The smartphones of the Samsung Galaxy series are the best-selling Android phones in the world, with a commercial success due both to the fact that it is a very good phone, both to the advertising and marketing of Samsung, very effective.
The Samsung Galaxy, including the Note and the Galaxy S9, are very rich in features, with many modes of use different from any other Android smartrphone.
The Android version installed in Samsung phones is in fact heavily modified compared to the original Google version, with the addition of various proprietary tools and additional options, sometimes useless.
Below we see how to fix the options and settings of Samsung Galaxy and ways to solve the most common problems, with a guide that is worth practically for every Samsung smartphone, both Galaxy S8 and S9 and Galaxy Note, both the other series and other models.
1) Memory full of useless apps or “bloatware”
Samsung Galaxy mobile phones have less real memory available due to an Android system greased by the many features and apps preinstalled.
In addition, when you buy a Samsung in promotion with a Vodafone or any other phone subscription, there may still be other apps from these phone companies.
To remove the useless pre-installed applications, you can tap the gear icon in the upper right corner, go to the Settings -> Applications menu, scroll through the list of all the applications installed in your phone and find out which ones are not never been used.
For some you can press the button to remove and uninstall them, for others there will be the button that disables them, making them disappear from the phone even if with the possibility to reactivate them whenever you want.
Disabling apps free up the memory space occupied by updates and temporary files and will ensure that these do not remain running in the background by slowing down the phone.
Note that some system apps can not be removed or disabled, such as Bixby Vision.
2) Hide Bixby (or remap button)
Bixby is Samsung’s smart assistant that comes pre-installed and activated on all Samsung Galaxy phones.
Since it is not up to the Google assistant and since it is very little used, the ideal would be to deactivate it.
To disable Bixby, proceed as follows:
Run the installation and configuration process if it has not already been done.
With Bixby up and running, open Bixby Home and then tap the gear button at the top to enter the settings.
Scroll down to the Voice section and turn off the “Bixby Voice” switch.
Also, press and hold on the main screen of the phone, scroll the screens going left to find Bixby Home and turn it off from there. With Bixby off, on the Galaxy S9, the button on the side of your phone does not do anything anymore and it can be a good idea to remap it and give it another function.
To do this it takes an app like bXAction to change function to the Bixby key.
3) Deactivate gestures
On Samsung Galaxy S9 and previous models, Samsung has set up many useless shortcuts of use with gestures on the screen.
To disable them go to settings -> motion and gestures.
In the end, even if any of them can be useful and fanciful, deactivating gestures also helps to improve battery life too.
4) Get rid of annoying notifications
The more apps you have, the more notifications appear at the top to fill the bar up to create a lot of confusion.
The most effective way to avoid the appearance of unnecessary or unwanted notifications is to disable them in the app itself.
Open the list of installed applications and touch the apps that you do not want to receive notifications to find the option to deselect.
To do this first, when a notification appears, touch it by holding down and then tap on “application settings“.
Also, open the Galaxy Apps app, and from the settings, go to the Notifications section to turn off the General Notifications switch.
5) The battery does not last
All Samsung Galaxy smartphones, S3, S4 and S5 have battery problems due to too many active apps.
Disabling the useless ones as per point 1 will help, as well as disable the gestures as per point 2.
It is worthwhile to activate the energy saving mode and disable all the switches that are not needed, such as Bluetooth or GPS location.
To do this, simply pull down the notification bar and open the quick controls panel.
Then set the automatic brightness, disable the auto-upload of photos without wifi (in the app of Google Photos).
6) Lag and slowdown
Even a smartphone as powerful as the Galaxy S5, equipped with Snapdragon 801 processor and 2 GB of RAM may have slowdowns if you get your hands on Samsung.
The problem is related to its rather heavy TouchWiz interface.
To improve the performance of Touchwiz, it may be useful to change some options:
– Disable animations and transitions on Android.
– Disable the activation of S Voice from the Home key, from the settings of S Voice itself.
– Replace the Launcher with something better.
7) Camera Lens
The Galaxy has one of the best cameras on the smartphone market today, but Samsung, being Samsung, has activated by default the slowest shooting mode.
The image stabilization mode function is useful if you are taking pictures in motion, but not in everyday life.
Then open the camera application, tap the gear icon to open the settings and make sure the stabilization mode is turned off.
8) Deactivate animations on Edge edges
Since the Galaxy S7 Edge, Samsung has used the “Edge Panels”, small menus on the side of the display that add features.
If you do not use Edge Panels, you can disable them in Settings> Screen> Screen Edges and then tap the “Edge Panels” switch to turn them off.
9) Customize (or Deactivate) the always-on view
The always-on function is a way to read information on the phone screen at any time, without having to touch it.
On any Galaxy phone that includes the “always on” or “Always On Display” function, you can change some options to make it even more useful.
To customize this feature, go to Settings> Lock Screen and Security> Always On Display.
Here, you can customize the program when you keep it active (in what time of day or night), the brightness level and the content to show.
In Settings> Lock screen and security> Information and FaceWidgets you can change the style of the clock, as well as the widgets that appear on the Always On display, which for some reason, Samsung calls “FaceWidgets”.
You can also disable the function by turning off the switch.
10) Set the navigation bar to the “correct” layout
Most Android phones have the bottom keys in the following Back-Home-Recent order.
On the Samsung Galaxy, the bottom keys are in reverse order: Recent-Home-back.
This can be changed by going to Settings> Display> Navigation bar> Layout.
If there are other problems, let us know in the comments.