The Samsung Galaxy S8 is one of the best phones available today. While it may be living in the S9’s shadow at the moment, it is still one of the most powerful and feature-rich phones available, and can readily compete and even beat out some of the premium smartphones available from Samsung’s competitors.
But, to get the most out of your Samsung Galaxy S8 or S8+, you will need to spend a few minutes tweaking its settings. Sure, if you unbox it and start using it, you will have an amazing experience. But, you can get even more out of your Samsung Galaxy S8 if you follow these handy Samsung Galaxy S8 tips. These tips will help you customize your smartphone experience to your liking and allow you to take advantage of some of the best features available on the Samsung Galaxy S8.
This is, by no means, a fully comprehensive list. That post would be way too long. But I do believe that these are some of the best tips available that many of you will love.
1. Take a Screenshot
You never know when you will need a good screenshot of something, whether it’s a conversation or just so you don’t forget how to do something. Taking a screenshot can be quite handy. To take a screenshot, make sure you have what you want to capture on the screen and then press the Power button and the Volume Down button at the same time.
2. Adjust Your Resolution
The S8 has an impressive display resolution of 2960 x 1440, but for some reasons Samsung didn’t enable this high resolution by default, opting instead to leave it at 2220 x 1080. To use the new, higher resolution, go to Settings – Display – Screen Resolution, and drag the slider all the way to the right to select the higher resolution of 2960 x 1440.
3. Pick Your Screen Mode
Speaking of your screen, not everyone views colors the same way. Because of this, Samsung has included several different screen modes for you to choose from. To access them, go to Settings – Display – Screen Mode. From there, you can select the screen mode that best fits you. Play around with each one to see what works best for you.
4. Add Security
By default, your phone will have very little security on it, although during the setup you can setup some of it. No matter what, you should put some type of security on your smartphone to protect your personal data. The Samsung Galaxy S8 comes with a variety of security options, including, PIN and Swipe patterns, Iris security, face recognition and a fingerprint scanner. To enable one or more of these security options, go to Settings – Lock screen and security.
5. Turn On Find My Mobile
Losing a phone or having it stolen is a huge fear for many smartphone owners. But, if you turn on Find My Mobile, if you do lose it you should be able to track its location from almost anywhere. If it’s stolen, just make sure you don’t go looking for it yourself. Notify the authorities to find it for you. You can activate Find My Mobile by going to Settings – Lock screen and security – Find My Mobile.
6. Enable Blue Light Filter
Countless studies have confirmed that many of our displays keep us up and prevent us from having a restful sleep if they share rooms with us. Often this is due to the amount of blue light emanating from our devices that is known to disrupt sleep patterns and cause headaches and eye strain in low light conditions. To reduce the blue light on your S8, go to Settings – Display – Blue light filter. From here, you can turn on the filter and even adjust how much blue light is shown on your display. You can also schedule when to turn the filter on and off so it only comes on at night when you are asleep.
7. Enable One-Handed Mode
There is no denying that the S8 is large, and the S8+ is even bigger. That means you may have trouble accessing everything on your display with just one hand. In many cases this doesn’t matter. But for others, it can be tough, especially if you have small hands. Luckily, Samsung has included a one-handed mode that can be configured for both right-handed and left-handed people. To enable one-handed mode, go to Settings – Advanced features – One-handed mode.
8. Configure the Always-On Display
First introduced with the Samsung Galaxy S7, Samsung has made several improvements and tweaks to this relatively new feature. The Always-On display allows you to access things like clocks, alerts, calendars and more on your phone even when you aren’t using it. Because of the type of display, it doesn’t destroy your battery life, either. To setup the Always-On display, go to Settings – Lock Screen and Security – Always-On Display.
9. Customize Notifications
Ah, notifications. If you’re anything like me, you love them and hate them at the same time. While they do give us great information that we definitely need and want, once we have several dozen apps installed they can quickly overwhelm us. Trust me, I’ve been there. Thankfully, if you go to Settings – Notifications, you can customize which apps send you notifications and which ones don’t. You can even prioritize these notifications so you only see exactly what you need and want to see.
10. Customize the Navigation Bar
The S8 doesn’t have any actual buttons. Instead it has what we call Soft keys. These keys are part of the display and consist of your Home, Back and Recents buttons. If you go Settings – Display – Navigation Bar, you can customize these buttons. From this one screen you can set the color of your buttons, the order, and even the behavior of the Home button. You can even adjust the sensitivity of your Home button. This will determine how hard you must push it when you use it.
Parting Thoughts
As you can see, these are some of the best tips out there to help you get more out of your Samsung Galaxy S8. Just between you and me, one of the first ones I did was change the resolution of my display, and you should, too. However, if you browsed the Settings at all while you were going through these, you know there is even more that you can do that I have listed in this post.
Android is a powerful operating system, and Samsung makes good use of all its available features along with adding a few of their own. The end result is one of the most powerful and fun smartphone experiences around today. So what are you waiting for? Why not give some or all of these a try so you can customize your S8 and get even more power out of it than you ever thought possible. Trust me, you will be glad you did.
Do you have a tip you would like to add to this list? If so, place your tip in the comments below and maybe I will add it to the list. Who knows, you just may help someone who just bought a new Samsung Galaxy S8. Do you have a question about one of these tips? If so, ask away. I would love to be able to help you solve your problem.
