Samsung Galaxy S5 reveals its hidden features
We knew all about the Galaxy S5's heart-rate monitor and fingerprint scanner, but dig a little deeper and there's a lot more going on.
Spend a little time with the Samsung Galaxy S5 and you'll quickly see that there's more to this flagship smartphone than the heart-rate monitor on the back and the optional fingerprint scanner on the front.
Of course, these remain some of the phone's most defining characteristics, along with its 16-megapixel camera with 4K video capture, and rapid quad-core processor. Beyond there attention-grabbing headlining acts are several new interesting and useful little gems.
Customize folder color
There's more than one way to organize content on your home screens, but I like the tiny tidbit of using color to differentiate among folders.
After adding a folder (which you can do by long-pressing an app and pressing Create Folder), tapping the on-screen menu button pulls up five color options: blue, grey, maroon, brown, and green. If you don't select one, the folder defaults to blue.
Private Mode
For whatever reason, you want to keep multimedia files in a place where you --and only you -- can see them. The Galaxy S5's new Private Mode gives you an easy way to do this. Once you turn it on in the Settings menu (or quick settings pull-down), you can select any photos, videos, document, or voice file and select the menu choice Move to Private.
While in Private Mode, you'll be able to see any content in separate folders, and can see an overview in the Private folder stored in My Files. Toggling Private Mode off makes all visible signs of these secreted-away files vanish. Note that Private Mode is separate from Samsung Knox, which requires your company's IT department to institute.
Toolbox
If you explore the Settings menu or the quick access settings in the notifications pulldown, you'll notice a quiet little option called Toolbox. Toggle it on and a white dot appears, inscribed with an ellipsis. Tap this and it will expand to reveal shortcuts to popular tools like the camera, voice recorder, browser, calculator, and the notes app -- but you can swap these for other apps.
If Toolbox gets in your way, drag it anywhere else on the screen. It'll fade when you leave it alone long enough. I found I had to move it around more often than not, but it saved the day when I needed to launch the camera app one-handed. Again, it's also pretty easy to toggle on and off from the notifications pull-down, which is something you can also do one-handed.
Heaps more photo-editing features
I'm a big believer in built-in editing tools, and with the Galaxy S5, Samsung has improved what you can do without opening photos in another app. When viewing a photo in the gallery, select Edit from the menu button to see a range of tools to crop and resize; airbrush and fight red-eye; apply filters and effects; and, a personal favorite, draw all over photos.
There are a ton of new camera options in the Galaxy S5 besides, including a mode to let you change focus points afterward, and special treatment for action shots. You can (and should!) read all about the Galaxy S5's spiffed-up camera app here.
Easily connect to other devices
S Beam is really great for sharing content between two NFC-enabled phones, but what about pushing content from the phone to somewhere else? Samsung has finally gotten this task organized into a neater package with Quick Connect, an easy press from the notifications shade. Tap it and you'll see a list of ways you can push your multimedia to your computer and your other connected devices.
Quick Connect replaces a handful of confusing individual apps. If you've never been motivated to push content from your phone to a different device, you may want to now.
Like I said before, this little list is just a sampling of some lesser-known features in Samsung's superphone. Read all about the rest (and see some in action) in my full Galaxy S5 review .
