SamFwYou just bought yourself a phone from the Galaxy S24 series. These latest Samsung products have upgraded performance and added many features. As usual, you may feel unfamiliar with a new device. Luckily, we are here to help you. Here are the first 12 things you should do as soon as you buy your new Galaxy S24 series.
This article shares some tips for the entire Galaxy S24 series, including Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24+, and Galaxy S24 Ultra. While most features are present across the product line, there are still some that are specific to certain products, such as the S Pen on the Galaxy S24 Ultra.
Turn on Swipe gestures
For some reason, Samsung likes to greet users with three old navigation touch keys. Some people may prefer using them, but many others are used to swipe gestures, which take up much less screen space.
Luckily, turning on Swipe Actions is pretty easy. Just open the Settings app and navigate to Displays. Then, scroll down and tap Navigation Bar. Here, you will see the Swipe Actions option. You can also fine-tune the sensitivity of gestures by tapping More options. You can also turn on and off gestures for Google Assistant and the versatile Search area.
However, you may want to hide Gesture Suggestions. Samsung has removed this ability on One UI 6.1. They decided to move it to Good Lock's NavStar module. So, if you want to restore Gesture Suggestions, you can restore it by downloading Good Lock and installing the NavStar module by following this guide.
Change screen resolution to QHD+ (for Galaxy S24+ and Galaxy S24 Ultra)
The Galaxy S24 series screen has been heavily upgraded, now much brighter than the previous generation. The Galaxy S24+'s screen has also been upgraded to QHD+ resolution, equivalent to that of the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Therefore, the Galaxy S24 is the only product in the line with an FHD+ screen. If you use the highest resolution, battery life may be slightly affected. It seems that for this reason FHD+ was chosen as the default.
If you want to take advantage of the high resolution of the Galaxy S24+ and Galaxy S24 Ultra displays, navigate to Settings → Display → Screen resolution. Finally, select the QHD+ option.
Edit Quick Settings Panel
With One UI 6.0, Samsung has brought many useful changes. In this, the Quick Settings Panel finally allows you to fine-tune more. Previously, you could only change the overall layout of the Quick Settings Panel. You can now edit the top row of keys separately from the panel below.
You just need to pull down the Notification Panel. Then, swipe down again to open the Quick Settings Panel. Finally, tap the pencil icon at the top. Here, you can select the keys you want to include in the top row and full control panel.
You'll also see a new instant access feature. If enabled, you can open the Quick Settings Panel by swiping down from the top left corner of the screen instead of swiping twice.
Finally, you may want Brightness Control and Media Output to always be visible, even in the Notification Panel.
Update native apps with the Galaxy Store
You may want to update all your apps through the Google Play Store. However, you should know that many Samsung apps come from the Galaxy Store. This is where you get updates to the Gallery app, Samsung Health, Samsung Wallet, and more.
To check if there is an update available, open the Galaxy Store app, tap Menu at the bottom then Update. If your Galaxy S24 is just out of the box, there are plenty of updates waiting for you, mainly for native apps and language packs for Galaxy AI features like Smart Chat Assistant and Direct translation.
While using the Galaxy Store, you should download some other Samsung apps that don't come pre-installed. Personally, I quite like Samsung Music because it's just a simple offline music player. You can also integrate Spotify with Samsung Music. Besides, you should also
Download and install Good Lock
One UI is quite easy to personalize. However, many other Android skins offer much more powerful customization capabilities. Therefore, Samsung created an application for those who like to personalize their devices: Good Lock.
You can download it from the Galaxy Store. Good Lock offers a variety of modules to customize One UI to your heart's content, including the navigation bar, app screen, notification panel, lock screen, watch face, and Quick Settings Panel. We encourage you to try out the entire module to see what tweaks you can afford.
Activate Enhanced Intelligence
The biggest change to the Galaxy S24 series is the addition of Galaxy AI – a suite of AI features that help you text, edit photos, summarize notes, and more. If you want to take full advantage of some features, you will have to enable and set them up. Just navigate to Settings → Advanced Features → Advanced Intelligence. Here you will find a list of features that you can enable:
- Phone
- Samsung keyboard
- Interpreters
- Samsung Notes
- Recorder
- Samsung Internet
- Photo Editor
For each option, you can toggle related features, such as translation, summarizing, and editing, on and off. Most options let you download language packs for different translation features. We encourage you to check out and try out all the Galaxy AI features.
Finally, you can choose to run Galaxy AI entirely on the device. In other words, no data will be sent to the cloud for processing. Unfortunately, not all AI features are supported running on the device. Regardless, this is still a welcome step for those concerned about privacy. For example, with Smart Chat Assistant's Spelling and Grammar Correction feature, only English and Korean support runs on the device.
Smart Chat Assistant
Smart Chat Assistant is one of the exciting Galaxy AI features you will experience on the Galaxy S24 series. You can use it to change your writing style as well as check spelling and grammar. However, the most useful feature for me is Translate.
