- [Alex] So you've just unboxed a brand new Galaxy S8,
and you want to go exploring
everything this phone has to offer.
That's great, and there's certainly no shortage
of features here, both new editions,
and familiar stuff from previous Galaxys.
That's why we've rounded up the first things to do
with your new Galaxy S8, let's take a look.
(upbeat music)
First, you want to make sure the buttons
are customised to your liking.
The Galaxy S8 is the first Samsung flagship
to use on-screen buttons,
and that means you have a few new options here.
Go to Settings, Display, Navigation Bar,
and you'll see a bunch of options.
You can change the background colour.
There are a few presets, or you can go totally wild
and select something with the colour wheel.
It's worth remembering that this colour preference
only affects Samsung's own apps,
normal Android apps will still use the standard black,
or whatever shade the developer chose.
You can also choose to bypass the lock screen
using the virtual home button.
This works pretty well with iris scanning,
or Face Unlock, or Google's smart unlock feature.
That means there's not need to swipe
when unlocking the phone,
just hard press that virtual home key,
and if you do want to the switch on
and just see the lock screen, you can still do that
by tapping the power key on the right.
It's a nice option if you're sick of swiping
on that lock screen to unlock.
Next, the button order, by default,
this matches the order of earlier Samsung phones,
but if you prefer the way
most other Android phones do things,
you can reverse the order of the old screen keys.
Finally, you can also tune the sensitivity
of that invisible home button.
I prefer to move the sensitivity up a nautch,
but it's worth playing around with the five different levels
and seeing which one feels the most natural.
Second, make sure to set up a secure unlock method
that works for you.
The Galaxy S8 gives you three biometric unlock options:
fingerprint, iris, and Face Unlock.
Now, it's no secret the Galaxy S8's fingerprint scanner
is in kind of a terrible place,
back there right next to the camera,
though it's worth exploring the other two options,
and seeing which one works best for you.
Both are pretty quick and easy to set up,
the main differences are that Face Unlock is less secure,
so it can't be used to authenticate of a Samsung Pay,
and generally speaking, Face Unlock works best
in moderate to bright lighting.
Iris works best if you're not outdoors
or anywhere near bright light.
You also can't use Face Unlock and iris's at the same time,
so it's worth just picking the one
that seems the most reliable to you.
If neither is a good option,
there's also Google's Smart Lock feature
found in the security menu.
This let's you unlock automatically when your Galaxy S8
is paired to a trusted Bluetooth gadget
like a smart watch or fitness band,
or when you're in a trusted location, like your home.
If you decide to stick it out
with the Galaxy S8 fingerprint scanner,
here's a tip to make it a little less finicky,
you can add up to four fingerprints,
but to avoid annoying errors
with your finger not being recognised,
you might want to just add multiple scans
of whichever finger you usually use to unlock.
So in my case, three of the four are just scans
of different areas of my right index finger.
It helps it work a little bit more reliably.
For extra security, you'll want to enable
Android's secure startup feature.
This means your Galaxy S8 will require
a pen, pattern, or password before it fully starts up,
and after 30 failed attempts to enter that password,
your data will be wiped.
It's a good option for protecting your stuff
if your phone is stolen,
but yeah, Google isn't messing around
when it says it'll wipe your data.
That's exactly what'll happen
if you forget you pattern or pin.
Android will ask you to switch on secure startup
when you first set up your phone,
or you can go to the lock screen security menu
to set it up at any time.
Next, you'll want to get to grips
with the new Samsung home screen launcher.
It's changed a bit from the old TouchWiz days,
in addition to looking a lot nicer,
some stuff has moved around.
You go to your app drawer by swiping up or down
at the home screen, at least by default.
It's easy to go back and bring the all apps button,
if that's what you prefer,
or if you're coming form an iPhone,
you might want to have no app drawer at all
and keep all your apps on your home screen.
Choosing you grid size for both app drawer
and the home screen is also important.
I've gone for the largest size possible
to fit more stuff into my SA Plus's big display.
On the smaller SA, you might want to stick to the default.
There are so many wallpapers and themes to explore
here in the Samsung Themes app,
including some suitably futuristic backdrops from Samsung,
and then there are the infinity wallpapers,
my personal favourite,
which customise the always on display
lock screen and home screen,
and smoothly animate between these three screens
in a really slick way.
We talked about the fingerprint sensor before,
and it's true that it's in a pretty awkward spot
compared to most phones,
but if you do find you can use it,
it's worth enabling one really neat shortcut
that'll help you out in notifications.
Go to Settings, Advanced Features,
and you can enable finger sensor gestures,
which lets you swipe up or down on the fingerprint scanner
to bring down the notification shade.
A lot of other phones have this turned on by default,
but Samsung apparently doesn't.
The Galaxy S8 is of course a very tall phone.
The S8 Plus is taller still,
so it's handy to have an alternative way
to drag down that notification shade.
It's also worth poking around
the Advanced Features menu a bit more.
That's where you'll find options that
turn on the one-handed mode,
which can actually be really useful on the larger S8 Plus.
Now, the new extra tall infinity display
is one of the stand out features of the Galaxy S8,
but it's unusual aspect ratio
can cause issues with some apps.
As a result, Samsung tends to be pretty conservative
about which third party apps it lets use the whole display,
and that means you might see
more black borders than you'd like.
There's an easy way around this though.
Go to Settings, Display, Full Screen Apps,
and tag the ones you want to run in full screen,
or if you come across an app that's letterboxed,
just tape the recent apps key,
and then hit the resize bubble that appears.
It's worth remembering some apps may break
or appeared stretched if you force them to go full screen,
but almost all the apps I've tried work flawlessly.
Finally, some quick five bonus tips.
If you've noticed the Galaxy S8 only shows you
your three most recent notifications icons
in the top left corner,
there's actually a really easy way to change this
so you can see all your pending icons at once.
Just go to Settings, Display, Status Bar,
and switch off show recent notifications only
to see all your stuff.
Want to see more on your Galaxy S8 screen at once?
Take a look at Settings, Display, Screen Zoom and Font,
where you'll be able to make things smaller
and fit more in the display.
Or maybe you hate the Galaxy S8's
rounded rectangular icon borders.
Go to Settings, Display, Icon Frames,
and you can turn them off for third party apps, easy.
So those are our top tips for your new Galaxy S8.
If you've got any of your own,
be sure to share them down in the comments.
In the mean time, that's it for me.
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Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.