If you're the type of gamer who appreciates quality, and if you don't want to miss out on this, it's important that you know how and where to enable this, because it doesn't just happen automatically. And there's also some hidden tools that will help you optimize the speed, which I think you're going to want to see. So if your Portal has been sitting on the shelf for a while, well, this might be the refresh that you've been waiting for.

TIP 1

So let's run through the five UI upgrades first, starting with trophy animations. You may not have noticed this, but they weren't present before — but now they are, including the very nice platinum animations. So if you're watching this and you're thinking about jumping into the world of Sony PlayStation, well, there's never been a better time to do it, because with the PlayStation Portal, you can get access to all of those Sony exclusive games.

And on top of that, they've made it even easier now to onboard with this new QR code. And I know you might be thinking you will only have to use this once, but actually, whenever you get an update, and the system reboots, you will have to sign back in. So it's actually going to save you time. So by scanning this QR code, you can quickly sign into your PlayStation account via the web browser or the app on your phone. And if you don't have an account, you can literally just set it up on your phone instead of on the actual Portal itself.

TIP 2

And here is another little UI improvement. When you receive a game invite while on the PlayStation Portal, that little animation will appear. It didn't happen before. Now I realise that this might not be that exciting an upgrade, especially if you have no friends. But on the plus side, that makes you unbeatable — because how do you kill that which has no life?

TIP 3

If you have purchased a game bundle in the past on the Portal, it may have been a little bit tricky to get to the different games within that bundle. But now they've actually made it a lot easier to do. And just for example, this is how the Uncharted Legacy of Thieves appears now. And if there were more, you would see more of these titles. Again, this is a subtle upgrade, but definitely a welcome one.

TIP 4

Now listen, I know these updates haven't been that exciting yet, but trust me — you will want to see the next one. So this is again very subtle. Whenever there is a text field now, the keyboard pops up automatically. But this little time-saving upgrade might be the key to more victories because it could potentially save you time. And if you've heard the saying, “You never stop playing because you get old, you get old because you stop playing.” I definitely butchered that quote, but you get the idea.

TIP 5

Here's a question for you — why wouldn't you want to play your games in higher resolution? I genuinely think the only answer to that question is if you have some kind of data cap on your internet. But if you're not worried about data usage, well, then you need to be using this on your PlayStation Portal. The next time you load up a game on your PlayStation Portal, just hit the PlayStation button, and it's right here where you will find the brand new Max Resolution feature.

It is still going to be 1080p, but it's going to basically double the bitrate of the stream. Now, there are two things you need to know about this. Once you switch on the Max Resolution mode and set it to high quality, you need to apply and restart the game, so make sure you do it at a good time. For example, like I did, on the starting screen. The Portal will then, of course, have to reconnect to the game server in order to get you back in with that higher speed and higher bitrate, and ultimately higher graphics output. And this immediately looks way better.

Now here's the important thing you need to know about this. Once you set it for cloud streaming, it will remember that setting. But there is a second setting that applies to PlayStation Remote Play. So, of course, you need to reconnect to your PlayStation once again. Just hit the PlayStation button, and on the right side, you will see the Max Resolution option. And when you go into this, you'll notice straight away it's still set to 1080p standard, so you need to set this to high quality. Apply and restart.

And just like before, it's going to reboot, and then it will come back with that enhanced bitrate. And if you were going to ask, “Is it too much to ask for high bitrate on both?” Well, the answer is… no, it isn’t. So it's important that you know this, because otherwise you might be missing out on one or the other.

TIP 6

Now let me show you those hidden tools, which are now less hidden and extremely useful — and even more so now that we have the high resolution mode. So once again, when you're in a game, if you just hit the PlayStation button, you get the quick settings. And now, if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the quick settings, you'll find the troubleshoot section. And this little tool here shows you the network status, so you can see what network you're on. You can see the downstream bitrate — that's the important one. Before, it kind of capped out around 12, like you're seeing now.

And just like you've just seen, when the speed dips to a certain level, the game stream will cut out. So what this does is it gives you some valuable information that you can work with. So the first and easiest thing that you could do would be to move closer to the modem or change the network. And then just underneath, you have all of the tips for how to improve the speed of your connection. And it's broken down into three nice categories: Wi-Fi, connection speed, and resolution. So if the new high-resolution mode isn't working as expected, you can go through these little troubleshooting steps and use the diagnostic tool to figure out exactly what's going on.

