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Top 6 Settings to Change on the DROID Turbo

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In late 2014 the Motorola DROID Turbo was announced and quickly released as one of the best smartphones of the year. It has tons to offer including a brilliant 5.2-inch Quad-HD display and a huge battery, not to mention nearly stock Android 4.4 KitKat, but here we’ll detail a few settings you’ll want to change right away.

Hardware wise, there are a lot of reasons to get the DROID Turbo instead of a Samsung Galaxy S5 or Apple iPhone, and there are an array of features and settings on the software side that make the phone pretty impressive too. Below are six or so of the top settings you should change on your device.

Read: DROID Turbo Setup Guide: 5 Steps to Get Started

Whether you already have one or just got a DROID Turbo, these are some settings you can change right away to improve the experience, get better battery life, and just enjoy the phone to its fullest. Customizing it to recognize your voice for hands-free usage, increasing the font size and more. Check it all out below.

Droid Turbo Review -8

Before we start it’s worth mentioning our DROID Turbo is running stock Android 4.4 KitKat just like it comes out of the box. Soon it will be updated to Android 5.0 Lollipop and while most of these will remain the same, some of these options will be slightly different, or in new locations. Android 5.0 doesn’t change much, aside from visuals and add more features, but it was worth mentioning.

That said, enjoy everything your DROID Turbo has to offer, take pictures with the stunning 20 megapixel camera, and enjoy all-day battery life with the huge class-leading 3,900 mAh battery. With that, these are some settings you may want to explore and change.

Font Size

The DROID Turbo has a large 5.2-inch display, but the high 2560 x 1440 quad-hd resolution means some of the text may be too small for some. Every line, every graphic is crisp and clear. Still, there are some people who are going to find the writing on its screen too small. For those people, there’s a way to change the font size in a matter of seconds.

Turbo-font

Go to the Settings app inside the app browser, or swipe down with two fingers from the top and tap the gear-shaped settings menu. Then tap Display. Now look for and tap on the Fonts option. There are four different sizes to choose from: Small, Normal which is the default, Large and Huge. Most use normal, but Large may better suit your needs.

Default Text Messenger App

With Android 4.4 KitKat Google made Hangouts the default messenger app for smartphones, but Motorola and Verizon devices use something different. The DROID Turbo has Motorola’s own Messenger+ app, and if you want something different you can easily change this.

To do so, go the Settings app and tap More. Then Tap Default SMS app. In here you’ll see whatever is installed, most likely just the red (stock) Messenger+ app and Google Hangouts. Personally I use Textra SMS, but try anything you want if the stock app isn’t quite your favorite.

Turbo-sms

That’s all you have to do, and now your stock messages will all be handled by the new app, and not the old. This disables the old SMS (text) app, and you won’t receive duplicate notifications on incoming messages like Android smartphones of old. This is a much better way of handling things.

Add a Password or Pin to Lockscreen

Google has a good setup guide when you first get your smartphone, but they don’t show or instruct you to add a password, pin, or patten to secure your lockscreen. This means if lost or stolen anyone can access your smartphone, which is our entire lives for most people. Head into settings and add a pin or password to secure your device.

Turbo-lockscreen

Head into the Settings app and tap Security & lockscreen, then select Screen Lock. From here you can set slide to unlock (default), Face Unlock, Pattern, PIN, or even an actual password. Once you set one, you can then control the timeout period that controls how long after the device is turned off before it asks again. I don’t want to put in my pin every time I turn on the phone, so mines set to 5 minutes.

Enable Attentive Display

One extremely neat feature on the DROID Turbo and Moto X is something called Attentive Display. This essentially knows when you’re looking at the screen and will keep it on while you’re looking, then dim and eventually turn it off when you look away.

Attentive-display-620x364

This will ignore the standard Display > Sleep Timer setting, but can make using the device easier, and save battery life. Tap on Display, then Attentive Display. Now tap the Battery Saver mode option.

Read: How to Use Attentive Display on the DROID Turbo

This is actually one of my favorite features, as I don’t like my screen on very long to keep battery life at its best, and this will dim and turn off the display whenever your not looking to preserve that all-important battery life.

Customize Moto Voice

Open the Settings app, and tap on Moto. Then tap Voice in the bottom-left corner of your screen. All four Moto options are worth exploring, but voice is one of our favorites.

Turbo-Moto-Voice

From here you can customize the launch phrase of your Turbo. You can say “Ok, My Moto” Call Best Buy” and it will do all of this with the screen off. It learns your voice, and can to tons of useful things. Turn on voice pin to unlock in case you give your phone a command it can’t do from behind the lock screen and more. Moto Voice is one of those unique features only the Motorola offers Android users, even if it uses Google Now to do most of the work.

Disable Emergency Broadcast Alerts

Last but not least is one of those things you won’t need to worry about often, but when it happens it’s extremely irritating. This is emergency broadcast alerts. Out of nowhere your phone will start blaring an alarm at full volume, no matter what your settings are set to. This usually is for severe weather alerts, Amber alerts, or other Emergency broadcasts your city or state send out.

I keep a few on just in case, but these are extremely loud and very obnoxious, so lets turn some of the less important ones off.

Turbo-alerts

Open your app tray and find the Verizon emergency app called Emergency Alerts and tap on it to open the app. Then tap the three dots at the top and select Settings. From here simply uncheck all that you don’t want as I’ve done above. I leave Extreme alerts enabled, but turn off the rest so my phone doesn’t scare me to death at random moments, day or night. Turn off vibrate too, because it vibrates loud, a lot, and at full power.

Conclusion

Of course there are tons of other options, settings, features, and useful things you can do with your Motorola DROID Turbo. Check out our full DROID Turbo review for more details, then give any of the above settings a try to get a better experience. When Android 5.0 Lollipop arrives check out Smart Lock, Do Not Disturb Notification options, and a few other things that are new to Android 5.0 Lollipop.

Overall the DROID Turbo is an excellent device, but each user have different wants and needs so in the end you’ll need to play around in settings to see and find what works best for you. Enjoy!

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. Dave

    06/08/2015 at 1:46 pm

    Thank You for taking the time to enlighten a new Droid Turbo user.

  2. Kymberle Cheney

    08/16/2015 at 1:55 pm

    Like you I absolutely love my new droid turbo but I’m having problems with my txt reading and answering feature. It’s not responding consistently to me saying yes when I want it to read my txt or when I want it to respond with my answer to a txt using the vocal command. Can you tell me what I’m doing wrong as this is one of my favorite features on my phone..
    Thank you,
    Kymberle C.

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    09/21/2015 at 8:41 am

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  4. Susan

    02/08/2016 at 11:57 am

    I have set the unlock feature to a pattern; however even while the phone is locked the power off button still works! So when phone is in my pocket and the seatbelt or other sitting position hikds the power button the phone powers off. Is there a way to require the pattern before powering off? This would eliminate my problem.

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