A Few Swipes You May Not Know About

There are more swipes than you think with the Nokia N9. By now you would have realised that swiping from the top down closes an app and swiping to the left or right in an application will take you to the other three screens (multitasking, feeds or apps list).

Swipe to Search

However, did you know if you keep pulling down on the screen in your email inbox and hold down for a while it will reveal the search function that you thought Nokia left out? I was about to blog on day one that it was weird that there is no search bar for the inbox but on closer inspection, this search is not only there, but its very fast! Whatever algorithm it is using, it seems to have learnt something from Gmail. 

Swipe to Refresh

In the Facebook application, swiping down from the middle of the screen in Notifications activates "refresh". 

Swipe up to Quick Launch

In any application that you have open, you can jump to the Dialler, Messaging, Camera or Web by swiping up a little from the bottom and holding it mid way. 

Hope that helps.

Why the N9 has no forward back button

I don't know about you but one of the things I enjoy most about a new phone is finding new features that I didn't realise had been sitting there all that time. Even better is when you identify what you thought was an omission only to realise that the designers turned out to be smarter than you (surprised?)

Today's little nugget of a discovery seems pretty simple. When you are typing in a URL or something and you stuff up, you want to delete one letter but you don't want to backspace everything to get there. So you use the left arrow and the right arrow to make your way slowly through the address to remove the delinquent letter. However, there is no such button on the keyboard. And this is why. 

If you tap and hold down the text field, whether it be the location bar or a field in a form, a magnifying glass will appear which allows you to move your finger to the left and right like a mouse pointer, moving the cursor to your desired position. It will look a little something like this:

For N9 users, try it out and leave your comments below if you also did not know about this (it wasn't in the user guide!)

By the way, the N9 does have a forward and back button for the browser. It just doesn't appear when there is no need for it.

Camera Tip - Press and Hold

When you are using your N9 camera, you should let the camera autofocus before releasing the shutter. Hold down the camera shutter button until the white square in the middle turns blue. Then release the shutter.

When you find some useful tips and you want to tell someone, leave a comment. Every tip you contribute can make many people's day, even after you have shared it. It sits in Google waiting for someone to look for it.