Hide Lock Screen Notifications

So here's a question for you: Do you want people to be able to read your private notifications when your phone is locked?. If the answer is no, then you should definitely, definitely do this. Go into your settings, and then go to notifications, and then here you'll see hide content while locked. Just go into this and set it to hide when locked. This doesn't mean you won't see the important notifications; it just means you have to unlock the phone to fully read them.

Private Album

Here's an important feature that you need to be aware of, especially if you are using this phone for work, or if you ever hand your phone to someone to use to play games or watch videos. Go into your gallery and then go to the menu at the bottom. Down here, you'll find the private album. If you go to this, you can create an album which you can lock down with your Pin number or biometrics. What you can then do is go to an image and at the top, hit the three dots and then move it to your private album right here, which can only be accessed by you. Now, if you want to find it again, all you need to do is hit the menu on your gallery, go to the Private album and then unlock it.

App Protection

Now, one of the ways you're most likely to get hacked on your device is if you install an app that opens up a pathway for hackers to get in. There's actually a security feature on your phone that can prevent this from happening, but it's not on. To switch it on, just bring down your settings, go to Security and Privacy. Right here, you see the app security. If you tap on this, you can turn on app protection. This will scan anything that you try to install on your device for potential risk, and it will let you know. Just be aware that this might be a region-specific feature.

Samsung Find

Alright, this next one is very important. If you ever lose your phone or it gets stolen, you'll be happy that you set this up. Bring down the quick settings at the top, and you'll see your account. If you tap on your account icon right here, it jumps into your Samsung account. And if you scroll down, you will see Samsung Find. If you tap on this, make sure this is set up properly. Now, if you do lose your device, you can log in to Samsung Find on the web browser and locate where it is.

Theft Detection Lock

But what if someone has literally just snatched it out of your hand? Well, this new feature here will help you with that. Go into your settings again, go back to security and privacy. Right here, you will see locked device protection. Tap on that. And this is where you'll find the theft protection mode, which isn't active on day one—it's right here: Theft detection lock. Tap on this, turn it on. Now, if someone does snatch your phone out of your hand, your phone will actually lock automatically, so they can't get access to all of your stuff. You'll also find the remote lock feature here as well, which allows you to lock down the phone if it is open and you don't know where it is.

Remaster and Object Eraser

And as I've mentioned in the intro, of course, I've saved some bonus tips and tricks for you guys. So if you've just migrated from an old phone, the pictures from your old phone might not be as good as they are on this phone. There is a nice little trick here to upscale low-res images. So if you choose an image, what you can do is hit the little sparkles at the bottom of the image. This will open up two options: Remaster and Object Eraser. Remaster will upscale that image using AI to make it look a bit cleaner, and Object Eraser will allow you to remove things from the image. You can tap on various parts to select them and then erase them. You can also use the magnetic lasso to draw around the object you want to remove, and it will select that area, and then you can erase it.

Webpage Read Aloud

Something else that is really cool, but not a lot of people know about, is this: if you bring out the edge panel, you should see Samsung's Internet app here. Within this app, instead of reading the web page at the bottom, you can hit the little sparkly stars and then have that page read out loud to you. And you can even lock your phone and walk down the street listening to this website being read to you if you want.

Edge Lighting Effects

Here's a fun little setting which can help you identify notifications very quickly. If you go into your settings, then go to notifications, then go to Pop Up Style and add the lighting effect. On this page, you can choose various effects like the eclipse or spotlight. You can then choose the colour, and if you want, you can go to advanced and change the transparency and the duration. When it comes to colour, if you leave it on auto, the colour of the animation will match the app that is sending you stuff.

Custom Notification Colours

Stay within the pop-up style; there is something really cool you can do here. If you want custom colours for people in your phonebook, you can type their name in here and actually choose a specific colour for their animation. Do keep in mind it is case sensitive, and it has to be exactly how it appears in your phonebook. This can also work with specific apps, as well if you want to customise those colours.

