There’s many good reasons that Gmail is now the most popular email provider in the world. It’s free, it automatically threads conversations, it has excellent spam filters, it has an easy to use interface, you get one almost by default if you have an Android because you need a Google account, it has built in translation, etc etc.

Most people, however, don’t use the full potential of what Gmail can do. If you set up the correct filters and labels your email will be better organised, you can shove most of the crud out of the way, and get your attention back to the emails you actually want to read. The thing is, this isn’t very hard to do at …

The Nexus 4, being the fourth iteration Nexus phone certainly lives up to the brand’s reputation. Remember that a Nexus phone means the latest firmware through Google. But for the enthusiasts out there (like me), a phone’s potential must be pushed.

Fortunately Google had the right idea of releasing their own phones packing pure Android. If you are familiar with earlier Nexus devices, root access can be achieved through terminal/command prompt using fastboot, etc. This is true for the Nexus 4, however there is a better and easier alternative.

XDA member, Mark Skippen (mskip) has put together a ‘toolkit’ that packs A LOT of features, including root.

Here are just some of the features:

• Install drivers
• Root
• Full NANDROID backup

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Travelling is a traumatic experience for your phone. Suddenly everything’s changed! You generally won’t have any mobile Internet connection (gasp!) and often won’t have any phone connection at all (double gasp!). Even if you do have these things, you will want to use them as little as possible, as roaming fees are usually expensive. Despite this you’ll generally be relying on your phone more than usual, because frankly you’ll have no idea where you are and so will cling to your phone like the blankie you had when you were 3. Not only this, but your ability to get to a power point to charge your phone is likely to be sporadic (especially if you take to staying in hostels …

When Josh asked me if I was interested in writing for Android Australia I was immediately keen. I’ve been an Android fanatic for a while now and am known among many of my friends as a go-to-guy for phone/tablet advice, as long as you don’t want to buy Apple that is. The problem then was to figure out what to write first, I wanted it to be more than just a standard news piece, it’s my opening impression on this site after-all.

Therefore I would like to introduce you to my Android launcher round-up (you may all cheer now)!! For many Android users, the launcher is among the first apps to go on a new phone, but for many others …

Android 4.0 has great functionality, design format and some very cool tools and gestures, making it easily the most stylish and smoothly running Android operating system of all time. But I didn’t really need to tell you guys that. However, one of the operating system’s most talked about features can now be used on the Samsung galaxy S 1 and 2.

The Facial recognition Unlock Feature gives the owner of the phone the ability to unlock their phone just by quickly looking directly at the front camera. Very cool in principle, but the system is a little flawed. Using a picture of yourself will also unlock your phone, giving anyone with a photo of you the ability to unlock …