The Samsung Galaxy S5 is brimming with features, so much so that it’s difficult to know where to begin. That’s where we come in.
With what’s on offer, it’s easy to miss the little details that might help make your experience with it, faster, smoother and more enjoyable. Here are our top five tips for getting to grips with your Galaxy S5.
Tip 1: Fiddly fingerprints
The S5’s hardware home button joins the likes of the iPhone 5S and HTC One Max for boasting an integrated fingerprint scanner.
Out the box, it isn’t set up, so in order to record your fingerprint, drag down the notifications bar and head into the full Settings menu using the cog icon at the top of the screen. Scroll down the menu until you find the ‘Fingerprint Scanner’ option and then press the Fingerprint manager section, which will then activate the scanners record function.
As the animation demonstrates, you need to swipe the finger of your choosing vertically across the home button (without pressing it). Swipe your finger repeatedly a total of eight times to complete the recording process and each time, adjust your finger slightly. This helps the scanner recognise your print, even if you swipe at an awkward angle.
Once you’ve successfully recorded a fingerprint, you’ll need to add an alternative password, this serves as a back up if you can’t or don’t want to use your finger to unlock your S5.
Hit OK once you’re alternate password has been saved and hit OK to confirm that everything is complete. Next you’ll see the Screen unlock settings menu. Choose the Fingerprint to set it as the preferred unlock mode on your lockscreen and then lock your device.
Next time you switch your screen on; you’ll see the familiar landing lights animation, which will morph into a green sphere if it’s happy with your fingerprint. Happy swiping.
Tip 2: Maxing out My Magazine
Some users choose Flipboard, HTC owners have BlinkFeed and your Samsung Galaxy S5 comes complete with My Magazine. If you want a quick and easy way to keep tabs on what’s happening in the world, then this is the perfect feature for you.
Swiping to the right from your main homescreen will reveal My Magazine. It brings you topical news stories based on your preferences. By default it offers up coverage on arts and culture, business, sports and a couple of other subjects, but you can add all sorts of extra feeds and even view content from your own social networks too.
Simply tap the three dots in the top right to open up the settings menu and then just start ticking any additional topics that interest you. Scroll down and you’ll find a list of social networks, which you can tick if you have a compatible account.
When you’re done, scroll back to the top, tick ‘Auto refresh on opening’ and if you’re happy to, ‘OK’ on the subsequent alert and then you’re done. Your feed will now show stories from the extra subjects and accounts you ticked and refresh every time you swipe right from your main home screen.
Tip 3: Setting a smarter screen
The Galaxy S5’s screen isn’t just stunning it’s smart too. First off head to the Display section in the Settings menu and you’ll be presented with a ton of options.
Smart stay, which was also a features of the Galaxy S4, stops the screen from going to sleep until the S5 notices your eyes aren’t looking at it anymore. If you find it useful, leave it well alone as it’s on by default, however if you’d rather just have your screen switch off after a set time, untick the box in the menu.
Under the Screen Mode option you’ll find a menu showing you different setups tailored to specific situations like Cinema for watching movies and Professional Photo, these modes alter the colour balance and contrast of your screen, but we’d recommend choosing the Adapt Display option. In this mode the S5 intelligently switches around colour, saturation, brightness and contrast options depending on what you’re doing, be that browsing the web, watching a video or reading a book.
Another notable feature can be found at the bottom of the Display menu. Choosing ‘Increase touch sensitivity’ will boost power to the screen so that you can use it whilst you’re wearing gloves, or use a stylus instead of your finger, it adds a little more versatility to the phone’s already adaptable skill set.
Tip 4: Prolonging power saving mode
Most phones nowadays have a power saving mode that’ll switch off your mobile data when you don’t need it or dim the screen, but the Galaxy S5 takes this feature one step further, pushing the last dregs of your battery life beyond anything you’ve previously seen.
Ultra power saving mode gives you access to just six apps of your choosing, sets everything to greyscale and locks off GPS and location access until you can get back to a plug point. Samsung says you’ll be able to manage 24-hours of standby on just 10% battery. We’re quite sure if that’s on the money, but it’ll serve you well in a pinch.
Tip 5: Getting variety from your video
The 16-megapixel camera on the back of the Samsung Galaxy S5 is packed with features. It’s top of the line hardware means that as well as taking great photos, it’s got an impressive box of tricks at its disposal when it comes to video recording too.
Open up the camera app and tap the cog icon to see the full settings menu. Video size lets you swap out the resolution and aspect ratio to save storage space or let you shoot in UHD. Ultra HD or 4K videos take up a lot storage space, so the phone limits you to 5-minute clips, but the quality of video is stunning.
Recording mode, meanwhile opens up options for 60fps super smooth recording, the sped up Fast motion mode or slow motion mode, which lets you slow footage down by up to an 8th of its original speed, pretty impressive stuff.
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