As a constant companion with you everywhere in life, your phone offers many useful functions and services to you. But, despite everything you use it for, are you truly getting the most out of it? Here are some features that you may not know about or haven’t explored enough.

Taking professional photos, enhanced by so many options

These days you don’t need a professional camera to snap breathtaking and visually stunning pictures and videos. Whether you are a social media star or simply want to capture memorable moments from your life to be remembered forever, just use your phone. But have you taken the time to fully explore all the capabilities of your mobile camera? From shooting modes and special functions to aftereffects and filters, there is much to use to make taking Gram-worthy pictures easy.

Aside from the typical photography settings such as aperture, shutter speed, colour space and white balance, there are other functions to look out for. These include the macro lens for close-up shooting; super night mode, which makes taking pictures in dimmer light no problem; and slow-motion mode.

Two of the favourite ones incorporated into TECNO’s newest phones are documents, which captures documents and auto corrects the angle of them in the picture and crops the picture for easy sending, and Sky Shop. This one can be used to change the sky in your pictures, so, for example if it’s cloudy and rainy outside it doesn’t have to be in your pictures, replacing it instead with bright sunshine and fluffy white clouds.

TECNO and itel’s advice when it comes to mobile photography is to play around with your camera settings and functions, taking various pictures to see the results of each combination of shooting.

Track your journeys easily

If you use Google Maps for navigation, you may not know about its Time Line feature. Enable this to track your journeys including dates and times. If this feature is enabled, you can even look at your historical journeys. This is a helpful function if you need to keep track of journeys for work travel logs or to remember favourite places that you have visited. All TECNO and itel phones come with all your favourite Google Mobile Services pre-installed on them for your convenience, which includes Google Maps.

Quicker access to your favourite apps

If you want to access your favourite and frequently used apps quicker, saving you time and making the process more user-friendly, make use of shortcuts on your smartphone. For example, TECNO devices have Smart Panel, which stacks your apps in a convenient block on your home screen that can be accessed with a simple swipe.

Another useful shortcut on TECNO phones is Smart Gestures, which allows you to access certain functions without even having to unlock your phone and find them. All you do is trace a pre-assigned shape on your screen and the feature opens. This is great if you need to take a picture in a hurry, for example. These two shortcut features can be found under the Micro Intelligence option in settings, along with a host of other handy features.

Secure, backed-up storage

While it is great to store all your contacts, pictures, videos, documents and data on your phone, it is equally important to ensure that they are securely backed up in case something happens to your device. Cloud storage is readily available, including Google Drive on itel phones and TECNO Cloud on TECNO phones, with the added benefit that you get some cloud storage space for free. Options are there to upgrade to even more space, but it is enough for just your most important data that you want to keep safe.

Longer-lasting battery life for more usage

When loadshedding hits, or you don’t have the option of charging your phone, there are ways to keep it running for longer, without your battery dying. itel phones are designed to enhance battery life, while TECNO phones have three features to do this: Battery Saver, Battery Optimisation; and Adaptive Battery.

The first one extends battery life by turning off or restricting background activity, some visual effects and other features. The second one extends battery life by, in the background, choosing apps that can use more battery power and others that can’t depending on your usage of them. The third one gives smart power saving by detecting power usage of apps to improve battery efficiency and configures the battery usage.

Just because you don’t have the ability to charge your phone doesn’t mean that you have to go without using it.

Enjoy playing around with these new features, as well as the many other ones on your phone (availability of features will vary depending on make and model of phone). They are all designed to bring more convenience, ease of use, and functionality to users.

Availability

TECNO and itel devices are available from select retail partners, including Ackermans, Edgars, Game, JET, Mr Price, PEP, and TFG (availability varies per retailer, per store and per product, and while stocks last).

Keep an eye out for deals that are currently available for both TECNO and itel, which bring devices at an even better price. These include POP 7, SPARK GO 2023, SPARK 10C, SPARK 10 5G, and SPARK 10 Pro for TECNO, and the P40 for itel. To find out more news about these, follow TECNO’s Facebook page and itel’s Facebook page.