How to make the most out of your Android smartphone

Well, Smartphones and tablets have brought a revolution and a dramatic change in all of our lives. Nowadays we know the details of their screen more than our own face (Ever girls! Even though it may look like they never reply to our messages and posts but still, they just look at their screens every minute! :P ).

We often get bored after using the same ol' thing for a long time. Well you can get bored of your face too but not many people can afford a plastic surgery. But fortunately, Android offers us a giant bunch of ways in which we can give our device a complete facelift/plastic surgery/brain operation/and any other ridiculous things that you'd wanna do to your body and personality! The reason is obvious, the OS being an open source . We can modify and use it as we wish!

Well, even knowing this, some people say "Dude! I've been using the same thing for months....Now this shit runs slow like internet explorer and I'm bored of this screen!! All I can do is change a couple wallpapers! Who goes to the play store!!?? Download shit and getting used to it takes another 5 days!! Man, imma purchase the new nexus 7 next week"- A typical Mac user kinda guy who has used his phone only for a few months!

Well, lemme tell ya! In the world of open source and free software, everything may not be easy as a couple taps or clicks. But the outcome you'll see will be worth the headache! What if your phone is an old one!? I bet a lot of people never use it to the fullest! Well, no worries, here are some things you can try:

1. Wallpaper Changer Application: A fresh looking screen always catches you eyes! With this app, the wallpaper of your home-screen will change randomly in the time periods you want! So no more fussing around the internet in search of wallpapers. Download it from Google play.

2. Install another Home-Screen Launcher: Everyone knows this. These apps change the appearance of your screens. If you're bored of the current conventional screen then these might do the job. Some good ones are: launcher 8 (A whole new Windows phone type look!), Vire Launcher (A new kind of interface with some nice little animations and a lot of customizations in the paid version), Nova Launcher (A customizable version of the stock 4.0+ launchers with a lot of looks, themes and gestures that we can change), Shells (A complete changeover right from the looks to behaviors and animations to customization. Some of them are TSF Shell and SPB shell 3D).

3. Install Juice Defender application to save your battery life: Run out of battery very often? With JD, you can control the battery use of the phone by some pre-loaded settings and you can also make your own settings. It monitors the wireless connections, CPU usage, Screen Brightness and lowers/increases them automatically to save "Juice"! XD Download it from Google Play.

4. Root your device: This shit is tricky! Only do it if ya know what it means (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_rooting) it voids the warranty period of your device so be sure that you won't be needing or you're already out of your warranty period!! Rooting opens the doors to new horizons of customizations. After this procedure, you can do anything with the phone's software  (Even a plastic surgery!) and you get to use a set of COOL root apps like titanium backup to back up your current apps along with their data, install Custom ROM's and a whole lot of other things. This step comes after you've had some experience!

5. Become a member on development forums such as XDA: This is the place where your phone and it's OS will NEVER get old! even after years! You can meet up with thousands of developers and look at hundreds of tutorials be it rooting, installing ROM's and everything else! You can post your queries and get expert replies. All tailormade for your device!

How to fix a bricked/bootlooped phone???

If your phone keeps rebooting
If you've flashed a ROM and your phone won't boot into the home screen, it's probably because you forgot to wipe your data and/or cache. It's trying to boot into the ROM, but some leftover data from your last ROM is causing it to error out, and it'll reboot itself over and over again. If your phone's eating a big bowl of boot loops, your first course of action should be to wipe its data and cache, which you can do from recovery mode. This method assumes you're using ClockworkMod Recovery, like the majority of Android users, but if your particular phone uses a different third-party recovery (like AmonRA), you should still be able to find these options in the interface. They might just be in a different place. To wipe your data and cache:

1.Power down your phone. Turn it back on and boot into Recovery mode. This is a bit different for every phone, so you'll have to Google how to do it for your specific model. Usually it involves holding down another button, like Volume Down, as you turn your phone on. HTC phones will have to then select "Recovery" from a menu, while other phones will boot directly into ClockworkMod. You'll know you're in ClockworkMod by the words "ClockworkMod Recovery" at the top of the screen.
2.Use your volume keys to navigate the menus, and your power button to select menu items. Scroll down to Advanced, and choose "Wipe Dalvik Cache". When that's finished, go back to the main screen and choose "Wipe Cache Partition". Lastly, head to "Wipe Data/Factory Reset". This will delete all your settings and apps, but you should still be using the correct ROM.
3.Reboot your phone.

If Your Phone Boots Straight Into Recovery: Flash a New ROM
If, when you boot up your phone, it goes straight into ClockworkMod, then there's likely an issue with the ROM you flashed. Note that some ROMs boot into recovery mode automatically after flashing, so reboot your phone once from recovery mode to make sure you're having a problem. HTC users: if you boot up your phone, it might go straight into the bootloader—check to see whether you can choose "Recovery" from the list before continuing to the next step. HTC phones usually don't boot straight into recovery.

In this case, you'll want to reflash the ROM from scratch. Try again with the ROM that messed up your phone, if you so choose, but if that doesn't work, try an entirely different ROM. The best way to do this is to download a ROM from somewhere on the net and putting it on your SD card. You'll need to take the SD card out of your phone, and you'll need an SD card reader that you can plug into your computer. Here's how it works:

Plug the SD card into your computer. Drag the ROM's ZIP file to your SD card, and wait for it to copy.
When it's done copying, eject the SD card and put it back in your phone. Reboot into Recovery mode. This is a bit different for every phone, so you'll have to Google how to do it for your specific model. Usually it involves holding down another button, like Volume Down, as you turn your phone on. HTC phones will have to then select "Recovery" from a menu, while other phones will boot directly into ClockworkMod. You'll know you're in ClockworkMod by the words "ClockworkMod Recovery" at the top of the screen.
Use your volume keys to navigate the menus, and your power button to select menu items. Scroll down to "Install ZIP From SD Card" and navigate to the ZIP file you just copied over. Give it time to flash the ROM.
When it's done, reboot your phone.
Hopefully, your phone should successfully boot into the new ROM. From there, you can probably assume that the previous ROM that messed up your phone isn't going to work, and you'll have to find another ROM for now—or find another copy of that ROM that isn't corrupted. Remember to make backups of your working ROMs so you don't lose all your data!