Mobile solution

The LG G2 is one of the best Android smartphones of the year 2013, and why not, it does have a lot of potential against the other smartphones in the current Android smartphone market, but are you making the most out of it, or just using it as any other device? Here is a handful of tips and tricks for LG G2 using which you can enhance the user experience and make it a more personalized device for your usage.

Change App Icon – Size or Picture

There are a few features which are limited to just the LG devices. This is one of them, where you can change the icon for the app, and changing here means – changing the size, the actual icon picture by selecting from the given icons or selecting one from your own gallery.

On the home screen, tap and hold on the app icon and then let go. It would show a bluish option on the top right of the icon which would stay for a couple of seconds. Press on that to see the options opened for the particular icon.

You’ll see the option to expand the icon.

Knock On – Tap the screen to wake it up

This is again one of the best ways LG has given for those who didn’t like the back button placement, especially when the phone is placed on a table and they have to lift the phone to press the power button. Just tap the screen twice gently so that the screen wakes up and you can then unlock it. That isn’t limited to unlocking, because you can use the same tips to lock the screen by tapping twice on any empty area or the notification bar on the top.

To change the settings, you can go to Settings > General > Gestures > Knockon and toggle it on / off.

Change chat bubbles / theme in Messaging

The messaging app in most of the Android smartphones is the standard one, with the regular chat bubbles, but in LG G2, you can personalize it and use one of the several themes and bubbles that are given by LG, or you can go to an extent where the theme can be uploaded by you and changed.

Go to Messaging app > Menu > Settings > Conversation theme and here, you will see the option to change both “Wallpaper” and “Bubble” where the background as well as the chat bubbles are changed into different ones based on your preference. The wallpaper can be something that is captured using your camera, or you can choose one from the Gallery.

QSlide – Using the apps in small windows

The QSlide is a feature where you would be able to open multiple apps on the same screen, in small windows and this is the best for multitasking, although the actual multitasking is different from this. The QSlide is seen as the second option when you drag down the notification panel. Selecting that would open a list of QSlide apps just below the settings in the panel, and you can open any of the apps from there.

Changing the apps and order of them is possible by going to the Edit option in the end of the QSlide. Also, you can change the transparency of the app window with the slider given on each app when you open it. This would help in doing stuff when you have to check what’s on the background.

Slide Aside – Multitask Always

This is not the multitasking that you see as the default one in the Android phones, because in the Slide Aside, you can store up to three apps for an unlimited time, unlike the standard multitasking where you see the apps disappear when the latest ones replace them.

In Slide Aside, you need to swipe three fingers to the left when on an app page, so that the particular app page gets saved. You can do that with three apps, and the preview looks excellent, showing you the three saved apps one of which you can open any time. You may press the X button to remove the app if you wanted to have any other app in the Slide Aside multitasking.

Guest Mode in LG G2

There’s a very good Guest Mode feature which would limit the usage and the apps when you are giving the phone to someone who you feel, should not be able to check your personal details, messages, call logs etc. The Guest Mode would allow you to set the apps which you prefer to show to the guest, and for that you will have to first set the pattern lock. Go to Settings > Display > Lock screen and pick the pattern unlock and set that one for yourself.

Now, head to Settings > General > Guest Mode and you will be able to set a pattern for the guest mode, and select the apps which to show in the guest mode. It would have a very limited usage, because the person won’t be able to open even the notification panel, and only the apps which you allowed would be shown on the screen.

Use LG G2 as Remote Control

The G2 can act as a universal remote control, and it isn’t limited to just the TVs but you can use your smartphone for various stuff which includes – Set-top box, Audio player, DVD player, Blu-ray disc player, Air conditioner, Projector and the smartphone can act as a Universal remote.

Just click on the Plus icon on the right top and it would take you to the options to select from, i.e. the type of remote. For example, if you add Set-top box, it would take you to the brands of the STB or the brand which is providing you the DTH connection. There would be a series of tests to be done, and only if is working correctly, you can proceed and it would get saved under the various places such as office, bedroom, living room etc. so that you can use it easily later on.

You can choose to Auto display the QuickRemote at home, as soon as it locates that you have reached home, and you can toggle between the sound and vibrate settings when you press any remote button.

Quick ways to capture Screenshot

Although the different button placement, the LG G2 would allow you to capture the screenshots in different ways, and that won’t take any extra time, because you are seeing the keys closer to easily press them. One of the ways is to just press the Power and Volume down button together, and it would do the needful.
The other way is to use the QuickMemo feature, which not just captures the screenshot but also gives you a quick way to edit and add any text to the screenshot if you wanted to do so. There are two ways to open the QuickMemo:

1. From the notification panel – the first option there is the quickmemo, which has to be opened from the actual screen where you wanted to capture the screen
2. From the home button – Pull the home button upwards from the bottom to quickly open three options, the right one in them being the one for quickmemo, which does the same job.

