Modern smartphones are incredibly multifunctional devices. Many users do not even know about some useful options of their phone, which save a lot of time or allow you to do without additional devices.
Voice commands
Almost all new smartphones have built-in voice assistants. So, for the first time a voice assistant (Siri) appeared in the iPhone. Later, Google released its assistant, which is available on all devices with Android OS (widely known by the phrase “Okay, Google”). Yandex also did not stay away from global trends and created Alice, which can be downloaded from the application catalog.
The benefit of voice assistants is that they significantly reduce the time it takes to perform any action. You just need to ask your smartphone for something or give it a command, after which it will immediately take the required action.
With the help of your voice, you can set an alarm clock or a timer, search the Internet for a wide variety of information, learn about the weather outside the window – the options for using the assistant are unlimited. Voice assistants are especially useful when your hands are busy, or it is difficult for you to compose some kind of search query yourself. The “smart” assistant will cope with the task much faster and more accurately.
Infrared port
Once upon a time, almost all push-button telephones had an infrared port. At the time, it was used for slow and unstable file transfers between devices. With the advent of Bluetooth, this option has disappeared for a long time, but now many smartphones are again equipped with an infrared port. The fact is that with the help of this sensor, you can easily control any household appliances: the smartphone acts as a kind of remote control. As you know, remotes are often lost, they can be easily confused, while one phone combines all the commands, from the TV to the air conditioner.
Many manufacturers, for example, Xiaomi, Huawei, Samsung, put their own program on smartphones to control home appliances via infrared. If your device does not have a built-in application, you can download it from the Internet. Setting up the application will not cause any difficulties: as a rule, the interface is as simple and straightforward as possible.
Wi-Fi data transfer
As you know, on Android devices, you can exchange files using Bluetooth or proprietary Android Beam technology. Unfortunately, these wireless technologies have low data rates. If you need to upload a couple of photos, then there will be no problems, but in the case of sharing long videos or heavy archives, you will have to wait a long time.
It turns out that any smartphone can transfer and receive files to any device that is connected to the same Wi-Fi network. For this, FTP technology is used, with the help of which the transmitter device becomes a server, and the other device simply connects to it, as to an ordinary website. Naturally, the speed of data transfer in this case depends on the speed of Wi-Fi, which far exceeds the capabilities of Bluetooth.
To set up such a transfer, you need the ES File Explorer app. Remote access is enabled on one smartphone, after which it remains only to connect another device. In this way, you can even connect to a computer: the file system of your phone will be displayed in the PC explorer.
Use of external storage media
Finally, you can connect flash drives, hard drives and other data storage to a smartphone: in the same way as it is done on a PC. To do this, you do not need to download any third-party programs or use built-in applications. It is only important that your device supports the USB OTG function (by default, it is available on most modern smartphones).
To connect a storage device, you need to purchase an adapter from USB to the connector of your phone (usually mini-USB or micro-USB). After that, you should connect the smartphone and the carrier with a cable (for example, a USB flash drive). Then you can work with the files as with a regular memory card.
We usually use smartphones for communication, the Internet and multimedia, but modern devices hide many useful functions. So, to perform any actions, it is enough to talk to the phone, and it itself is quite capable of replacing a PC or consoles of household appliances. For fast and wireless data transfer, you do not need to mess with old technologies: you can use a regular Wi-Fi network.
