Samsung Galaxy S3 – Shortcuts & Tips

Some tips, shortcuts and stuff you won’t find in the manual, collected from different forum and personal experimentation. Please use only tips you understand – if you don’t know what a factory reset means, you do not want to find out :)

Explanation

„Pinch“ means using 2 fingers to zoom in our out (Google it if you don’t know the word). The buttons are depicted here:

Swype keyboard

The Samsung stock keyboard has a Swype-like feature. You can enable this via: “Settings” > “Language and Input” and then click the wheel next to “Samsung keyboard” and check “Continuous Input”.

Lock screen shortcuts

Go to Settings > Security, enable “With swipe lock” and then click on “Lock screen options”. There you can enable different shortcuts for the lockscreen and modify them, display a clock, current weather and you can enable a nice shortcut for quick camera access [holding the device straight, tapping and holding the screen and then rotating the device].

Use S-Voice to unlock the phone: Choose “Wake up in Samsung Unlock” in the above menu.

Battery percentage display

Go to “Settings” -> “Display” -> “Display battery percentage” to show an additional percentage display next to the battery icon.

Application drawer by alphabet

In the application drawer you can choose an additional view setting: “Alphabetical grid”. Open the app drawer, click menu, then “View Type”.

Disable shutter sound [root only]

If you don’t like the camera shutter sound you can disable it by renaming the following file: /system/media/audio/ui/Shutter.ogg – therefore root access is required. I haven’t yet found out how to disable the shutter sound for burst shots.

Additional free apps from Samsung

There are some additional apps from samsung which can be installed for free: Start “Samsung Apps”, click on “Category” and then choose “More Services”. Apps I found useful:
“Flipboard”, which is a very nice looking news reader – including Google Reader, Twitter and Facebook integration.
“Photo Editor”, a good picture editing app.

Custom vibration patterns

You can create your own vibration patterns here: “Settings” > “Sound” > “Device Vibration”. Then click “Create” and press the wheel to create patterns.

In Call EQ

A bit hidden: Open keypad, press menu, choose “Call settings”, “Additional settings” and scroll down. There you can select different equalizer settings for calls and create a personalized one.

User interface

• Phone wake up: Via home or power.
• Hold menu: Quick access Android search.
• Reboot: Hold menu and volume up for 8 seconds.
• Double click home: Quick access voice commands – you can toggle this in the settings from “S Voice”.
• Screenshots 1: Press home and power simultaneously. Screenshots are copied to the clipboard.
• Screenshots 2: Enable “Palm swipe to capture” in “Settings” > “Motion”, then wipe the hand across the screen. Screenshots are saved in /sdcard/Pictures/Screenshots/

Home screen

• Multiple home screens: Touch the dots to switch directly to a screen or hold and drag left/right to scroll very fast.
• Changing shortcuts at the bottom: Open the App drawer (bottom right), drag an application to the home screen. Then drag it onto one of the shortcut locations.
• Quick view current date: Hold the notification bar (on the top).
• Pinch home screen to view all home screens and add/delete them.
• Pinch application drawer to view all application screens and reorder them.
• Set background image for lock screen: Change background images in “Settings” > “Wallpaper”.

Android Apps

• E-Mail: Pinch in the overview list to fold/unfold by date.
• Contacts: Drag left over a contact to send SMS, drag right to call.
• Keypad: Use the letters on number keys to type a name, the triangle on the right shows how many matching contacts are found, clicking on it reveals them.
• Camera: Change shortcut buttons by clicking menu, “Edit”, then modify shortcut buttons via drag&drop. You can configure shortcuts for picture and video mode independently.
• Camera: Pinch to zoom in/out.
• Browser: Pinch to view all tabs.
• Browser: Go to “about:debug” via address bar. Now you can open a javascript console and have additional options when pressing menu.
• Video player: Drag left/right to Fast forward/Rewind.
• Video player: Power locks/unlocks the screen.
• Settings: Open Settings/About Phone/Battery Use and click on the graph at the top to zoom and view more details in a timeline.
  
• Easter egg from Google: Go to preferences, about phone, click some times on “Android Version” (try multiple times)

Miscellaneous hints

• If you get an error when trying to uninstall an app: Did you assign the app as “Device Admin”? If so, you have to remove this before uninstalling (Settings > Security > Device Administrators).
• Samsung offers a free service to track and control a lost or stolen mobile: Enable “Remote Access” in Settings/Location and Security. Then login at www.samsungdive.com (with your Samsung account data) to locate and remote control your phone.

Force TW Launcher in memory [root only]

If done wrong your phone might be unusable.

Open /system/build.prop as root with a text editor. Add following line at the end:

ro.HOME_APP_ADJ=1

Make sure the last line has one empty space, reboot.

xda-forum discussion

Factory reset (Everything will be deleted!)

Via these three ways:

• Turn phone off, press and hold: volume Up + home + power. Use volume keys to navigate up/down, home to execute.
• In the phone keypad: Enter *2767*3855#
• Menu: Settings > Back up and reset > Factory data reset.

Codes (enter via phone keypad, the ones below work for me)

*#0**# LCD Screen test *#06# Show IMEI Number *#2222# HW Version *#1234# Phone info/Firmware version *#34971539# Camera Firmware settings *#9900# Sysdump (Logfiles etc.) *#0228# Battery diagnostics *#7353# Function testing *#9090# Service Mode *#197328640# Service Mode Menu *2767*3855# Factory Reset (not tested.. :) ?

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