All Android smartphones are released from their
manufacturers with some hidden deactivated set of options that can influence an
Android device’s performance. These options are put in place only for experts as
tampering too much with these options can cause your device to misbehave. There
are some basic options available for ordinary users too but a lot of them are
for the geeks. I learned how important the Developers options was the day I
downloaded Modern Combat 3 on my smartphone. The game was always crashing and
my progress lost with it; at times, its fps (how fast the game was playing out)
was slow. I did a little research and came upon a thread on Quora that explains
how to use the developer options to solve the problem. The thread didn’t
include how to enable developer options
on your Android so I was faced with another issue. After surfing web pages
and trying some tips, the developer options were still not available in my
settings page. Almost giving up, I finally got it activated after watching a
YouTube video simply by tapping the kernel version of my phone! Funny right?
This article will put you through on how
to enable developer options on your Android while also highlighting the
perks of activating or enabling it.
As stated earlier, the developer options come with all
Android smartphones but are always deactivated and sometimes even completely
hidden by the Manufacturer. These are done by the manufacturers so that they
cannot be accessed accidentally by users mainly because it actually affects and
can damage your phone. There are many different ways of activating and
accessing these options because there are different brands making different
phone models. To enable it you need to:
- Go to
the settings of your smartphone
- Navigate
to the “About phone” option. It is usually the last option in the settings
menu. Once you see it, tap it and scroll until you see “Software
information”
- Select
“Software Information” and look for the Build number. For some smartphones,
it might be Kernel number (my smartphone has this as the option). The
critical thing here is to look for the option that says ‘Build number or
Kernel number’.
- Now
here is the trick. You need to rapidly tap the build or kernel number for
five (5) times. For some other devices, it might be seven (7) or six (6).
My phone took six before I got the message ‘You are now a developer’.
Please note, that is the message you will get when you do it right.
- You
can now access the Developer Options by returning to your settings menu.
It would be just above the “About Phone” option.
Please note- that once
you activate the Developer options, the only way you can remove it is by
Factory Resetting your phone. Also, there is a slider that you still need to
turn on to use the Developer options features on your phone. So, if you know
you do not have anything important to do on it yet, you can simply set the
slider to off. Trust me, you don’t want to damage your phone.
Here are some impressive things enabling the Developer
Options to allow you to do:
- USB Debugging
Enabling
your developer options allows you to activate USB debugging option on your
android. It is, in fact, one of my favorite options after learning to use
Developer Options for my Modern combat game. With these option on, you can
seamlessly share and exchange files between your computer and smartphone. You
can also do a lot of impressive things like:
· Unlocking, flashing (to remove
virus) and Rooting your smartphone
· Using your computer’s program to
take a screenshot of your smartphone
· Create or restore backups of your
smartphone
It is
important to note that activating USB debugging means you must be wary about
the kind of computers you connect your phone to. This is especially important
to prevent hacks and privacy intrusion.
- Tweak your smartphone’s Animations
By
animation, it means how fast your Android device opens an app or closes them,
how fast you move from one tab to the other on your menu page, etc. You can
either disable this animation to make your phone faster. You can also increase
the speed of the animation if you want to keep it but it slows down your phone.
An already
fast android device will move almost at the speed of light if the animation is
disabled. I tried it on my 3 GB ram smartphone; when I tried starting up the Clash
of Clan app which takes a minute to move from the black screen, it was just
amazing!
- Stay Awake while charging option
The
function of this option is as the name implies! It allows you to force daydream
your phone with any app you want as long as it is being charged. Android
devices come with a Daydream mode while charging but only certain apps are
available. With this option activated, you can use any app you want. (I
tried using clash of clan app with it and it was on like forever!).
- Fake GPS location
This is an
option that allows you to fake your location. With this activated, nobody can
truly know your location when they used a location tracking app. It is
especially good for playing pranks amongst friends.
You can access the developer options to try the above
and a lot more tricks and tweaks out. And ensure you touch only what you
understand its meaning and function.
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