Samsung has given us a lot of additional features for our Galaxy S9 that they think are useful such as one-handed mode, smart stay, smart capture, and more. In this video, I’ll take you through each of these settings and show you how to use them.
Let’s take a look at the advanced features section on your S9 and S9+. Go ahead and swipe down from the top of the screen, tap on the settings. You’ll notice in the middle of the screen there’s advanced features. Now, advanced features are a lot of different options that Samsung chooses to put into their phone that you typically don’t find on other features of Android devices. We’re going to go ahead and go through this list. I decided to include this all in one video because there is a lot of features that Samsung adds on. Some of them you will find useful, some of the you might not find useful at all.
So with Smart Screen we have the option of keeping our screen awake as long as the device can detect that our eyes are looking at it. You can go ahead and toggle that on or off using the toggle at the top of the screen, or directly from the advanced features option here on the screen.
There is a one handed mode. If you are using the S9+ this is something that you might find a little useful when trying to use your device one handed. By turning this one you can enable one-handed mode via a gesture, a swipe up diagonally from either bottom corner, or we can tap the home button three times. I’m going to go ahead and tap the home button three times. You see I know have one-handed mode. I can use the arrow at the bottom of the screen to either go to the left or right of the screen, depending upon which side you like it to show up on. Notice now I can use the phone just as I would, but it’s kind of one handed mode with the screen. All I have to do is tap the home button three more times and it brings it back into full screen mode. You can chose to disable that or enable that by the toggle switch over there.
Down below the one-handed mode we have a finger sensor gesture. What this will allow us to do is to swipe up or down on the fingerprint sensor to open and close notification panel. By default, this is turned off. If I turn that on, all I have to do now is swipe down on the fingerprint sensor and it opens up my notification panel, or swipe up to go ahead and close it. I can even chose to have it open up Samsung pay if I am using Samsung pay with my fingerprint reader.
I have the option of quick launching the camera, which we’ve already gone over in another video, by double clicking on the power button. That’s going to quickly launch my camera. Coming back in there, I can disable that by tapping that off or on.
Then I can chose my device assistant app. By default, this is Google assistant. You can see I can tap on the settings icon here and go ahead and change some of the settings for my Google assistant, or I can tap on my device assistant app and either choose use Google assistant or I can use the Samsung internet app. If you wanted to switch it completely from Google assistant, you can do so. And then there are some other settings here for my assistant app.
I can choose to use multi window applications. If I tap on there, I can use the recents button. If I tap and hold on the recents button, it will actually enter a split screen view, and I can choose from an apps list or any one of the apps that are in my multi-tasking tray. All you have to do, again, is tap and hold on that and it’s going to close it.There is also a pop-up view action, which we can see. We can swipe from the top, left hand corner when an app is open and then open it into a pop-up view. I can enable or disable these options here in the multi window option.
Then there is an option for smart capture, which this is on by default. I find it really useful to capture long portions of screen. So, if you are in the settings menu or a Twitter feed, or a Facebook feed, and you wanted to capture everything on the screen, you can do so by using smart capture. We can either swipe across the screen with our palm, or it will automatically detect it whenever we’re taking a screenshot. This one is on by default. There is a palm swipe to capture, which we just mentioned in the smart capture option. Which we can swipe our palm across the screen and it’s going to take a screenshot. Again, this one is also on by default.
There is an option for direct call. If we’re in our contacts list we can actually go ahead and view a contact and then just raise our phone to our ear to go ahead and call that contact. This one is also on by default.
There is an option here for smart alert, which is on by default. Once we raise our phone from our desk, as long as we put our phone face down on the desk, or table, or whatever other surface it was, the phone will vibrate if there are any notifications that we missed while our phone was face down.
There’s an option for easy mute, which if we cover our phone with our hand or palm while it’s on a desk, or even flip it over where it’s face down, it will instantly mute any notification or ringing that is happening on our device. Again, this one is also on by default.
Down below easy mute there is an option to swipe to call or send messages. We can see we can swipe a contact number right to make a call and swipe it left to make a message when we’re in the phone or contacts list. This one is also on by default.
Now, dual messenger allows us to have multiple installations of certain applications. For example, they have Facebook in here. If we wanted to have two, separate Facebook accounts, we can have that happen here. It’s going to install Facebook twice on our device. All we have to do is toggle that on and then go through a few different prompts that show up on the screen. Then we can have two separate installations of Facebook to sign into two, separate accounts.
Below the dual messenger, we have send SOS messages. We have to turn this on and then go ahead and agree to a disclaimer. Then we’re going to need to set it up. To send at least one SOS message, we need to have one recipient added. We’re going to add it from our contacts list. Go ahead and go through all these prompts and then we’ll be able to change some of the settings for SOS messages. As you can see here on the screen, I have send messages to my dad. I can attach pictures by taking pictures from my rear and front facing camera, and even attach an audio recording. Now, the way that you enable SOS messages is to quickly press the power button three times and it’s going to send a quick alert to our emergency contact. And then we are in an emergency situation. It will also attach the pictures and audio recording.
You can set that up with whatever contacts you want. Currently I have it set up to just one contact. But, you can add multiple in there if you want to. That is off by default. You will need to come in here and set it up because you have to have contacts in there for the SOS messages to work. Otherwise, triple clicking the power button when it’s off will do nothing. It will not send any sort of SOS message to anyone.
Below that we have the option for direct share. Direct share will show the contacts, whenever we’re in a share menu, which we can quickly tap on that contact and share it directly with them without the need to go through any sort of other menus or setting to get that to show.
the last few are going to be video enhancer, which will enhance the image quality of our videos. We can see the apps that are available. If we turn this one we’ll kind of see a little preview of what they’re trying to do on the screen. When we turn it off we can see it kind of goes back. This is your option. This one is off by default, but when you do launch an application that supports it for the first time, it will prompt you to enable it.
Then the last one that we have, we have touch sensitivity. If we are using a screen protector on our device, we’re finding that our touches just aren’t working the way that we feel like they should be, come in here and turn touch sensitivity on. This will increase the sensitivity of the screen to help you use your device with the screen protector enabled. If you’re finding everything is okay, just leave it off. It is off by default.
These are all of the advanced features that are on your S9 and S9+. If you found this video useful, be sure and give it a thumbs up. For more videos like this, be sure to subscribe to State of Tech and we’ll see you in the next one.
Make sure to check out our other Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ Quick Tip Videos.
