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Hi,

Android has covered the most of Mobile market these days as local manufacturers as well as big brands has emerged and created product in cheaper price. In last few years Micromax, an Indian mobile brand has taken over local markets of Android as they have produced Mobiles with varieties of hardware combination within affordable price. To compete in market and to maintain their dominance, International brands like Samsung, Motorola has also produced affordable Android devices with quality packed in Hardware and latest software.

As, we all know, Android is a great Mobile Operating System maintained by Google as Open source project. As data taken from IDC.com, we can clearly see, Market share of Android is almost 78%, which means almost 78 people out of 100 who carry mobile use Android as their Mobile Operating System.

As being this much popular and expensive too, some of Android devices from big Brands and with latest hardware, software costs a lot for a normal person. To compete with other or to show off, we just buy them but to secure them is a hard job. As If device is lost, we loose privacy to our data, saved data on device as well as huge money loss too. So we have tried to discuss some of first steps to do with your Android device. Lets have a look at First 5 things to do with Android.

1. Get a data pack: First most  important thing is to get a data pack in your Android device. Without getting a data pack, most of below settings are useless and you can not consider your device being fully utilized. We always recommend you to get a unlimited plan of data even that is of slower connectivity (2G) in case of south Asia and never turn off, because that is sufficient enough to locate your device when lost or upload some of important setting and files (contacts) to Google server.
2. Connect with Google account: This is the first step and we consider it as very important. However, you are pushing your data to Google, this may concerned to your privacy but to enable all features of Android, it is must enable setting. You must link your device to a valid Google account. This enables your device to Sync settings, Application Data, Application Installation history and many more settings. If you have not connected Google Account till, you can add by following below settings path.
   [box type=”info” align=”aligncenter” class=”” width=””]Settings > Accounts > Add New > Google[/box]
3. Enable Location History: Most of Android devices has GPS (Global Positioning System) device and can give your exact location based on Latitude & Longitude from satellites. Which is very much accurate, as well as, these device take help of Mobile Telecom tower which is currently in use and WiFi being used at current time. This feature is helpful when you lost your device. If you have enabled Location History and Location access, you can see the current location from web view of Google Play website or Google Maps. This needs Mobile Data or Internet working on mobile to push data to Cloud server.
   [box type=”info” align=”aligncenter” class=”” width=””]Settings > Location[/box]
4. Register with Google Play and enable Device Administrator: As we have enabled Data Pack and put a Google Account, now the most important feature for Securing your device comes to a setting. This setting is called Device Administrator and available by following below path. You can Ring, Locate on Map or Erase all data on phone using Google Play website from your computer’s web browser. Open Google Play from app list and accept Terms and Conditions to proceed to get all important updates and allow access to your account.
   [box type=”info” align=”aligncenter” class=”” width=””]Settings > Security > Device administrators[/box]
5. Keep updating operating system to latest available patches: As you know, every computer program gets problem, similarly Android OS also got problems and security holes. These security loopholes are either reported by User community or Google’s Android developer team themselves. As being Open Source, Google publishes patches known as System Updates to respiratory. It becomes the duty of Device manufacturer to provide timely update on regular basis to protect your privacy and data as well as to enhance security.
   [box type=”info” align=”aligncenter” class=”” width=””]Settings > About Phone > System Updates[/box]

Please note, about settings path are taken from nearly Stock Android on Motorola Moto G running Android L (version 5.0.2). Based on your OS version and customizations by Manufacturer (UI change), setting path may relatively change. Also some feature like Device Administrator are not available in older versions of Android.

Thanks to IDC for the market share chart. This chart is used using Embed feature provided in their website.

Thanks for reading. We will be back with few other articles on Android series. Keep reading.