Sports by Google

Right, if you're a sports fan, you're going to love this one. Jump into your settings, go to Lock Screen, and here you'll find Now Bar settings. Go to this and go to see all. If you scroll down, you will see Sports by Google. If you tap on this and go to sports from Google Settings, you can choose your favourite sports teams. Now whenever those teams are playing, you will get live updates on your Now bar on your lock screen. And you can also add the Now bar to the home screen as well if you want, in the form of a widget.

App Pinning

Here's another really useful feature if you are the type of person who lets other people use their phone to play games or watch videos. Go into your settings and then go to Security and Privacy, scroll down to More Security settings, and you'll find Allow apps to be pinned. What you can do whenever you open up an app, now you can open up the background, hit the icon at the top and go to pin this app. This app has now been locked on screen, and whoever's using your phone won't be able to get out of this without your fingerprint.

AI Select

One more tip: see the little edge panel that we set up before?. This is where you can find one of Samsung's unique tools—it's a very powerful one called AI Select. You just hold your finger down on that edge panel there, and that activates AI Select, and now you can draw out anything and extract it, or use the information with other apps on your phone.

They say that when you lose one of your senses, the others become stronger. You know, like Daredevil. But what if you don't have to lose one of your senses in order to get an edge when it comes to hearing things when gaming? Well, that is the advantage that I'm told RIG are bringing to the table with their brand new AR Five Max HD. Now these are still sealed and brand new in the box, so I will give you guys my first impressions. And I have been briefed on these, and there are really three things that, when they told me about them, I was like, really? And I am interested to know if you will be surprised by these things too. Anyway, let's get this out of the box and see what it comes with.

So RIG actually have a few different names for these headphones, and one of them is the AR Five Sphere. And here we have a bit of paperwork where they are referred to as the AR Five Sphere Max HD. If you do buy these, I don't think you're going to get this bit of paper. I think this is exclusively for the press. So first out of the box is this — they are snap-lock mod plates. I will come back to these once we get the headphones out of the box. And we have a box within the box. I believe this will be more like the official retail packaging. Now I really like the black and gold theme that they've used on the packaging here, and these are cross-platform compatible, so you can use them with Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, PC, and even mobile.

And actually, one of the features that surprised me was regarding mobile gaming. You'll see something that I'm quite happy to see, which is this Dolby Atmos support for spatial audio. And if you are a PlayStation fan, you'll be happy to know that these also support Tempest 3D audio. “Audio above all” is the tagline for RIG. So these right here are the official mod plates that you get with this headset. So let's get a little look at them. So these are optional covers for the backs of the earcups. And the idea is that you can get your own ones made or add your own branding to them. So if you're a game streamer, you can kind of interchange the branding whenever you feel like it. You know what? Since we're here, we might as well see what these other ones look like, if they're any different from the ones that you get in the box.

So those have got a completely different style. This is a good example of what you can create. And if you do happen to have a 3D printer, RIG do provide the files that you need in order to create your own RIG mod plates for the headphones. And I really like what RIG have done with these ones. I like the style. Anyway, let's get the headphones out of the box now. So, taking these out of the box for the first time, something I really appreciate is the weight that they have. They're not extremely light, which can make them feel cheap. They're not extremely heavy, which could make them feel uncomfortable. Just like with the packaging, they've got the black and gold theme going on here. And something that's really, really nice about these headphones is the all-metal headband. These apparently have been thrown at the wall — quite literally — to make sure that they can survive rage quits.

So, first impressions are that I really like the look of these headphones. They do kind of look like studio monitor headphones without the mod plates. And when you put the mod plates on, yeah, they take on that gamer look a bit more. hidden away underneath here are a few more things, including one of the things that I mentioned in the intro that really surprised me. So this right here is a magnetic broadcast-grade microphone, and you'll notice it can be detached when you don't want to use it. It's got a flexible arm here. It does use a cardioid pickup pattern. It very simply magnetises onto this little area. And it does have the flip-up-to-mute feature. And there is something else quite special about this microphone, which we're going to come back to in a moment. But let's see what else is in the box first.

