Samsung’s brand new flagship smartphones – the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus – are enjoying a lot of attention, with pre-orders and sales skyrocketing, and almost everyone giving them highly positive reviews. The smartphones bring a ton of great features, and while a lot of them are fairly obvious, there are some hidden features and tricks that aren’t that obvious. So, if you have bought (or are planning to buy) the Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus and want to know about the great but hidden features they offer, here are 10 Cool Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+ Tips and Tricks you should know about:
1. Use Separate App Sounds
- If you like listening to music on your Bluetooth speakers at full blast, chances are you’d not want an incoming call, or text message to blast its sound through your Bluetooth speakers. But that’s how it has always been… until now. With the S8 and S8 Plus, Samsung offers what’s called “Separate App Sounds”. The feature allows you to make your smartphone play sounds for specific apps through a specific output only, and all the other sounds are played through the device.
- You can find and enable this feature by going to “Settings -> Sounds and Vibration“, and then “Separate App Sounds“.
- Here, you can simply enable the toggle, and then choose what apps should play their sounds through which audio output.
2. Selfie Camera-Say Cheese!
The Galaxy S8 features a wide range of commands which can be used to click a picture. It takes commands as simple as “Cheese,” “Smile,” or “Capture”.
Especially handy for the selfie savvy folks, as it’ll give you the perfect reason to pose and smile.
To enable this mode, head over to settings and toggle the voice control switch to On.
3. Pin Anything to the Always On Display
The Always on Display on the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus is really great, and while I would’ve preferred that notifications didn’t turn into small circular icons, there are things about the Always on Display that are really great. One such feature allows users to pin almost anything they want to the Always on Display. This could be an image, or a note taken in Google Keep, etc. You can even pin YouTube videos to the Always on Display, but they only show up as the URL. To pin, for example, a note to the Always on Display, you can just follow the steps given below:
- Launch Google Keep, and select the note you want to pin. Then, tap on the three dot menu button on the top-right, and tap on “Send“.
- From the screen that slides up, select “Always on Display“, and then tap on “Pin to Always on Display“.
The note will be pinned to your S8 or S8 Plus’ Always on Display and you’ll be able to access it with a quick double tap. This can prove extremely useful for reminders, and shopping lists, as you’ll be able to access them without having to unlock your phone.
4. Hide Apps
Hiding apps is not something that everyone uses, but it’s nice to have the feature in case you need to use it. Fortunately, with the S8 and S8 Plus, you will not have to rely on third party app lockers that seem a little shady, or are unreliable. To hide apps on your S8 or S8 Plus smartphone, just follow the steps given below:
- Swipe up from the home screen to open the App Drawer, and then tap on the three dot menu button on the top right. Here, tap on “Settings”
- Here, tap on “Hide Apps“. You can then simply select the apps you wish to hide, and tap on “Apply”.
5. Rear Camera Pro Mode
If you’re bored by the conventional filters and modes, you can choose to go pro and take a picture the traditional way. Like most of the manual camera apps, you’ll get the option to add in the focus manually, change the ISO levels, etc.
And yeah, if you want to slap in a filter as well, that option is also there.
6. Remove Icon Frames
The S8 and S8 Plus both use squircle icons all over the user interface. This means that apps that do not have squircle icons, get their icons resized and fit into white squircles to match the theme of the rest of the phone. While this does look uniform, it tends to make the icons look bad. So, if you want your phone to ignore squircle icons, and use all the normal icons instead.
- To do this, you can simply head on over to Settings -> Display -> Icon Frames.
- Here, select “icons only“, and tap on “Done”. The S8 will switch over from using squircle icons with white frames to normal app icons instead.
7. Secure Folder
Secure Folder is a new feature that Samsung added to the S8 and S8 Plus. With Secure Folder, you can keep your personal data for compatible apps, safe inside a secure folder that can only be accessed by entering the PIN, scanning your fingerprint, or through the iris scanner. This is awesome because, for the same app, you can basically create two separate spaces, one that anyone with access to your phone can see, and another inside the Secure Folder. So, if you take pictures with the camera app inside the secure folder, they will be saved to the Gallery, but won’t be visible outside the secure folder.
Also, if you have pictures in your gallery that you want to secure, you can move them from the regular gallery to the one inside the Secure Folder, effectively protecting them from unauthorized access.
8. Edit Edge Panels and Add More
The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus come with curved screens, and there is no flat screen option left anymore. So, even if you didn’t like the curved screen design, and you haven’t been a user of edge panels, it’s high time that you begin to embrace it. Edge panels are actually quite useful, provided you set them up right. To edit Edge Panels, and to add more panels, you can follow the steps below:
- Go to Settings -> Display -> Edge Screen. Here, tap on “Edge panels“.
- In the screen that opens, you can easily enable or disable the pre-loaded Edge panels that come with the S8 and S8 Plus. Also, if you want to find out some more cool Edge panels, you can do so by simply tapping on the “Download” button on the top right.
Once you have set up Edge panels on your S8 or S8 Plus, you’ll figure out that they actually are quite useful, and really do make it easier to perform a whole lot of operations on your smartphone.
9. Secure your phone with fingerprints, iris scanning or facial recognition
You’ve got plenty of choices when it comes to keeping the Galaxy S8 safe: fingerprint scanning, facial recognition, and iris scanning, on top of the usual onscreen passwords, PINs and patterns. You could just opt for one of these, but we’ve found that a combination is much more convenient.
Add a password by going to Settings -> Lock screen and Security, and registering your face, fingerprint and iris. Each one has its own sub-menu on this screen. You’ll also need to set a PIN, password or pattern before you can use biometrics, and you can only use one of either facial or iris scanning at once.
With a registered fingerprint, onscreen password and either iris or facial scanning enabled, you’ll have three ways to quickly unlock your phone.
10. Enable Dual Audio for Bluetooth Devices
The S8 and S8 Plus are the first smartphones in the market with support for Bluetooth 5.0, and among it’s various cool features, one that really stands out is the fact that with Bluetooth 5.0, the S8 and S8 Plus can stream music to two Bluetooth devices simultaneously. This is just awesome! There may be a slight lag between the two devices, but what matters is that two people can simultaneously enjoy wireless music over Bluetooth now.
- To enable Dual Audio for Bluetooth devices in the S8 and S8 Plus, simply head over to “Settings -> Connections -> Bluetooth“.
- Make sure that Bluetooth is on, and then tap on the three dot menu button. Here tap on “Dual Audio“. You can then enable Dual Audio, and enjoy your music on two Bluetooth devices at the same time.
Ready to Try These Galaxy S8 Tricks and Hidden Features?
You can use these tricks and hidden features to enhance the way you use your brand new smartphone, and do a lot of cool things with it. You can play games in a more immersive environment with better frame rates, you can set different sounds to play out of different outputs, and you can listen to music over two Bluetooth devices at the same time. There is a lot that the S8 and S8 Plus are capable of, and these 15 tricks and hidden features are just the ones that I felt were worth sharing. However, if you know of any Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus tricks that you think we should include in this article, do let us know about them in the comments section below.
