Samsung Galaxy S20 tips and tricks: Useful Features

Getting a new Samsung Galaxy S20 requires that you fully understand how to operate it to make the best use of it because the Galaxy S20 is manufactured with some exciting and exceptional features that enable good user-friendliness. The Samsung Galaxy S20 tips and tricks are required to be known by a new user of the phone to enable a hitch-free use. To this effect, this article has provided some useful Samsung Galaxy S20 tips and tricks to help users of the phone out.

Samsung Galaxy S20 tips and tricks

Customization of the side key

The side key/power button on the Samsung Galaxy S20 does not perform the regular function of switching the phone on and off as other smartphone does. If this button is pressed and held down on the Galaxy S20, it opens up Bixby by default, also if you double-press the button the camera app will be opened.

To change the operation of this button for on/off function or for any other function, navigate to Settings of your Samsung Galaxy S20 device, tap on Advanced Features, and then Side key. Under the Side key, change the Press and hold the option to Power off.

You can also customize what happens when you double-press the side key from the list of options available there such as selecting an app or launching Bixby.

Navigation Gesture

You can enable navigation gestures on Samsung Galaxy S20 to access your home button, recent button, and a back button if you don’t want to use the navigation soft keys. To enable navigation gesture, go to Settings of your Samsung Galaxy S20 device, search for navigation type, and select Full-screen gestures. There are two options available here on how you may want the navigation gesture to work; the first is Swipe from the bottom and the second option is Swipe from sides and bottom. The Swipe from sides and bottom option mode of operation is as follows:

• Home: Swipe up from the bottom edge of the phone screen.
• Back: Swipe from the side to the center of the phone screen.
• Recent: Swipe up from the bottom edge and keep your finger still on the phone screen.

Using this feature might take a bit long to be adapted to at first especially if you have never used a phone with navigation gesture but you will get accustomed to it within a short period.

Linking phone to Windows PC

One Samsung Galaxy S20 tip and trick a user most know is the “Link to Windows“ feature that will enable the user to send and receive texts from a Windows PC, mirror the phone’s screen on the PC, make or receive calls on the PC, etc.

Although this feature is also enabled on some other Samsung devices but what makes that of S20 exceptional is the universal copy or paste feature the owner of the phone enjoys. This implies that the user can easily paste a clipboard content of his/her PC on the Samsung Galaxy S20 or vice versa.

One-handed mode

If you would love to operate your Samsung Galaxy S20 using one hand, it is very much possible with the One-handed mode feature. To do this, navigate to Settings of your Samsung Galaxy S20 device, Advanced features, and then select One-handed mode under the advanced features.

Either by swiping down from the center of the bottom edge of the screen or by tapping the home button twice (this option is not available in the navigation gestures). 

Enabling the One-handed mode will scale down the User Interface (UI) of the phone and locate it to the left/right portion of the screen so that one can easily access the desired app or content on the phone.

Enabling the 120Hz refresh rate

The Samsung Galaxy S20 is manufactured with a super screen display of 120 Hz AMOLED but on a default, the display refresh rate is being set to 60Hz for power conservation. To feel how this 120Hz display refresh rate is, you can enable it by going to Settings of your Samsung Galaxy S20 device, select Display, select Motion smoothness next and finally switch to high refresh rate to enable the 120Hz refresh rate. If you want your phone battery to last longer, you can switch back to the 60Hz refresh rate.

Running apps in window mode

This is another exciting Samsung Galaxy S20 tips and tricks for a multitasking experience e.g. reading two documents at a time, accessing more than one app at the same time, etc. 

To achieve any of these, all you need to do is to display the apps in window mode. To do this, tap or bring up the Recent Apps and tap the apps you would love to run in window mode, select the Open in pop-up view option to have these apps in the window mode. 

Note that the window mode feature is not supported by all apps and in such cases, the Open in pop-up view option would be missing for such app.

Document Scan

On the Samsung Galaxy S20 camera app, there is a feature called the Scene optimizer. This Scene optimizer is enabled by default and one of its functions is to allow the camera to use AI to recognize documents and texts immediately the phone camera is targeted at them.

Once the yellow frame on the photo mode interface appears around your document, you can scan it with your Galaxy S20 instead of snapping it. On scanning the document, the phone crops every other thing outside the document and straightens it automatically.

Smart selfie angle enablement

Taking wide-angle selfies that involves more than two people has been made more convenient with the Galaxy S20 with a Smart selfie angle feature. 

Once this feature is enabled, the phone will automatically switch to the wide-angle lens whenever it detects the presence of more than two persons for a selfie.

To enable this feature on your Samsung Galaxy S20, open the camera app, tap the Camera Settings icon, and then switch on the Smart selfie angle to effect it.

8K Video Recording

This is a mind-blowing Samsung Galaxy S20 tips and tricks. You can record your videos at 8K high-quality resolution on your Galaxy S20, unlike many other smartphones.

To do this, open the Camera app, go to the settings, locate the Videos option, tap Rear video size and then select 16:9 i.e. 8K to enable all your videos to be recorded at 8K resolution.

Note: 8K videos consume a lot of storage space and can also cause the phone to heat, therefore the feature should only be used when the need arises.

Screen Recording

There is the availability of a native screen recorder on the Samsung Galaxy S20 which eases the stress of downloading a screen recorder from the Google Play Store if you want to have a record of activities on your phone screen.

To start a screen recording, go to the Quick Settings panel and tap on the Record Screen button. You have options to customize the screen recorder resolution, if you want to record system sounds, record audio from the internal microphone, etc. 

To do any of this, go to Settings, Advanced features, then Screenshots and screen recorder and finally select Screen recorder settings to customize any settings you may want.

Dismiss Samsung daily feed

This is one of the Samsung S20 tips and tricks that will help you to get rid of the daily feed Samsung sends you. You can easily hide the Samsung’s daily feed by long-pressing anywhere on the display screen or home screen. Then, swipe to the right on the thumbnail of your home screen until you come across the Samsung Daily card and then finally slide the switch to the off position from the top of the screen.

Quick Screenshots

Taking a screenshot using the volume button and the power button is a too slow process. You have to long-press both the buttons simultaneously to get the screenshot. To get this process a tat bit faster, just tap up and down the volume button and press the power button at the same time. This will take the screenshot of your display screen.

Samsung Pay

It is not any new Samsung S20 tips and tricks but a vital one you should know. Samsung Pay, for those who don’t know, enables or allows a user to work with any traditional payment method without any problems.

Lock Applications

This Samsung S20 tips and tricks is something every single Samsung S20 user should know. We all love a little privacy. Why not lock the apps that we want to keep away from prying eyes. The device leveled up the game by providing this feature.

You can use this feature to lock an app in memory. All you need to do is open the recent apps menu and click on the icon of an app that you want to lock.

From there, you will be required to click on the option labeled as “keep open for quick launching”. This option will keep the app in the recent apps menu but with lock.

Experiencing difficulties with your Device, check out our “How To” page on how to resolve some of these issues.