We’re big fans of the Sony Xperia XZ3, but it’s not perfect out of the box. You’ll want to spend some time customizing the look of your new phone, setting up shortcuts, and scheduling routines that suit you. We’ve got a few suggestions to help you get started right here. These are the key settings we think you should tweak.
Customize your home screen
Tap and hold on an empty space on your home screen and you can tweak how it looks. You can pick a wallpaper that suits you, choose widgets, and set shortcuts, but there’s more. Try out some different Transitions as they determine how the move between home screens is animated when you swipe left or right. You can also resize the grid to determine how many icons are displayed or dive into Home settings and dig deeper into specifics on how icons are displayed, and what you’d like to appear by default.
Set a Night Light schedule
Too much blue light before bed can make it harder to get to sleep, so most phones now come with an option to filter the blue light out of the display temporarily. The XZ3 is no exception as it offers a Night Light feature.
We recommend scheduling Night Light to turn on and off automatically, so you can forget about it. Go to Settings > Display > Advanced and scroll down to Night Light, then tap Schedule and choose specific hours or Turns on from sunset to sunrise. It’s available in your notification drawer as a quick settings tile so you can quickly turn it off if needed.
Customize your quick toggles
Pull down the notification shade and tap the little pencil icon at the bottom right to edit the quick toggles that appear. You can tap and drag any icon to add or remove it from the quick settings panel or to change the order they appear in.
Set up Stamina mode
You can extend your Xperia XZ3’s battery life by using Sony’s Stamina mode. Go to Settings > Battery > Stamina mode, toggle it on and choose when you want it to kick in automatically. We generally set it to switch on when our battery hits 15 percent.
Customize your Lock screen
Go to Settings > Lock screen & security > Lock screen preferences and you’ll find a treasure trove of handy options. You can decide what should wake the screen, how you want the Ambient display to work, set your own photos to pop up on the Ambient display, choose your preferred clock style, decide if music should display album art, and lots more.
Disable or uninstall unwanted apps
You don’t want apps you didn’t pick using up system resources or taking up space, so get rid of them immediately. Go to Settings > Apps & notifications and tap See all apps. If you see anything you don’t plan to use, then tap on it and select Uninstall or Disable.
Customize Side Sense or turn it off
Side Sense allows you to tap the side of your XZ3 and trigger a shortcut panel with frequently used apps, some quick toggles, and shortcuts for things like One-handed mode. If you look in Settings > Display > Advanced > Side Sense you’ll find the option to toggle it on and off.
If you want to keep it on, then we suggest tweaking the sensitivity to suit you and choosing which apps and games you do and don’t want to appear, all of which is an option in this Side Sense menu.
Set up data limits
You can set up alerts and hard data limits, so you know when your data allowance is close to running out and you can avoid exceeding it. Go to Settings > Network & internet > Data usage > Data warning & limit. You can choose your data cycle set the stages at which you want to receive a warning or even set up a hard limit to ensure you never go over your allowance.
Try Dynamic Vibration then turn it off
If you look in Settings > Sound, you’ll find the Dynamic Vibration option. Toggle it on and it will vibrate when you play some music, video, or games. It’s supposed to increase immersion, which we think works for games, but not so much for movies and music. If you tap the Volume up or Volume down button, then you’ll see a separate slider next to the volume slider for Dynamic Vibration, and you can tweak the level of intensity or switch it off completely.
Set up a Do Not Disturb schedule
You shouldn’t be responding to messages in the dead of night or wondering why your phone screen lit up as you’re drifting off to sleep, so set up some automatic downtime when your Xperia XZ3 won’t disturb you. Go to Settings > Sound > Do Not Disturb and look for Turn on automatically under Schedule. Pick the hours that suit you and enjoy the peace and quiet.
