How to get the best out of your Redmi Note 8 Pro

Be careful with permissions at set up

As you initialise your phone and start to set it up, be very careful about the permissions you give. Avoid things like the carousel wallpaper and choose something static instead. Be careful about which apps you’re being encouraged to download and bring them on board yourself from the Play Store. This is because you will encounter prompts and notifications which can get annoying. Setting up carefully will minimise the nuisance.

Control notifications

As you start to get notifications in the drop down on the home screen, swipe to the left to see each one’s setting and turn it off permanently if you don’t want to see more of them. If you do, explore what priority you would like to give them. A little bit of work in the beginning will save you much irritation as you begin to use the phone everyday.

Go macro

This phone’s camera has a lens for you to close in on an interesting object and take a photo. Bugs are always a favourite, as are the centre of flowers or drops of water on a leaf. You’ll find the macro lens on the top row in the camera app: it’s the little flower icon. But get into some good daylight for this as it’s really only a 2-megapixel lens and can only do so much. In low light the image will have too much grain and muddiness.

Don’t miss the effects

Spend some time exploring the camera app as there are little buttons here and there with plenty of interesting options. In Portrait mode, for example, look at the button on the left and you’ll find a number of effects that add an interesting touch to images of faces. One of them is a nice light leak in rainbow colours.

Get your own watermark

If you’re a proud phone photographer you may want to use your own watermark on photos instead of the default. Look for the three lines on the top right in the camera app. Tap in and find Settings. Scroll to see Watermark. You’ll find an option to enter the text for your own customised watermark which you can do to add a little flair to your photos.

Ask me anything

One unique thing about the Redmi Note 8 Pro is that you can wake up with device with either an OK Google or an Alexa. Signing into Google happens at setup so you don’t need to make any additional settings to start using the Google Assistant. But Alexa is of course connected to your Amazon account which you will be prompted to enter.

Pretty soon you’ll notice that Alexa only wakes the phone and doesn’t respond if you have it password or fingerprint locked. To enable this you go to Settings, look for the Alexa tab and click to allow responses. after this one-time selection, you can ask either Google or Alexa to respond to questions even if the screen is off.

For certain things such as getting the assistants to read your messages, naturally you will need to unlock your phone else anyone passing by could just call out and do so.

Uninstall unwanted apps

Xiaomi’s interface comes with a bunch of pre-loaded apps and you may not want all of them. Some, usually the ones not created by Xiaomi, can’t be uninstalled, but third party ones can. However, the option to uninstall is a little hidden. You should be seeing it when you long-press on the app;s icon, but you don’t. Tap on App Info from the long-press menu. Look at the bottom of the screen. That’s where you’ll find the option to uninstall.

Go dark

Dark mode

This year much has been made of ‘Dark Mode’ on phones. It’s easier on the eyes to see white text on a black background because there’s less blue-white glare hitting your eyes. To enable it on this phone, go to Display in Settings and you’ll see Dark Mode straight off. This isn’t going to save much battery because the device’s LCD screen isn’t impacted by going dark, but it will be more restful and more visible in certain circumstances as well as less annoying to those around you.

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