A smartphone is a handy, personal accessory. Something you can just pull out of a pocket and connect to the world with. But in addition to the everyday functions that we are accustomed to (camera, Wi-Fi, calls, messaging, etc.), there are other incredibly cool things that you can do on your Android smartphone.

1.      Swipe typing

Exactly, you can type with gestures. This means that you type a message simply by dragging your finger from one letter to the other. This can be super convenient especially if you only got one hand to spare. You don’t really need any special tools to be able to take advantage of gesture typing on android. The feature is innately available through Google keyboard (you can download this through Google Play).

2.      Tap sharing

This one comes straight out of a ‘Sci-fi’ setting. Think about those futuristic movies where people just have to put devices closer to each other and do some finger maneuver to share information. The Android Beam allows you to share nearly everything just by tapping phones – from music, apps, contacts, photos, videos, etc. You only need to one NFC-enabled device to another, usually back-to-back, and then tapping send. To get started with this, you can check whether your smartphone is NFC-enabled by navigating to Settings>Connections

3.      Palm silencing

Do you have a big enough palm? If so, you can use it to silence your phone or take a screenshot. These are especially handy tricks if you own a Samsung handset. Swiping the side of your hand across the screen captures a screenshot, while placing your hand over the screen quickly mutes the handset. You just need to enable Palm motion by navigating to Settings>My Device>Motions and Gestures>Palm motion. You’ll find the Mute/pause and Capture screen options under this.

4.      Photo-movie

Android handsets running version 4.3 (and above) of the mobile OS can automatically create short films by editing photos and videos that are stored on your device. Although the process is a little bit more twisted, it, all the same, works great, and you’ll certainly love the outcome. You just have to launch Googlee+ app and enable Auto Backup from settings. This way, each one of your photos will be saved in a Google+ private folder. Along the top of the ‘Photos’ section, you can hit the small video camera icon. You’ll then be able to choose what pictures or videos you want to turn into a nice movie. Customize the background music, style, and theme – Google+ will do the rest.

5.      Tab access

Your Android smartphone can access or tabs that are open on your other devices, just provided you’re signed into Chrome. On Chrome, navigate to Menu>Other Devices. It’ll all be there, like rain out of a heavy cloud.

6.      Smart stay

You’ve probably heard about that feature where your screen doesn’t go off as long as you have your eyes on it. This is another cool thing that you can do from a Samsung-specific device (sorry LG, Sony, HTC guys J ). Smart stay is actually so cool if you get to do it. Eliminates the hustle of having to unlock your device after every short while. Just navigate to Settings>Display>Smart Stay and you’ll be ready to go.Impressive? I think so. If there’s any feature you think I left out from this list, be happy to mention it below!

View Comments

What's my model number?

There are several ways to locate your model number:

Option 1
On your device, go to Settings, then "About device" and scroll down to "Model number"
Option 2
Often times you can view the model number inside the device, by removing the battery
Option 3
Using Samsung's model/serial number location tool

Looks like you're using an ad blocker.

We get it: ads aren't what you're here for...

But ad revenue is our only way to manage this site. Without ad revenue we won't be able to continue to provide quality content and free firmware downloads.

Please disable your ad blocker or whitelist Updato.com in order to continue into Updato's ad-light experience.

Thanks for your support!