Huawei P10 Lite EMUI 5.1 tips, tricks and hidden features: The P10 Lite may not look like its namesake’s more powerful offerings (the P10 and P10 Plus) but its Emotion UI 5.1-based user experience offers many of the same benefits. Here’s how to find and use some of its most useful abilities.
Read next: Huawei P10 Lite vs P10 vs P10 Plus: What’s the difference?
Huawei P10 Lite EMUI 5.1 tips, tricks and hidden features: Customising your home screens
Those already familiar with Android will likely know that pressing and holding on a blank area of one of your homescreens typically lets you add apps, widgets, change wallpapers and more.
In the case of the P10 Lite, you can also alter transition animations between different desktops, as well as scale the grid size, toggle badge icons for notifications and decide whether it continuously loops or not by jumping into the dedicated homescreen settings menu in the bottom right.
Huawei P10 Lite EMUI 5.1 tips, tricks and hidden features: Show/hide the apps drawer
One of the oldest gripes users had with early iterations of Emotion UI was its decision to drop stock Android’s apps drawer completely, forcing all of your apps to live on one of your homscreens, iOS-style.
Thankfully the P10 Lite gives you the option to add or remove the apps drawer. By default, it’s switched off but you’ll find the option to enable it again from within the Home Screen Style section of the Settings menu, where you can switch from ‘standard’ to ‘drawer’ to bring it back.
Read next: Huawei P10 and P10 Plus tips, tricks and best EMUI 5.1 hidden features
Huawei P10 Lite EMUI 5.1 tips, tricks and hidden features: One-handed use
Huawei’s devices have offered one-handed functionality for generations but for some reason, this feature is disabled on the P10 Lite out-the-box.
To switch it back on, open the Settings menu, scroll to the Smart Assistance sub-menu and tap on the One-handed UI option. Mini Screen View scales the entire interface when you swipe across the navigation keys (with a tap outside the interface area to scale it back up again) whilst Shifting Keyboard justifies the entire typing area to one side of the screen or the other.
Some may also find the Floating Dock useful, found in the Smart Assistance menu under System Control.
Huawei P10 Lite EMUI 5.1 tips, tricks and hidden features: Better readability in dark or bright conditions
The Eye Comfort feature alters the colour temperature of the P10 Lite’s display to allow for more comfortable viewing in darker, dingier environments. This feature can be controlled manually under the Display section of the Settings menu, where you have the option to alter the colour temperature further and add scheduled start and end times for when the feature should kick in and when it should disable itself.
What’s more, you can add an Eye Comfort toggle to the P10 Lite’s quick-settings in the notifications shade by tapping the pencil icon and dragging its icon onto the lineup of active settings.
As for brighter conditions, the Increase Readability Under Sunlight Toggle in the phone’s Display settings will ensure your P10 Lite boosts its maximum screen brightness when the sun’s rays pose a threat to visibility.
Huawei P10 Lite EMUI 5.1 tips, tricks and hidden features: Fingerprint sensor gestures
The rear-mounted fingerprint sensor doesn’t just unlock your phone, it can be used to pull off a few extra features too. Once you’ve registered a fingerprint dive into the Fingerprint ID section of the Settings menu.
There you’ll find all manner of options that you can toggle on or off including the ability to swipe down in order to summon the notifications panel and press and hold to snap a selfie when using the camera. Super useful stuff.
Huawei P10 Lite EMUI 5.1 tips, tricks and hidden features: How to split-screen multitask
Some Huawei phones have offered up split-screen multitasking for some time but with Android Nougat, on which Emotion UI is running in the case of the P10 Lite, the functionality is now native.
You can run two apps simultaneously one of two ways. Huawei’s knuckle mode is a hit-and-miss method that sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t but it’s there if you want to use it. Simply drag your knuckle across the centre of the screen when in an app to trace a blue line (indicating that knuckle mode is working), at which point the screen will split and you be able to pick any other open applications to run alongside it.
Note: If knuckle mode doesn’t appear to be working head to the Smart Assistance sub-menu in the Settings menu and make sure Split-screen gesture is turned on under the Motion Control section.
Alternatively, press and hold the app switcher key when in an app to bring up the same split-screen interface. You can also drag the blue bar to alter how much of the screen each application takes up.
Huawei P10 Lite EMUI 5.1 tips, tricks and hidden features: Power saving
The 3000mAh battery inside the P10 Lite should be good to see you through to almost two days of use (depending on usage) but you can stretch longevity even further by leveraging the phone’s Smart Power-Saving 5.0 skill set.
Under Battery in the Settings menu, you’ll find three important toggles: Power Saving Mode gives you a few extra hours of juice by minimising background app activity, reducing visual effects and transitions and turning off background email synchronisation.
Ultra Power Saving alters the interface to a simple black affair with low screen brightness and access to only six apps of your choosing, whilst the Low-Resolution Power Saving toggle drops the resolution of the interface to draw less power in day-to-day use.