So right here is another attachment. And it is another magnetic attachment. And this attachment is purely for those of you who are not into game chat. This one is just for audio. You've got 3.5mm here, and you've got the adapter here if you do have more pro equipment. Of course, there's paperwork in here, including a QR code to some support videos, a quick start guide, and this — because these are Dolby Atmos certified headphones — they do kind of prompt you to download the Dolby Atmos software for PC if you are going to be gaming on PC. And it also shows Xbox here, so Dolby Atmos via Xbox is supported too. Okay, last but maybe most importantly is this — the RIG deck. If you are watching this and you are a more serious gamer, this might be the audio game changer that you've been looking for, and I will show you why.

DESIGN

Let me give you a quick guided tour of the design, and I'll explain what that feature is with the deck. So customisation is a big deal when it comes to these headphones. You can easily interchange the mod plates and change up the look entirely whenever you want. I actually do like them without the mod plates. I think they look, as I said before, like studio monitors. The microphone can be detached, and if you wanted to, you could attach it to the opposite side. This is something that I have never heard of before when it comes to gaming headphones. And this is one of the features that I was like, really?

And when it locks on, it's super secure as well. It's not like you're going to snag that and it's going to get ripped out of the headset whilst gaming. They've really done a fantastic job at making sure that that's really locked in there. And I'm giving this a lot of force now, and it's not detaching. It's only when you pull it straight outwards that it comes off. And the mic does have inline controls built in, so you can adjust the levels there very easily with this nice little slider.

Here's a little mic test for you guys. This is how the mic sounds in a very quiet room. But let's say you're gaming in a coffee shop — here's a coffee shop background noise. And this is how the mic sounds now. Because it is a cardioid mic, you can really point it towards your mouth and away from the sound. Let me know how it sounds in your opinion. For the mic test, please watch the video

The modularity and flexibility of this make it very different from other headphones. And of course, like I said before, if you don't want to use the mic, you can just use the audio cable just like that. Something I know a lot of people will appreciate is the look — the gold accent on the headband — but maybe more so than that is the durability of this headband. I really don't want to damage them before trying them out for the first time, but I've seen you can fully twist these up. You’ve got a bit of subtle branding across the top and a lot of padding across the inside at the top of the headband, which is very nice. And it has very soft padding here, and it's very breathable.

And one of the reasons for that is this — so hopefully you can see this — inside this leatherette area is actually perforated, which means it can breathe better. When you do squash it down, the air can actually escape, and I'm assuming the other way as well. So when you start to get hot, there's some good ventilation built in here. And something else that I know a lot of you guys will appreciate is this — the earcups are magnetically attached, which means you can replace them when they get worn down. And behind them is the second thing that I was like, really? When I heard about it. It is the type of drivers that RIG are using here. One of the big differences between these headphones and all of their similarly priced competitors is the fact that this RIG headset uses graphene 40mm drivers, with the membrane being 45% pure graphene.

Now, the reason this is important is because graphene has a certain amount of stiffness to it, but it's incredibly light. It's also very thermally efficient. And when you push it, it doesn't fall apart like other drivers. And compared to most traditional types of drivers used in competitor headsets, the harmonic distortion is far lower — less than 0.3% with these headphones. Most regular headphones are around 0.5%, and this might seem like a minimal difference, but it's a huge difference when it comes to audio distortion and ultimately clarity.

And because they can be pushed so far without distortion, of course, they do support high-res audio. The frequency response here is 20Hz to 40kHz, which exceeds human hearing. But the fact that it doesn't start to degrade outside of that range means that the accuracy within the hearing range should be much clearer and far more detailed — they say, in fact, maybe twice as detailed compared to other 20Hz to 20kHz headphones.

I show you how you can easily customize and personalise your galaxy, and I even show you a few tricks that only the pros know. You just have to think 14 moves ahead, that's all. Remember us. Welcome to part two of three in this Galaxy A57 Tips and Tricks series. In part one, I showed you how to unlock max performance; here in part two, if you stick around by the end of this video, you'll understand how to customise your phone like a pro. And trust me, it is easier than you think.

