Samsung A50s : Hidden & Less Known Features

Previously we published a review on Samsung A50s. A50s Has a Good Number of Hidden Features Among the Available Smartphones. I am using a Samsung S10 and this A50s (as an upgrade to J7 Max) among the latest sets. S10 costs so higher for official support of VR, DEX, the display, wireless charging, more features of USB-C, 8GB RAM and so on. Many difference exists between S10 and A50s. But I can say that A50s worth the price. Note 10 is not great about connectivity – Note 10 is not exactly S10 with a pen. A50s is a good phone for day to day usage. It will be offtopic to discuss the problems of S10.

The A50s manual itself a hidden object :

Hidden & Less Known Features of Samsung A50s

What I saw that A50s does not have video wallpaper option by default on the home screen. You can set video wallpaper on the lock screen of A50s. Find a video named “Flowing Paint” on the official Samsung Galaxy. It is free and a splash of colour in high resolution. It is great for both S10 and A50s. You can download the official live wallpaper of Note 10 (dark version) – it is a colourful motion of fluid in the dark. Download an application from Google Play named “video wallpaper” and set that video wallpaper on the home screen of A50s.

The above things are not any hidden trick of A50s. But those steps will make your A50s both great and saving the display (black on AMOLED means LEDs are off). We are saying “Hidden Tricks” mostly for being too less known.

Hidden codes

*#0*#: You’ll get some peculiar things to explore :

Mega cam: Rear camera HDR with flash (main camera). Click image. How beautiful the real quality of the original camera’s macro. Samsung fucked it overdoing with software in the camera app. After that tap makes it Rear2 HDR auto (second camera). Click image. After that tap makes it Rear3 HDR auto (third camera).

Front cam: Same thing like above for front cam.

There is not much more fun here other than the graph of the sensors.

*#0808# : Tweak the USB-C settings. I already talked about Media Transfer Protocol in the article on How to Connect Two Android Phones With USB Cable. MTP is the default settings.

Turn on the Vivid mode

Go to Settings > Display > Screen mode. The vivid mode appears nice to me. I am not sure why Samsung wanted to force dull colour settings by default.

Camera : The Hidden 48MP Settings

Go to the camera and tap the aspect ratio settings, you’ll find a 3:4H option both on the selfie camera and the back camera. I am not sure why Samsung kept 48MP (back camera) and 32MP (front camera) hidden in this odd way.

Camera : The Hidden 4K Settings

The selfie and back camera records as 4K – you need to select the UHD from the settings. The selfie camera’s 4K is not just crap on a 4K smart TV. You’ll loss many auto settings such as stabilization with 4K.

App Settings : The King of Hidden Settings

Go to settings and enter Apps. You’ll notice that almost all the default applications have a settings gear icon beside them. You have to tap each setting and enable the features. For example :

1. In the Calendar settings, you’ll get “Show week number”, click “Notifications” and you’ll get an application named Reminder.
2. In the Contacts settings, you’ll get “Profile sharing”.
3. In the Finder settings, you’ll get “Add finder icon”.
4. In the Gallery settings, you’ll get “Convert HEIF images when sharing”. It is ON by default. You can switch it off if your friend’s mobile supports HEIF format. HEIF uses 16-bit deep colour, JPEG uses 8-bit. JPEG compression makes the files near half-sized and almost universally usable.
5. In the Messages settings, you’ll get “More settings” and inside it “Show web previews”. Also, enable the Delivery Reports from More settings > Text messages.

Phone Settings: Auto record calls and read the caller’s name aloud

Tap Phone dial icon > Settings :

Make “Caller ID and spam protection” to ON
Make “Recording calls” to ON
In “Answering and ending calls”, the “Read caller name aloud” to “Always”

Read caller name aloud was a feature of Nokia’s Symbian S60 V3.

Developer options

Go to Settings > About Phone and tap either the Build number or Software info seven times to get the option under Settings.

Tweak auto clean

Go to Settings > Device care and tap the triple-dot icon to get the menu. Tap “Auto optimization”, set it to time like 00:00 and enable “Close apps to free up memory”.

Tweaking One UI

Swiping the right-sided tab by default gives you “Apps Edge”. Tap the settings icon (gear icon), enable Music, Quick tools, Clipboard edge etc. Now by swiping the right-sided tab, you can go the Quick tools. Quick tools have a compass, a tally counter, a torch (tap increases (or decreases) the brightness of LED), a surface level tool and a ruler. The ruler is useless on the right side because of buttons on the side.

Camera : Live translate text

Go to the camera app, tap Bixby Vision and adjust the settings to avoid unwanted features. Auto translate does work to translate the Chinese words on various packages.

The Power Button

The power button had lot of Governmental fuss to launch camera & use as a shutter so as mandatory shutter sound. Presently you can set the power button :

1. One press to lock/wake
2. Double press to launch the camera app
3. Press hold to invoke the power menu to shut down

The volume key can be used as shutter.

Conclusion

Lack of easy documentation is a matter which can be blamed. By default what Samsung delivers is far lesser than the device can do. The in-display fingerprint sensor is not slow. The GIF animation of S10 was also slow before a patch. Add fingerprints of both hands of different fingers.