I’ll start with some gestures that come in handy during everyday use, and mention a few tricks to squeeze some extra battery life out of the downsized flagship. If you’re still here, I have plenty more where that comes from. The Huawei P8 lite is lighter than the standard P8, but it still has tricks up its sleeve.
Tips for Everyday Use
I’ll start with gestures and features you should keep toggled on, or off, to make each day with the Huawei P8 lite a convenient one.
1. Stop the Noise with Just a Flip
In your Motion Control settings, you can enable a flip gesture that can silence alarms, calls, notifications, and anything else annoying your ears. While this is extremely convenient to silence your phone quickly, be careful with enabling it for alarms. It’s difficult to wake me up in the morning, and with a gesture like this I can go back to bed with just a flick of the wrist.
2. Pick Up to Turn the Noise Down
Let’s stay in your Motion Control settings for a while longer and see what happens when you pick up your loud phone, instead of flipping it. With this toggled, any loud alarms or ringtones will grow quiet when you pick your phone up. I like this gesture much more than flip, if only because it makes it harder for me to hit the snooze button.
3. Answer with Your Ears, and Not Your Fingers
This next gesture within your Motion Control settings is similar to the pick-up gesture. Once toggled, you can answer the phone by raising it to your ear. Similarly, if you raise the phone to your ear while on a contact’s page, you’ll call them. This gesture will become second nature very quickly once activated, so it’s one that I recommend.
4. Shake Your Phone to Change Icon Placement
Have you ever been so frustrated with your icon layout that you want to shake your phone into a different one? I haven’t, but if you want a quick gesture to hop into Icon editing, you can toggle the shake gesture in your Motion Control settings. After activation, just give your phone a shake on the home screen, and move your icons around however you please.
5. Ask Your Phone Where It is with Voice Wake-up
I’ll often ask my phone where it is when I can’t find it, but it hasn’t answered back once. Thankfully, if you give the Huawei P8 lite a shout, it’ll call back out to give away its location. By default, your phone’s name will be “buddy,” or “P8,” so shout out “Hi Buddy, where are you?”
When you do, the P8 lite will vibrate, light up, and say “I’m here!” If you’ve changed your phone’s name, call that out instead. I just hope you didn’t call him something embarrassing if you have to find him in public.
6. A New Way to Take Screen Shots
For this tip, turn on Smart Screenshots in your Smart Assistance settings. With this enabled, if you want to take a screenshot, lightly knock on your screen twice. When you do, your phone will vibrate to confirm the shot, and even give you a little knock-knock joke, free of charge.
Tips to Customize Your Phone to Your Needs, and Keep It Secure
Every phone deserves to be unique, and ever since the P8 lite’s upgrade to 5.0, this has become even easier. With these tips your phone will be under your complete control, and exude as much personality as you do.
7. Customize Your Notifications
If you haven’t upgraded your P8 lite yet to 5.0, it’s worth it for notification control alone. Now each app can be tweaked to never display notifications, only display notifications when set as a priority, or change it to sensitive to make sure it doesn’t display on your lock screen.
8. Download a New Launcher
The fastest way to spruce up a phone’s sense of style is with a new launcher, and if I can only recommend one, it has to be Nova Launcher Prime. Nova Launcher Prime is a paid experience, but one well worth the money. With a new launcher, your amount of customization options hit new heights. You can change everything from your icon style, to your UI with the right launcher. If the default P8 lite style isn’t enough for you, give the free version of Nova a try.
9. Pin a Screen to Keep Prying Eyes Locked in Place
I have more than a few friends who like to scroll through my phone after handing it off to them. With Screen Pinning, this becomes impossible. To activate the feature:
Navigate to your SettingsHead to SecurityNow select Screen Pinning
Once you’ve enabled the screen pin, launch the app you want to pin your screen to, then hit the overview (multitasking) button. Now scroll up and give the blue thumbtack icon a tap in the bottom right corner of your most recent app. That app is now pinned, and you can un-pin it by long pressing both the back and overview buttons simultaneously.
10. Initiate Guest Mode
If pinning your screen isn’t enough to keep prying eyes and fingers away from where they shouldn’t be, Guest Mode is your next option. If you go to Settings and then Users, you can tap Guest to start a new instance of Android. This new instance will have only stock apps, and no personal information.
11. Enable Smart Lock
Smart Lock is another security feature that helps keep your phone locked at the appropriate times. Smart Lock has set conditions, but to activate it:
Navigate to your SettingsHead to SecuritySelect Smart Lock
From here you can alter your Smart Lock settings to choose when and where your device will stay unlocked. Personally, I prefer to have it set to stay unlocked while on your person. Note: Smart Lock will only work if you have a pin, pattern, or password set on your phone.
12. Root Your Phone and Unlock its Potential
In the world of customization and security, there is no bigger step than rooting. Once rooted, you can use different custom ROMs, and apps that are impossible to activate on a stock device. If you want to unlock all of your P8 lite’s customization potential, rooting is recommended.
Tips to Keep Your Battery Healthy and Long Lasting
The battery is arguably one of the more important aspects of an Android phone. With the Huawei P8 lite’s non-removable 2200mAh battery, and demanding internal components, keeping it charged throughout a day is rough. If you want your P8 lite to stay on from sunrise to sundown, you’ll need some tips.
13. Turn on Power, Ultra Power, or Smart Power Saving Mode
When you’re down to less than 10% battery, and you still have half the day to get through, it’s time to turn on Power Saving Mode. Toggling any of the three power saving modes gives you a boost in battery life, at the cost of appearance and performance.
You can toggle your three power saving modes at any time from your Battery Settings. The standard Power Saver has the best balance between performance and battery life. The Ultra Power Saver is the end all, be all that will cripple performance in exchange for battery life. Lastly, Smart Power Saver attempts to meet your power saving needs automatically by changing its settings throughout the day.
14. Set Battery Saver Parameters
If you set parameters in your Battery Saver, there’s no need to switch to Power Saving Mode unless there’s an emergency. In your Battery Settings, you can set battery saving to activate at 5%, 10%, or 15%.
15. Monitor Battery Usage with New Apps
While the stock Android experience tracks battery usage, it helps to get a second opinion. Battery monitoring apps can help pinpoint new battery drainers, and keep track of old apps sucking battery. Most battery saving apps can not only keep track of battery sucking offenders but help keep your phone cool under pressure. If you’ve only been keeping track of your battery statistics with stock tools, it’s time for an upgrade.
Conclusion
The Huawei P8 lite may be a compromise in terms of power when compared to its bigger brother, but the lite experience is still a memorable one. Ever since the P8 lite received its update, it’s a midrange phone that can still run with the middle of the pack. Do you know about any secrets hiding away in the Huawei P8 lite? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below! Featured Image Credit