Quick Panel Reorganisation

So let's start with the customization of the quick panel. So if you bring down the quick panel top right corner hit the pen here. You can actually resize and reorganize this entire area. So if you want the Wi-Fi button to be a bit smaller, just grab it by the line there and drag it inwards. Just drag the Bluetooth one inwards as well and put it over here. And if you want to, you can expand this quick settings area to be much bigger. And here's a little customization trick that not everybody knows about. If you delete the volume and the brightness slider from here and then go to add at the bottom and then re-add them, it will add them to the bottom here. And you can actually drag this inwards and down so it becomes vertical. We'll do the same with the volume slider into the long shape like that and bring it up. There we go, we got a volume and brightness slider in the vertical format instead of horizontal like everybody else.

Wi-Fi Calling

Here's a quick setting that you absolutely need to know about. If you ever get stuck with bad signal and maybe you're on Wi-Fi, let's say a hotel abroad or something, this will be extremely, extremely useful to you. So bring down the quick settings. Hit the pen here, hit the add control at the bottom. Right near the top, you should see Wi-Fi calling. Tap this and add it as one of your easy-access quick settings. With this active, whenever you have a bad signal, you can make phone calls from your own phone number as usual over Wi-Fi instead.

Home Screen Grid and Icon Size

Now, the Galaxy A57 has a fantastic display and it's a big screen, so I personally do this. This is entirely optional, but you might want to know about this. So if you hold your finger down on an empty port screen and go to settings here. This jumps you to your home screen settings, where you can change the size of the home screen grid. So I actually like to have five by six. This gives me more room per page so now you can have five docked apps and five apps per row.

Yes, the app icons do get a little bit smaller, but if you want to increase them back to the original size when you had less icons per page, I want to show you how to do that right now. So once again on your home screen, hold your finger down on an empty space and go to settings. Right here at the top you'll see this slider. If you want the apps to be larger, you can just slide this to the right and that increases the size of the apps.

Clean Home Screen

Now something else you might want to do, especially if you're very familiar with all of the app icons, is this. Hold your finger down on the home screen, go to the home screen settings again, and then switch off "show app labels on home screen". This cleans up the home screen a lot. I'm personally very familiar with all the app icons—I don't need the text underneath to tell me what they are, and if you feel the same, then definitely switch off the labels.

Folder Styling

Okay, here's an organisational tip. So if you're the type of person who likes to create app folders, I think you'll appreciate this. So let's just drag this into a space like this. If you hold your finger down on a folder, you can enlarge it and make it bigger, of course. And if you hold your finger down on it again and go to settings, you can even colour-code that folder. So let's say all of the Google apps, I want that folder to be green. And we can adjust the transparency here. And if the green isn't quite right, you can just go to the little swatches here and choose the specific colour that you want. And do keep in mind they don't need to be big in order to recolour them—you can have them in the small format as well.

Edge Panel Handlebar

Here's another little colour-coding tip. See the little faint line here on the edge of the screen? That's your edge panel handlebar. You can actually restyle this to contrast nicely with your wallpaper. To do this, just slide out the edge panel real quick, and you see the settings down here. Tap on that before it disappears. Here you see the handle menu; tap on it. And this is where you can customise the colour—so let's make it purple. Actually, just make it a bit more of a bright purple, something like this, and we can change the transparency. So if you want it to be faint or bold you can do that. You can also change the size of the handle and you can adjust the width as well if you want it to be less visible. Keep it thin. And there we go, and you've got these little arrows here to adjust the exact position. I do recommend you keep it higher up the screen, because when you're swiping between pages, you don't want to accidentally hit that handlebar.

Advanced Wallpaper Customisation

Now, I do realise that the first thing you probably will do with your phone is customise the wallpaper, so I might as well show you how to do that. It is very easy to do if you hold your finger down on an empty part of the screen, go to Wallpaper and Style at the bottom. Here you can go to change wallpaper and that will change both of these at the same time. At the top you'll see all of the featured wallpapers. I do like this dynamic one—it actually adjusts this colour throughout the day. You have various other options below as well, like a wallpaper carousel. But if you want one from your photo gallery, this is where you'll find it. So I'm just going to choose the Master Yoda one. This will apply that wallpaper to both of the screens, and if you just want to use it on one of them, you can untick one of the ones down here. And if you're happy with it, you can just hit done.