Capture Full frame pictures with camera

If you are one of those who would capture the photos mainly to view from the smartphone screen itself, then you should have the wide view captures rather than the 4:3 aspect ratio ones which give a black bar on the either side of the image, because of the fixed ratio. The default one set is 13-megapixel which comes in the 16:9 ratio and thus you see the black bars on the left and right when seen in the landscape mode, and the option you need to select here is the 10-megapixel one which gives the aspect ratio that fills the entire screen.

Swipe to Delete / Share Photos

The Gallery app in the LG G2 although has the standard options to share or deleting the photos, does an even better job for those who wanted to check each photo individually and then decide what to do with it. When swiping between the different photos, you just need to pinch the photo a little to show the options such as swipe up to delete and swipe down to share. Based on what you want to do, swipe it.

Quick Actions with Back Buttons

The back buttons aren’t just for a single purpose, i.e. you can surely increase or decrease the volume of the smartphone with the Up and Down keys on the back panel of the G2, but a bit more can be done along with it. When the screen is turned off, if you press the Volume up button for a couple seconds, it would activate the Quickmemo if you wanted to jot down any notes. Similarly, if the Volume down button is pressed for a couple seconds, it would activate the camera without you having to activate the screen.

Change Front Bottom Touch Buttons

The touch buttons in the front bottom are not the capacitive fixed ones, because these are the system buttons which can be manipulated and changed, from the options given in the settings. Go to Settings > Display > Front touch buttons and see the different options available for the front buttons. There are bars which include even the Notification panel button and the quickmemo app.

Smart Screen – Keeps screen active if you are facing it

The smart screen feature is something similar to what you might have seen in the Galaxy S4 from Samsung. The thing that is done in this, is that the front camera of the LG G2 would check whether you are looking at the screen, and if yes, it would not allow the screen to turn off automatically on the normal screen timeout time that you have set. To activate that, you need to go to Settings > Display > Smart On > Smart screen.

Plug & Play options for Earphone

Whenever you plug a 3.5mm pin in the headphone jack, normally the phones don’t respond to it although the headphone works. In the LG G2, you can select a set of apps whose icons would show up for you to easily access them, and most of the times it would be one of those apps which you would have opened normally when you use the headphones. To set up the list of apps which are to be shown, go to Settings > General > Accessory > Earphone.

Dual Camera – Showing yourself while capturing others

Again one of the features which is nothing new in the high-end smartphones, but a very useful one when you are missing yourself while capturing your family in a photo. The Dual camera mode shows a small box with the front camera while most of the screen in the camera app is still filled by the objects from the back camera. With the Dual camera, you can:

• Drag to move the small screen
• Touch and hold to resize the small screen
• Tap small screen to swap the screen

Swiping from bottom in the camera with dual camera mode would show the various shapes for the small screen – Window, Stamp, Oval blur, Instant, Heart shape, Star shape, Fish eye, Split view.

Capture Plus – How to capture screenshot of full web page

Capturing screenshot, as we said above, has a few different ways but that would be only for the current screen and nothing that can be scrolled down or up. While browsing through the web browser in the LG G2, you would find a feature called Capture Plus, in the menu. That is what would capture the entire page from top to bottom, and save that to the gallery.

Setting up a Default home screen

There are multiple home screens in the interface, which has been a case with most of the Android smartphones, but when you have to make it look neat and organized, don’t keep shifting between the home screens by yourself, as you can take advantage of the default home screen option. Set one of the home screens as default by pinching on the home screen and then selecting the option “Set default Home screen”, and then tap the home screen which you wanted to set as the default one.

Quick Check and Uninstall Apps

Just like in the iOS devices, you can uninstall the apps directly by just a couple touches from the app pages. On the app drawer page, you just need to touch the Wrench icon on the top right, which would show the X option beside every app which you can uninstall. Clicking on the one which you want to uninstall, the information about the app is shown, and the option to uninstall it. And the deletion of the app is pretty quick, with a trash sound confirming that the app is gone.

Set up Battery Saver Mode on Low Battery

The battery saving mode is again one of the standard options provided in most of the smartphones, as the brands know how fast the battery gets drained when you are using it at ease. At a certain battery percentage, the battery saver mode, when activated, would automate a lot of stuff and keep your phone on mainly for calling and messaging, as most of the other stuff is hibernated. To activate the battery saver mode, you need to go to Settings > General > Battery > Battery Saver.

Change the Font and Size of Text

Personalization getting even better. Above we did share how you can change the messaging apps’ background and chat bubbles, and now here’s how you can change the text font and the size to a few limited options, but they would do quite a good job. Go to Settings > Display > Font where you would see the options for changing both – font type and size.

Share files wirelessly

You can access files on your LG G2 using your PC or Mac wirelessly through your Wi-Fi network. It’s a feature called Wireless storage and you can find a toggle for it at the far right of your notifications shade toggle menu. You can also turn it on via Settings > Share & connect > Wireless storage. When you turn it on you’ll get a pop up that gives you the IP address, username, and password.

