Samsung shows 10 features you probably didn’t know the Galaxy S4 had

Samsung’s TouchWiz is loaded with ridiculous amounts of features (especially on the Galaxy S4), it took even us quite a while to find them all. Not that we’re complaining – as gadget geeks finding new toggles and buttons to play with is half the fun of a new phone. Yet, Samsung takes pity on those less tech inclined and posted a list of 10 features the Samsung Galaxy S4 has out of the box that you might have missed.

They range from “that’s nice, I guess” to genuinely useful features.

One great feature to save on battery life is the Wi-Fi Timer. It’s a little hard to find – Settings > Connections > Wi-Fi > Advanced >Wi-Fi Timer – but it can automatically turn on Wi-Fi and then turn it off again at preset time. For example, switch it off during the night and then back on in the morning so you don’t miss any notifications.

The notifications that arrive in the middle of the night would have woken you up, so it’s better this way. What about meetings, school hours and other times you don’t want noisy notifications interrupting? Blocking mode (Settings > My device > Blocking mode) can turn off select notifications (even the LED indicator) either manually or during a select time period. You can also add contacts to the Allowed list so you don’t miss any vital calls.

What if you get a call in a noisy environment? The Samsung Galaxy S4 screen has several buttons on its in-call screen to help. One button can boost the volume, another can activate noise reduction so the other side can hear you as well and you can even use the equalizer to tweak the in-call volume to your liking.

Speaking of sound tuning, the Adapt Sound will tune the music player for you. You just have to plug in your favorite set of headphones and go through the test which determines the capabilities of your headphones and tunes the equalizer appropriately. The Preview feature will show you what a difference that made.

The 5″ 1080p screen of the Galaxy S4 is big enough to run several apps simultaneously. The detachable keyboard complements that quite well – you can use it to type in one app (an SMS or in a chat client), while the other half of the screen shows you a map, your schedule or anything else that might be relevant to the conversation.

There’s more. For watching videos, you can zoom in with a pinch gesture, adjust the sound and brightness during playback straight from the screen. Or if you’re watching the TV, you can put the IR remote feature WatchON in the notification area or as a widget on the lockscreen.

The notification area can be tweaked too – rearrange the quick toggles, view all quick toggles directly with a two finger swipe, even hide the brightness slider. The lockscreen has plenty of options too – you can have an easy camera launch gesture (like on stock Android) and you can change the personal message on the lockscreen, even pick the color and font.

You can check out Samsung Tomorrow’s post and our review to learn how to do all those things.

Source