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.

2. Improve Google Now cards (Jelly Bean)

Enabling Web history at history.google.com gives Google Now a better set of data to work with, enabling it to show you flights, sports scores, and lots more besides just the weather (pictured).

Google Now is pretty useful right out of the box -- the more you use it, the better it will get at serving up useful information in an appropriate way (like pulling traffic and calendar information to figure out how long it'll take you to drive to your next engagement, for example). But if you're finding Google Now's abilities a little limited, try enabling Web history to give it more data to pull from. Visit history.google.com and click "Turn Web history on.” Before too long you'll be able to use Google Now for things such as sports scores and flight information. The service learns pretty quickly, too. For example, you'll find it letting you know what time you need to leave your house in order to make a flight. If the notifications become too distracting, you can adjust the priority level of each one from the Google Now screen. Just tap the three dots on the right side of the card to set it as normal (the phone will alert you with updates), low priority (the information will show up on the Google Now screen, but won't otherwise announce itself), or off.

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