Stick the IP address into Explorer on Windows or Finder on Mac and you can drag files directly from the phone to your computer. On Windows if you add G2 to the end of the address then you can map the network drive. On OSX in Finder hit Command K and then enter smb:// followed by your IP.

Rooting HTC Hero (G2)

BEFORE YOU BEGIN:

Before trying this procedure, try the How To Root the Hero In One Click since its update. Should work for all Heros (read the before you begin on that procedure carefully). If not then come back to this procedure.

Make sure you have an SD Adapter to put your MicroSD in so you can plug it into a computer and access it.

I. Download and Install the Android SDK and USB drivers (If you already have this done, skip this section).

1. Follow our video procedure on HOW TO SETUP ADB/USB DRIVERS.

II. Create a “GoldCard” from a MicroSD Card

1. Put the memory card you want to use for the GoldCard into your phone.

2. With the memory card in your phone, click on Settings, SD and Phone storage, then click Unmount SD card. Once it unmounts, click Format SD card. (Please keep in mind that some memory cards don’t work, and this will erase all data on your SD Card so back all the data up first to your computer)

3. On the Phone, goto Settings, Applications, Development and then make sure USB Debugging is checked.

4. *Make sure you have installed the SDK and Fastboot correctly from Section I!!!
Plug the phone into the computer and then open the Command Prompt (goto the start menu and type in cmd in the search box). Then type the following with hitting enter at the end of each line.

cd
cdAndroidSDK ools
adb devices

(wait for the it to show a serial number underneath, if it doesn’t then reinstall the drivers from section I). Then type:

adb shell
cat /sys/class/mmc_host/mmc1/mmc1:*/cid

5. A code will display, write the code down (MAKE SURE TO WRITE IT DOWN EXACTLY!)

6. Goto this site, Soaa.me - (write down, copy, paste, and then) One-click hex reverse for GoldCard creation, then put in your code you just wrote down into the text box and click submit. It will generate the code reversed and replace the first two digits with zeros automatically. Write that down and continue to step 9.

7. Now, on your computer, goto Redirection and enter your email in the appropriate field and for CID enter the reversed CID you just copied down BUT REPLACE THE FIRST 2 DIGITS WITH 2 ZEROS!

8. Click continue and then you will receive your goldcard.img via email. Once it arrives save it to your computer.

9. Now, goto http://download.cnet.com/HxD-Hex-Editor/3000-2352-10891068.html?part=dl-HxDHexEdi&subj=uo&tag=button to download the HxD Hex Editor. Save it and install it to your computer.

10. Take your SD card out of your phone and put it into the SD adapter it came with. Then put that into your computer so it shows up on your computer as Removable Disk.

11. Open the Hex Editor (Run as Administrator if one Vista or Windows 7) and click on the Extra tab, then click on Open Disk. Under Physical Disk select Removable Disk (your SD card you just put into the computer). Make sure to UNcheck “Open as ReadOnly”. Click OK.

12. Goto the Extra tab again and click Open Disk Image. Open up the goldcard.img that you saved from your email. You should now have two tabs, one is the SD card (Removable Disk) and the other is the goldcard.img
Press OK when prompted for Sector Size 512 (Hard Disks/Floppy Disks).

13. Click on the Goldcard.img tab and click on the Edit tab and click Select All. Then click on the Edit tab again and click Copy.

14. Click on the Removable Disk tab (Your SD Card) and select offset 00000000 to 00000170 then click on the Edit tab and click Paste Write.

15. Click on File then click Save.

16. Close the Hex Editor.

17. Test what we’ve done:

Take out the memory card from the computer, then put it back in.
Try to open the memory card on the computer (Removable Disk), if it lets you, you are all set. If it asks/tells you to reformat the card, then try steps 13 – 19 again. If it gives you the same error again, then try a different memory card (Erlern said it didn’t work for him until he finally went and bought a Kingston 2GB card, then it worked on that card only).

18. Put the GoldCard into your phone and reboot the phone with the GoldCard inside.

III. Downgrade the Hero using the Goldcard

1.Download and install

HTC Sync

2. Plug in your phone via USB cable to your computer (make sure the GoldCard is in the phone).

3. Once HTC Sync is installed and your phone is plugged in, pull down the notification bar on the phone and select HTC Sync. Make sure it connects to HTC Sync on the computer.

4. Download the Original HTC Hero RUU

Hero RUU

5. Double click the RUU you downloaded while the phone is plugged in with the GoldCard in it and follow the on screen procedure.

THANKS JESTERZ at XDA!

Reported Issues

Issue: I get an issue at step 5 or this procedure does not work for me.

Solution: Try to repeat the procedure with the 2.73.405.5 RUU listed on the site here:

Alternative RUU

Issue: I get Wrong Customer ID or a similar error when trying to use the RUU.

Solution: This means your Goldcard did not work and you need to try to do it again with a different SD card.


...:::A Big Thanks to xda-developers for all this:::...