10 Samsung Galaxy S20 tips and tricks

If you’ve already bought your Galaxy S20 , you’ve surely transferred over
your apps, set up the home screen, and picked just
the right wallpaper to show off your big beautiful
screen. But there are a few settings you might have
missed that will make your S20 experience that much
better. Here are 10 toggles, tweaks, and settings you
need to learn:

1. Use every megapixel in your photos

The S20 Ultra has the largest sensor ever crammed

into a Galaxy phone: a whopping 108Mp. But you

won’t take 108Mp pictures by default. Instead,

Samsung uses pixel binning to bring the resolution

down to 12Mp and cram more detail into a smaller

shot. If you want to use all 108Mp (or the full 64Mp

in the S20+), you’ll need to change the ratio in the

camera app. Tap the 3:4 button and switch it to the

3:4 108Mp or the 3:4 64Mp option. Just keep an eye

on your storage, because every photo takes up a lot

more space (about 30MB per photo using 108Mp).

2. Make the display buttery-smooth

The S20’s display is awesome out of the box, but it’s

not all it could be. Samsung has motion smoothing

turned off in an effort to preserve battery life, but with

an minimum of 4,000mAh at your disposal, your S20

actually has more than enough to handle it. And what

a difference it makes when you switch in on. To find it,

head over to the Display tab in Settings, select Motion

smoothness, and switch to 120Hz. Note that if you’ve

already upped the resolution to WQHD, you’ll need to

go back down to Full HD, because Samsung doesn’t

allow both WQHD and motion smoothing.

3. Turn your phone
into a music streaming hub

One of the more annoying facts of life is that if

one device is already connected to a Bluetooth

speaker, switching to a different one is a tedious

process involving pairing and unpairing. But with

Music Share, your friend can find your S20 on their

own Galaxy phone and use it as a hub to play their

music through your speaker. To turn it on, go to the

Bluetooth settings, select Advanced, and flip the

Music Share toggle.

4. Launch your apps insanely quickly

Every S20 comes equipped with at least 12GB of RAM,

which is more than you’ll ever need to keep your

phone running at tip-top speed. But you can put all

that memory to good use. Samsung lets you lock up

to three apps to the RAM so they’ll instantly launch

whenever you call on them. You can find the setting

on the Recents screen (where you find all of your

open apps). Just tap the icon above the screen and

select Keep open for quick launching. You might see a

slight hit on battery life, but for apps and games with

lengthy load times, it’ll be worth it.

5. Stop accidentally
triggering Samsung Pay

Samsung Pay isn’t a new feature, but its shortcut at

the bottom of the screen is more of a nuisance on the

S20 than ever before. I lost count of how many times

I accidentally launched it while trying to bring up the

Recents screen or summon Assistant. It actually took

me a while to figure out how to disable it. You’ll need

to go to the Samsung Pay app’s settings, which you’ll

find in the sidebar. Select Use Favorite Cards, then

toggle off the Home screen option

6. Automatically un-mute
after silencing your ringer

This is a solution to a problem I didn’t even realize I

had. We all do it: turn our phone on silent at a movie

or meeting and forget to turn the ringer back on

when it’s over. With One UI 2 on the S20, you set your

phone’s ringer to turn on automatically after a set

period of silence. To find it, head over to Settings, then

Sounds and vibration. Select the Mute option at the

top and the Temporary mute toggle will appear, letting

you choose the duration of your muting.

7. Bring back the battery percentage

No matter which S20 you buy, you’ll get great battery

life, but you’ll still want to keep an eye on your

percentage. However, One UI on the S20 does away

with the battery percentage to save space in the status

bar. Here’s how to get it back: Go to the Notifications

tab in Settings and select Status bar. Inside you’ll see

a Show battery percentage toggle, which will put the

number back in the status bar.

8. Reposition the shutter
button when taking a picture

The S20 Ultra is so big, you’re going to need an

entirely new grip to use it. That’s especially true when

you’re using the camera, but there’s a hidden way to

make it a little more finger-friendly: move the shutter

button to a new spot. All you need to do is tap and

drag on the shutter button when you’re in the camera

button, and move it wherever you want on the screen.

Once you find a place you like, the app will remember

it for next time.

9. Block out the selfie camera

The hole-punch camera on the S20 is much improved

over the S10, but it’s still going to get in the way of

full-screen photos and videos. You can hide it if you’d

like. It’s not the most elegant solution – all it really

does is add a black line across the cam and push the

screen down – but it works. You can find the option in

the Full screen apps tab in the Display settings. Tap the

menu icon in the top right corner to get to Advanced

settings, and flip on the Hide camera cutout toggle

10. Fine-tune your Space Zoom

Whether you’re using 100x Space Zoom on the S20

Ultra or zooming to ‘only’ 30x on the S20 or S20+, it

can be extremely difficult to control with the standard

two-finger pinch, even if you’re using a tripod. There’s

an easier way to do it. If you tap and hold on one

of the three camera views above, the zoom bar will

appear below your fingers, letting you slowly zero in

on your subject.