Help GT i9505 - Some Questions from a noob

[Rafik Jabbour]

Hi guys, I appreciate your help and time spent in advance. I recently bought Samsung S4 LTE GT i9505 and after excessive use, I came up with few questions, and I apologize in case I sound silly or if my question had been asked and answered before because I haven't searched the forum yet.

Q1, How do you hide the "Ongoing" applications in your notification panel? Keeping in mind I don't want to affect their performance or priority.



Q2, What's with the delay that we have in the lock screen? I sometimes find that my phone doesn't display a contact's name or photo during an incoming call but only displays the number.

Q3, How do you assign a contact's location on Google Maps? The only way I've seen is that you have to enter the address manually in the contact's address bar which will open through Google Maps, is there a way to save a pin or link it to a contract?

Q4, How do you make Google Now... live?
Google Now doesn't update the "Time to home" card while I'm driving.. I need to manually open Google Now and click on the card so that it opens in Google Maps

Q5, What's the optimum processor speed, RAM usage, and Device Temp? I'm using this widget that tells me these information but I have no idea when I am crossing the lines



I appreciate your help and support !!

 

[Rafik Jabbour]

*bump*

 

[SebaKL]

Hi there Rafik

I'm going to be a very lousy help.

Q1, How do you hide the "Ongoing" applications in your notification panel? Keeping in mind I don't want to affect their performance or priority.

I don't believe there is a generic setting for it. It could only be within given app, and if it's not there, then you have no choice. If I'm not wrong, Android doesn't allow apps to clear notifications of other apps, so you might not be in luck even with 3rd party tool.
Perhaps if you were rooted, there could be some solutions. Wound't know that, not rooting my devices.

Q2, What's with the delay that we have in the lock screen? I sometimes find that my phone doesn't display a contact's name or photo during an incoming call but only displays the number.

Never happened to me. Does your phone come with DU Telecom custom bloatware?
Your telco firmware could be messing around with the device.

Q3, How do you assign a contact's location on Google Maps? The only way I've seen is that you have to enter the address manually in the contact's address bar which will open through Google Maps, is there a way to save a pin or link it to a contract?

I don't think it's possible. The best solution I found for myself, was to find my friend on Google Map, share the address via SMS, and copy paste that into the contact.

Q4, How do you make Google Now... live?
Google Now doesn't update the "Time to home" card while I'm driving.. I need to manually open Google Now and click on the card so that it opens in Google Maps

First of all, you need to turn ON google Now. Open google Now by holding the menu button for few seconds. Go to settings, and first menu item on top, is the ON/OFF toggle slider.
Then make sure your location reporting or location sharing is ON. That's the only way for Google to learn about you. Keep in mind tho, these are battery hogs.

Secondly, your area could simply not be feeding sufficient data to Google. Just like play store, certain content is available exclusively to USA or European users. In here, I only get apps, no music, books or movies. So my Play Store layout is really plain and boring.

I don't think you will get many real live updates from UAE. I suppose weather, distance (home, work), maybe traffic. But that would be it. Anyway, for NOW to learn more about you, you need to have location sharing enabled, use google search frequently, maps etc... It's the activity that teaches Google your preferences, habits, likes...and it will try to cater appropriate content accordingly.

Q5, What's the optimum processor speed, RAM usage, and Device Temp? I'm using this widget that tells me these information but I have no idea when I am crossing the lines

Don't know about processor, so can't answer that.

Don't be too concern with monitoring RAM. The perception that high ram usage is not good, was developed mostly by PC users. Android manage memory very efficiently, and just because you see high ram consumption, it doesn't mean it slows down the device. Some apps like dialer, sms, and others, are PRE-Open and on standby to speed up future launch of the app. If another app is coming into play, and there is no enough memory, Android will manage it for itself.
To the contrary, if you clear your ram to keep it low, it will decrease the performance and possibly reduce battery life, by forcing all the apps to be loading from scratch, every single time.

Ok, I guess that's all...

Enjoy your Iftar

Seba