Today we’re going to take a look at how to adjust your screen’s brightness level. Adjusting your screen brightness is one of the most basic Android display settings you’ll find and allows you to compensate for the lack of or over abundance of, surrounding light. Most Android devices will already be set to automatically adjust your screen brightness depending on how much light your Android device’s light sensor detects, but since everyone is different, you may not want your have your brightness dimmed at a particular time, thus making it important to know how to manually adjust it. Knowing how to adjust your brightness levels can also lead to better battery management, something everyone can use. I’ll outline a few steps on how to adjust your screen brightness, followed by a short video showing how to do it. Hopefully this will help you further your knowledge of how your Android device works, and make using it that much easier.

If you’re often typing odd words — such as your huggybeartoodles email moniker you’ve had since grade school — chances are, they’re not in your user dictionary. Adding words to your user dictionary allows for the word to be recognized once you’ve typed a couple letters, saving you from typing the entire thing out each time. This can both save time and avoid embarrassing auto-corrects that have your friends deleting your contact info faster than you can type an apology. Today, I’m going to show you a couple simple and easy ways to add a word to your user dictionary. Once you’ve learned these simple and easy steps, you will have an indispensable tool for increasing typing productivity while saving precious thumb energy. Below you will find instructions and a brief video on how to add a word to the user dictionary in Android.

Sometimes you come across an App so cool you want everyone to know about it and even want to give it away to people you really like. Maybe that App is Angry Birds… Maybe that App is Drawing Pad. In any regard, here are the instructions on How to Gift an App using the Amazon Appstore.

Adding shortcuts to your homescreen is one of the quintessential conveniences of owning an Android smartphone. While there are all types of shortcuts you can add, today we’re going to focus on how to add a direct dial shortcut. A direct dial shortcut is essentially an on screen speed dial icon that allows you to one-tap dial any contact you’ve specified. Adding a direct dial shortcut is an easier and faster way to call your most frequently dialed contacts. We’ve put together some simple instructions along with a short video to show you just how easy it is to add a direct dial shortcut.

I’d like to start off the “How-tos” section by showing everyone how to take a screenshot on the Galaxy Nexus. Taking screenshots is one of the most used feature for bloggers like myself, and comes in handy for anyone looking to show off their homescreen or post a pic of that uber high score they got. Believe it or not, up until now, taking screenshots on an Android device was quite the project and required either using the Android SDK or gaining root access and downloading an app. This was way too much trouble for such a simple feature, one that really should have been built into the OS. It seems Google took note of this and decided to finally include the ability to take screenshots into Android 4.0. Now that we have this capability, I’d like to show you how to use it with the first ever Android 4.0 device — the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.