Now once you've found the wallpaper that you want to use, you can actually customise it on both of these screens independently. So here's how you can do that: hold your finger down onto the screen again, Wallpaper and Style again. This time I'm just going to tap on the home screen wallpaper. If you hit the suggest button, the phone will suggest various layouts for this wallpaper. Sometimes they're good, sometimes not so much. I'm going to hit back and then go to effect. Now here's a bit of advice for your home screen wallpaper: you don't want it to kind of distract you from the apps, or wash any of the apps into the background so they're hard to see. So I like to add a blur effect that just softens the wallpaper and makes the app stand out a bit more. But there are other options here, for example, grayscale colour, where you can adjust the colour of that wallpaper behind and still keep some of the image visible. And you can even change opacity here as well. There's also the dark mode, and you can add a little bit of a tint to that if you want to. Definitely have a little play around with the different effects that you can add to your wallpaper. But like I said before, my favourite by far is just the general blur.

Adaptive Lock Screen Clock

Once you're happy, hit apply. Now let's go to the lock screen. This is where things start to get interesting because you can do a lot of customisation here. If you hit effect again you can do the same thing—you can add these filters. But check this out. If you resize the image, I'm going to make it about that big. I'm going to tap the clock here and choose this one. This is the only clock that can adapt to its surroundings. I'm going to hit style to make it a bit bigger that way. And as you can see, it's kind of shaped around Master Yoda's head. This works best if you have a picture with a person in it; it can separate the foreground from the background. And if you want to watch the weather, you can activate the weather at the top of this clock. I think this is the best one by far. A couple of other things you might want to look at on your lock screen is this: when you tap on the lock screen, you can add various widgets just underneath the time, and you can also remap these shortcuts here at the bottom if you want as well.

Google Search Bar Styling

Here is another customisation to tweak to add a bit more colour to your home screen: see the Google search bar?. This is the bog standard search bar in dark mode. It will be lighter in light mode, but you can actually take full control over how it looks by doing this. Hold your finger down on the Google search bar, go to settings and this jump straight into the customisation settings for the search bar so you can go to custom. Here we can choose a specific colour, let's say green, for example. We can change the transparency of that search bar so the image actually shows through it. And then if you scroll down, you can go to Add shortcut. The two most useful ones, in my opinion, are song search and the AI mode. But you can only have one. Once you're happy with your customisation, you can go back and straight away, that change takes effect. You can also adjust the size of the search bar—it doesn't need to be right across the screen like that. You can shorten it, but it will restrict the number of shortcuts that can be shown.

Modes and Routines Widgets

Let me show you one little customisation tweak that I have recently started to use all the time on my Samsung phone. So if you bring down the settings and then go to Modes and Routines, you will find some recommended routines that you can set up. Sleep is a very good one—we can hit the set-up, go through the setup guide and customise this however you want. I'm going to set my sleep time, and you can choose the days at the bottom. There are various other things you can do, like changing the alarm background. Once you've done that, you can scroll down and choose a different wallpaper for when you're in this mode. Now that this is set up, you'll know whenever you're in this mode because the wallpapers will change on your device.

But here's a little customisation tweak: on your home screen, go to an empty space and go to widgets at the bottom, then go to the Modes and Routines widgets over here and choose the sleep widget and add it to your home screen. Making it much more accessible, and you can just toggle this on and off whenever you want. Now what I do is set up a bunch of different routines and modes for various occasions, and I have them all stacked on top of each other right here. So I can slide between these buttons on the home screen. Now, if you want to do the same, you just hold your finger down on that widget and go to Create Stack, and then you can add more widgets on top of that one.

If you've just picked up a Galaxy A57, I'm here to show you some tips and tricks and chew bubble gum. And I'm all out of bubble. So let's kick this off with some performance upgrades first. Then we'll get into some customisation, and then some of the very important security settings. And if you stick around to the end, I may or may not have some bonus tips and tricks. Kind of hard to find, and most people don't know about. All right, so let's get this off.

Bixby and Perplexity AI Integration

You might not realise this, but Samsung have recently upgraded Bixby, and they've introduced Perplexity, which has been optimised specifically for your Galaxy. However, you won't be able to use it unless you do this. First, go into your settings. So if you swipe down from the top, you can find it here. Scroll all the way down to Advanced Features. Here you will find the voice wake up settings. So if you tap on that, straight out of box, Bixby will be on, but Perplexity will be off. So if you switch this on, it will then prompt you to set it up for the first time by repeating the sentences on the screen. Once you've set up Perplexity, it can now work alongside Bixby and even control functions on your phone.

