It has now been over 48 hours since Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S10 series. With the devices now on pre-order and plenty of people getting their hands on them, more intricate details and hidden features about the Galaxy S10 series are now being known.
While Samsung highlighted the major changes on the Galaxy S10 at the launch event, there’s a lot that it missed as well. I have compiled a list of such little changes and features below. These are important features since they have a major impact on the phone’s overall usability.
Galaxy S10 Features You Didn’t Know About
Bye Bye Virtual Home Button, Hello Double Tap to Wake!
You know how you can always press the home button area on flagship Samsung devices to go back to the home screen or wake the phone up? Well, that’s no longer available on the Galaxy S10.
Samsung has removed the option to 3D Touch/hard press the home button area to wake the device feature from the Galaxy S10. Instead, it is now offering double-tap to wake on them. Additionally, there’s Raise to Wake which Samsung introduced with One UI/Android 9 Pie update.
Bright Side Mode
Samsung has also added a new Bright Sight mode to the camera app of the Galaxy S10. This mode is similar to Google’s Night Sight mode found on the Pixel 2 and Pixel 3. Using it, one can take bright and relatively usable photos in extremely low-light situations.
Improved AR Emoji
Samsung still has not given up on its Animoji/Memoji copycat feature AR Emoji. Instead, it has improved it further on the Galaxy S10 and at first glance, it actually looks pretty good. The new AR Emojis are less creepy to look at and offer functionality than before.
8GB RAM
There’s some confusion in online forums on whether all Galaxy S10 and S10+ variants ship with 8GB RAM or not. While Samsung’s official spec sheet does say so, its U.S. website lists certain S10 and S10+ models as having 6GB RAM. Well, there’s nothing to worry about here since all variants of the Galaxy S10 and S10+ indeed come with 8GB RAM, with the 1TB storage variant coming with 12GB RAM.
Live Focus Using Primary Camera
Up until the Galaxy Note 9, Samsung used the telephoto sensor on its flagship devices for capturing portrait photos. Since the camera set up on the Galaxy S10 series varies a bit, Samsung has switched to using the primary 12MP shooter for Live Focus/Portrait photos. This has its own set of pros and cons.
The pro is that portrait photos now come out a lot better — especially in low-light — since they are captured using a superior camera sensor. However, the focal length of the primary shooter (26mm) is nowhere close to the one offered by the telephoto sensor which is usually around 50mm making it perfect for portrait photos. This means that you will have to get unusually close to your subject while capturing portrait photos or they will look a bit odd.
Wide Selfie Camera
The Galaxy S10 series comes with a 10MP selfie shooter. However, by default, all photos from the front camera are captured at a cropped 6.5MP resolution. One need to switch to the wide angle mode in the camera app to capture selfies at 10MP. This does not mean that the Galaxy S10 has a super wide-angle camera at the front though. That’s just Samsung trying to fool customers into thinking that it does.
Remappable Bixby Button
The Galaxy S10 still comes with Bixby and that dreaded Bixby button. But this time around, there’s one change. Samsung is allowing Galaxy S10 owners to remap the Bixby button to a third-party app. This previously required Galaxy owners to use a third-party app so this is a welcome change. Samsung will also be bringing this feature to its older Galaxy devices via a software update.
Ring Light Around the ‘O’
There’s no notification LED on the Galaxy S10 series but Samsung has come up with something even better It is using the area around the ‘O’ of the front-camera as a notification ring. So every time you have a new notification, the notification ring will light up.
One UI v1.1
Samsung debuted One UI as a part of its Android 9.0 Pie update for the Galaxy S9 and Note 9 devices. With the Galaxy S10 series, Samsung is shipping v1.1 of One UI with some minor new feature additions and enhancements.
Got any other interesting feature to share about the Galaxy S10 series? Drop a comment and let our readers know!
