Galaxy S II: The Missing Manual

The Four Keys

MOST OF THE TIME you use your Galaxy S II, you’ll be tapping on virtual buttons on the keyboard. But down at the bottom of the Galaxy S II, there are four real keys—physical things that you actually push. From left to right, here’s what they do:

Menu Key

This key opens up a menu that lets you perform some kind of task or customization related to what you’re currently doing. In geek-speak, it’s context sensitive, which is a fancy way of saying that the menu that appears changes according to what you’re doing on your phone when you touch the button. So if you’re looking at your contacts, for example, you’ll be able to do things like adding a contact, displaying only a certain group of contacts, backing up your contacts, and so on. If you’re looking at your calendar, you’ll be able to create a new event, change the time period that shows in your calendar, and other similar options.

When you’re at the Home screen and you press the Menu key, here’s the menu that appears, and what you can do with each command:

• Add. Lets you add a shortcut to your Home screen—an icon that when tapped launches an app, opens a file, and so on. You can add pre-built widgets (apps or little gadgets that do things like toggle Flight mode on and off), shortcuts to actions like searching for contacts, and shortcuts to folders. You can also change your wallpaper. Just tap the action you want to take, and ...