Smartphones today have grown big in terms of display and processing speed. But the bigger size makes it difficult for many to operate the device in one hand.
So here are some free applications that certainly will help you get the best possible experience from your big screen devices also called as phablets.
Swiftkey
Swiftkey keyboard application is one of the most popular input applications on Google Play owing to its user friendly functionality and ton of customisations.
Featuring natural language technology, the App learns your typing style through SMS, emails and posts on social networks. Based on the way you respond and post text online, the smart engine suggests, to a high degree of accuracy, words that you might have meant to type.
The application senses your words and places them for reference or as suggestions as you type on the keyboard. The app also has a split keyboard version for phablet and big screen device owners and is certainly a boon for most of them. And for those who love single handed typing the portrait and landscape size of the keyboard can also be altered as per desire.
The best part of this keyboard is that it can be personalised based on the app you are using – Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, or even blogging apps. It is smart enough to learn your typing style for different services, suggests words, and also supports multiple languages that include Hindi, English and even Hinglish. The app though is paid, it comes with a free trial versions for those who love testing it before buying.
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Turn off the Screen
One of the key disadvantages of the big smartphones (called phablets) is the odd placement of the power off/ standby key; especially top-side placement is the worst. But not to worry as the ‘Turn off the Screen’ application is just what you require to control the standby function right form the device’s home screen.
This application comes with a neat widget that adds the standby/display turn off key right on the home screen. So the next time you need to turn off your device you will not have to use both your hands to hold and find the hardware key. Just a simple tap on the widget will lock your display and put it to standby.
The application is available for free.
VLC Media Player
VideoLAN is one of the most popular media players globally for computers and now the same is available for Android users as well. Though the app is in its beta build, the VideoLAN mobile team managed to add a good set of features such as network streaming, multiple audio/subtitles tracks selection, multi-core decoding, support for subtitles – external and embedded, and even Headphone control with gestures.
The app supports almost all the compressed and raw video and audio format in addition to support for artwork and automatic shuffle as well. The media scanning of the device takes less than 2 minutes to finish and the player sweetly categorizes each file for easy and simple access.
Big screen users can lock the player while in action to prevent accidental stops and also can use swipe gestures such as swipe form downwards to upwards on right hand side to increase volume or swiping form left to right on the lower half of the screen to skip the video and so on.
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Screebl Lite
Reducing display timeout on big screen devices can seriously help save battery life. But at times when we need to access longer emails or reading something on the ebook reader the shorter time-outs becomes a nuisance. 
Well there is an application that can help you to overcome this problem as well. Screebl Lite is the application that makes sure the device stays on as long as the user holds it in their hands. Well not something as advanced as the ‘Stay Awake’ feature on the Samsung Galaxy SIII but something much smarter and functioning too.
The application has a selection of angle that a user would generally hold the device on while reading something and it keeps the display awake as long as the device stays in that angle or range. The free application gives users control over brightness and angle in both landscape and portrait modes. There is also a paid version that offers the same support without advertisements as well but the free mode also is not annoying at all. Very legitimate user of advertisements through referral system only.
Speaker Boost
The bigger display size is surely a good thing as it allows users to share stuff such as videos and even video calling. And since the devices are big and the screen is too there is no need to keep the device up close to the subject and can be safely put up on the desk to do such things. But if the loudspeaker of the device is not powerful enough everything can go bad.
But not to worry as the Speaker Boost application is there to help the users in similar situations. The application can help increase the volume of the loudspeaker even more than what the stock volume control application supports.
The application comes with a safety feature that can prevent damage to the application and in addition to that the application can also set a safe limit for the loudspeaker so that it does not go over the threshold.
Now you can enjoy videos with a small group of users and boost the volume if the need be.