After successfully accessing Advanced Intelligence by following the steps above, select Samsung Keyboard and enable Chat Translate. Here, you can choose to display only the translated text or both the original text and the translated text. Then, tap Manage apps to select the apps you want the Chat Translate feature to work on. Finally, download the language packs you want to use. Available languages include:
- Chinese
- English (India)
- English (United States)
- English (United Kingdom)
- French
- German
- Hindi
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Polish language
- Portuguese
- Spanish (Mexico)
- Spanish (Spain)
- Spanish (United States)
- Thai
- Vietnamese
Then navigate to a conversation you want to translate. When Samsung Keyboard pops up, tap the icon with the sparkling star and select Translate chat. When a floating window appears, choose how you want the conversation to be translated. Next, tap the Translate key in the Samsung Keyboard, which will open a new text field. Select the language you want to translate on the left then enter your text. The keyboard will automatically translate your text, ready for you to send.
This feature is extremely useful if you are texting with foreigners. It doesn't stop there, your tweaks will be saved and you can use Chat Translate only for the chat you choose. In other words, you don't need to constantly switch languages manually when you have to chat with many foreigners.
Create wallpapers with AI
When it comes to personalizing their phone, the first thing most people do is change the wallpaper. Samsung goes a step further by allowing you to create your own wallpapers.
Press and hold the idle screen then select Wallpaper and style. Then click Change wallpaper. Finally, select the Generate option in the Creation tab. Here, a series of options will appear to get you started:
- Imagine
- Night
- Paint
- Topographic
- Mineral
- Flaming
- Soft focus
- Blur
- Flowering
After choosing one of them, you will get to choose the words used to create the new wallpaper. Once done, press the Create key and select one of the results. You can also click Create again if you don't like any of the results.
Wallpapers created with AI will be displayed inside the Created gallery. Additionally, photos created with AI will have a sparkling stars icon in the lower left corner.
Set up a Lock Screen and Always On Display
With One UI 6.1, Samsung has upgraded the lock screen with the return of widgets. Below the clock is a space where you can place up to four widgets at a time depending on their size. Currently, only Samsung applications support this feature. Additionally, widgets come in many different sizes.
If you want to edit your lock screen, just long-press the home screen. Then tap Wallpapers and Styles and select Lock screen. Here, you can edit keyboard shortcuts, wallpaper, and clock style.
The Battery Status widget is useful for those who often carry more than one device with them. Similar to the Battery widget for the Home screen, it shows the battery status of connected devices, such as headphones and watches. You can also use Weather, Samsung Health, Calendar app door widgets, and more.
In addition to the lock screen, Always On Display (AOD) has also been upgraded in terms of interface. Navigate to Settings → Lock Screen and AOD → Always On Display. Here, you will see options to display the wallpaper for the lock screen on AOD. Additionally, if you use a personal photo, One UI can intelligently remove the background so that only the subject is visible. This feature works best if there is a person or animal in the photo. Otherwise, you will not be able to use this feature.
Download and install Camera Assistant
The Galaxy S24 series are great photography machines, especially the Galaxy S24 Ultra. However, they are not perfect. Some features like automatic HDR are nowhere to be found. Luckily, Samsung offers an app to let you deeply customize your photography experience.
I'm talking about Camera Assistant. This is an app that you can download from the Galaxy Store. Camera Assistant has been released for quite some time. However, Samsung still continuously updates the application to add more features.
When you download Camera Assistant, you can access the app from the apps screen or from the Camera app Settings screen. Camera Assistant offers a lot of features for you to try. One of them is automatic HDR. We recommend using this feature to improve the dynamic range of the resulting photos. We also recommend the High-resolution setting to improve photo quality in low light and when zooming.
Take photos with S Pen (for Galaxy S24 Ultra)
If you choose to buy the Galaxy S24 Ultra, you will experience the S Pen. There are quite a few things you can do with this pen. For me, the most useful feature is remote photography.
Simply navigate to Settings → Advanced features → S Pen, then tap Air gestures. Here, select the option Press and hold the Pen button to then select Open Camera. This will allow you to easily turn on the camera remotely.
Then, in the App Actions menu, tap the Camera icon. Here, you can choose an action and assign them to a certain operation. For the easiest experience, we recommend assigning Single Tap to Take Photo/Record Video. You can also scroll down to see the General App Actions menu to make sure the Camera Single Tap option is assigned to Take Photo.
Later, once you open the Camera app, you can simply press the S Pen Button to take a photo.
Set up Quick Share
Just before the Galaxy S24 series was introduced, Google announced that Nearby Share and Quick Share would be merged, starting with the Galaxy S24 series. You can find this feature by navigating to Settings → Connected Devices → Quick Share.
Here, you can sign in to your Samsung and Google accounts. You can also name your phone, choose who can share files with you, and more.
To easily use this feature, you can add a Quick Share key to the Quick Settings Panel.
