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32 essential Android tips and tricks

Several weeks ago, we highlighted 40 useful iPhone tricks everyone should know. We got such good feedback from that feature that we wanted to share the love with Android users – who, after all, make up the largest proportion of the smart phone community.

21. Take a screenshot (Ice Cream Sandwich/Jelly Bean)

In Ice Cream Sandwich, it's easy to take screenshots using the power and volume-down buttons. Here, a gallery of some of the screenshots used in this article is displayed on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

  • By Jeff Ward-Bailey

For a long time, the only way to take a screenshot on an Android phone involved rooting the device (a process similar to jailbreaking an iPhone) and installing specialized software. Thankfully, that's no longer the case in Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean. Just press the power and volume-down buttons simultaneously. The screen will flash and a screenshot will be saved in your phone's photo gallery.

If you're on Froyo, Gingerbread, or Honeycomb, you might still be able to take a screenshot without special software -- sometimes manufacturers build screenshot shortcuts into handsets and tablets. If your device doesn't have this ability and you don't want to root it, try No Root Screenshot It -- you'll have to connect your phone to a computer to enable screenshots each time you restart the phone, but the app does exactly what its name promises.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

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