 , 75 and 100 percent. Also a scroll bar to make a custom selection.

Curvefish also makes several other power control widgets that i like. Wifi, Blue tooth, lock screen, power on/off, gps, vibrate/silent/ring mode selector. All great widgets, and they are free! but donate if you want to see more from them.

 

[netnurse#AC]

Without selecting any emails within your email folder, press menu --> delete. You can then select all the emails you would like to delete. Prior to choosing any, you can select Menu one more time and "Mark All" if you like.

Thanks so much for this one! It was driving me nuts thinking I had to delete each e-mail seperately!

 

[sum spicy rice]

Deleting a SMS message individually from the threaded SMS. Saw user "droidrob3" post this info in another thread. I think it's pretty useful.

You can delete a single SMS by pressing and holding it until a menu pops up with different options including one to delete.

 

[Peanutbutter_N_Jelly]

Deleting a SMS message individually from the threaded SMS. Saw user "droidrob3" post this info in another thread. I think it's pretty useful.

Tip of the day! Thank you.

Also... that brightness control app threepio mentioned a few posts up is pretty legit

 

[mritter88]

The "touch" part of the touchscreen actually begins above the visible part of the screen. I found myself oftentimes not grabbing the notification bar when I tried to drag it down, but if you try tapping and holding above where the screen starts and then drag down it works perfectly!

 

[TBolt]

CAPS LOCK is activated by pressing & holding the upwards-facing arrow on the virtual keyboard.