Android phones are inherently connected.  Google allows for excellent contact management, syncing across devices and platforms, and chock full 'o options.  Sometimes, the easy ones can get lost in the shuffle -- like marking a contact as a favorite, and adding it to your "Favorites" (or starred in Android) group for easy access.  Here's a quick tip that can alleviate a lot of searching for someone's email address or phone number.

• Open your contacts application
• Navigate to the tab that shows all your contacts, and search for the one you'd like to favorite
• Notice the star (in our example it's circled in red in the upper left)
• When the star is active, that contacts is in your "Favorites" group

Un-favoriting someone is just as easy, make sure they aren't starred.  The real beauty is how this works on your Android phone.  Every OEM skin is a little different (our example is LG's Optimus UI v2), but you'll be able to view individual groups in your contacts application settings.  Once you have the people you talk to the most favorited (or starred), you'll be able to view them all in the "Favorites" group.  Depending on your Android version, this group will be called "Favorites" or "Starred in Android."  Select to display that group, and you have the short list and a lot less typing and searching.  Double pro-tip bonus round -- many OEM dialers and SMS apps also will display the Favorites group, making things even easier.

Here's one that should be a little simpler than it is. In a basic e-mail in the most recent version of the gmail app, the options to reply all and forward e-mails are somewhat hidden. You've got top-level access to star an e-mail (which we find ourselves accidentally hitting far too often) or to replay to the original sender.

To reply to everyone in the e-mail, or to forward the e-mail, you'll need to first hit the little triangle button that we've highlighted above. Then you'll have options to reply all or forward.

This tip is one that seems counter-intuitive, but you can save a lot of wear and tear on your Android phone's battery if you tell it to keep the Wifi radio turned on and connected while the phone is sleeping.  Your phone needs a lot of juice to keep pinging those cell towers, and even more to transmit data to and from them.  Wifi radios use much less power because of their design, and they don't have to keep searching for a better access point.  It's the way cellular data communication was designed, and it's a necessary evil.

But what if you're spending all day (or all evening) in one place, connected to Wifi?  If you tell your phone to shut off Wifi when idle, it bounces back to cellular data (be it 2G, 3G, or 4G) and starts sucking down the electrons again when the screen shuts off.  That's no good, and easy to fix:

• Open the advanced Wifi settings by pressing the menu button, then Settings, Wireless & networks, Wi-Fi settings, and tapping the menu button again.  You'll have a choice to either Scan, or go Advanced -- go Advanced.
• Tap the Wi-Fi sleep policy entry, and you'll get a pop up dialog with the choices you see in the picture above.  Choose Never.

Now even when your phone goes into standby mode, you'll stay connected to Wifi and be able to get mail and messages without turning the cell radio back on and trouncing your battery life.  And for the times when you're not in an area with a Wifi connection, just shut Wifi off, either through the menu or with a handy toggle widget.  Your battery will thank you for it.

A little headache in Gmail is that embedded images don't show up by default. That actually makes sense, as that can be data-intensive. Until recently, there was no way to force images to always load. But Gmail recently updated so that you can tell it to always display images from a particular sender. Just look for the button you see highlighted above.

You can also clear the list of senders that will automatically show images. Just go to Menu>More>Settings>General Preferences>Clear "Show pictures" and you can reset the list.

One of the best perks of having an Android phone is Google Maps and free turn by turn navigation for Android.  A part of Google Maps that we often forget about is the Labs section.  In Google's own words "Labs is a testing ground for experimental features that aren't quite ready for primetime.  They may change, break or disappear at any time."  They are also pretty darn cool, offering things like a map scale bar to estimate distance, or a measuring tool to actually measure it, and of course the pre-caching of an area we've talked about before.

Enabling any of these is easy.  Open the Maps application on your phone, hit the menu button, then tap "More."  Choose "Labs" from the top of the list.  Tap on any of the Labs features to toggle it on and off. 

Sometimes, your Android phone is the best (or only) way to get your computer on the Internet.  Since version 2.2, native tethering has been built into Android, and as long as the folks that made your phone or your carrier haven't removed it, it's a great way to get online.  And it's easy, too!

Open the settings by tapping the menu button, then choosing Settings, Wireless & networks, then Tethering & portable hotspot.  You'll see what's in the picture above, and have two choices here -- do it over a wire or turn your phone into a wireless hotspot.  Just choosing "Portable Wi-Fi hotspot" will probably get you right up and running, but you'll be using an open and unsecured network.  You can change the security method in "Portable Wi-Fi hotspot settings" to WPA2 PSK (a fancy way of saying you'll need a password to use my phone for Internet), and you really should.  You can also change the network name if AndroidAP just doesn't do it for you.  On a computer, you connect just like you would any other Wifi router. 

If you plug your phone's USB connection into your computer, you'll also have the option to use it as a USB modem.  This is even easier than using the hotspot feature, provided you have installed the drivers for your phone (see the forums for help with that).  Just check the box, and your computer will configure itself to use your phone as a network device.  I've tested this extensively on both Windows 7 and Linux, and often use it when I'm sitting somewhere out of range of my own wireless router.  The bonus of using a USB connection is that it won't drain your battery -- it's plugged in!

Now we have to mention two things here -- these instructions stand for stock Android.  Your phone may have things laid out a little differently for the USB modem settings, and may not even have these settings at all.  And there's the fact that your carrier will likely want to charge you for tethering.  We're not going to debate that issue, but we do want to advise you to check with your cell provider about any fees or restrictions before you try this one.

Performing a factory data reset can be useful. Maybe you're going to sell your phone or send it back in for warranty work. It's simple to do. Here's how. Go to Settings. then Privacy, then Factory data reset. It will ask you to confirm that you really want to do it. After you confirm it there's no turning back. Once it's done it's done.

Where the Factory data reset button appears may vary slightly from one manufacturer to another. These instructions should work for a vanilla build of Android, such as the T-Mobile G2X, but you may have to investigate the settings a bit to find it on a phone with a manufacturer skin.  The rest of the process will be the same.

Also not that some phones (Motorola, particularly) also give you the option to wipe any extra internal storage as well as the storage card.

Ever wonder what it is that's draining your battery? Is it a rogue app, or are you just using your phone a lot? Let's find out. There are a couple of easy ways to see what's been using your battery. The first is to use Android's built-in battery reporting. Press the menu button, then go to Settings, then About Phone. There you'll find battery stats, and you can break things down even further from there.

Another popular way to check your battery usage is with the Spare Parts application. It's not as pretty as Android's built-in battery stats, but it gets the job done, too, and throws in a slew of other settings.

Another one of those things that's just too hard to get to, and buried about three levels deep in Android's settings, is manually closing an app that may be stuck or misbehaving.  It happens, even with the most well designed applications, and knowing how it's done can save you the trouble of a reboot.  Just tap the Menu key, then Settings, Applications, and find the app in the list you see.  Tap it's entry and you'll see something similar to the above.  Tap the "Force Stop" button, acknowledge the warning, and the app will close.

It's not something you want to do randomly, but times when you need it, it's nice to be able to.