Camera Tips and Tricks

Megapixel Settings

Here are a couple of camera features that you should be aware of, and not everybody knows about. Open up the camera app. At the top here, you see it says 12M—that's 12 megapixels. If you set it to 50 megapixels, you can capture more detail. However, keep in mind that 50 megapixels is best for well-lit scenarios, and 12 megapixels is much better in low light conditions.

Camera Assistant

If you hit the little folks down here, go to the camera settings. You can unlock some hidden camera settings that might be very useful to you. So on this page, if you scroll down, you should see this right here: Camera Assistant. And you will very likely see a downward arrow indicating that you can download it, and install that app. And once you've done that, you've unlocked this new menu where you can actually tell the phone to prioritise focus over speed. If you find you're getting blurry photos, this will solve that problem for you.

Dual Record

And something else you can unlock here, if you scroll down a little bit, is these two features right here: Single Take, which is great for creating short content, but this one is my favourite: Dual Record. With this enabled on your phone, you can now film picture in picture, which can be located in the more section at the bottom of the screen. So if you go to this, you should see Dual Record. You can actually grab this and then drag it onto the bar at the bottom so you have quick access to it. Now, when you activate Dual Record, you notice you have this little screen up here. And if you tap on this, you can actually make it a bit bigger. And you can also move it around on the screen. This can be a great way for creating content as well, if you want to show how you're reacting to what you're seeing. This is a nice little trick.

Composition Guides

Here's another little camera tip that can improve how you use your camera. If you go into the camera app again, hit the folks over here and then go to settings. On this page, scroll down a little bit, and you will see the composition guide. If you switch this on and then tap on it, you can choose what kind of guide you want. I think the grid lines and the level is obviously the best ones, because now when you use your camera, you have the rule of thirds grid, and you also get this little crosshair when you're doing top-down shots. And when you are taking regular photos, you get a little crosshair in the middle or a little spirit level so you know when you're perfectly level.

Performance Optimization

RAM Plus

Now let me show you how to speed up your device a bit more. I'm assuming you have a lot of free memory since you have a new phone, but you might want to look at this and just be aware of where to find it. So go back into your settings, go to Device Care. Here where it says memory, tap on this. Right now I have eight gigs of RAM. 1.8 gig of it is being used, and the phone is barely out of the box for five minutes. So yeah, you get an idea of how quickly that RAM can be used up. If you want to, you can hit Ram Plus down here and expand it all the way up to eight gigs. This can help with loading times, backgrounding tasks and things like that. And if later on you start to run out of memory, you can always scale it back to 4 or 2 if you prefer.

Auto Optimization

Now on a rare occasion, what you might find is that your phone is running lots and lots of processes in the background without you knowing, and it starts to warm up and slow down the phone's performance. Now, if you want to prevent that from happening, there is a tool within the software that you need to be aware of within the settings. Again, let's go back to Device Care and then this time just below these graphs you'll see auto optimization. If you want to be extra cautious you can go to auto restart and then set this to restart when needed, which if you are a light phone user, will probably be never. But if you switch it on, and the phone does start to do something in the background that drains all of the resources on the phone, well, this will sort that out for you very quickly. And if you prefer, you could set it as a schedule so every night a specific time it can reboot and refresh your device.

Security and Personalisation

Fingerprint Accuracy

My guess is when you set up your phone for the first time, you probably did 1 or 2 fingerprint scans for your unlock, and that's fine. But here's a way to make them even more accurate. If you go into your settings and then go to Security and Privacy, right here. On this page, you should see screen lock and biometrics. Tap on that, tap where it says fingerprints and then tap on the first fingerprint that you registered and then go to improve accuracy.

Now you can re scan that same print again. And this will just expand the amount of detail that the phone holds about your fingerprint. And it's a bit more of a thorough process. But once you've done it, your phone will unlock much, much faster. And if you're the type of person who rushed through the set up process and only did one of your digits, I highly recommend doing three: the thumb and first finger on your dominant hand, and then maybe your thumb on your other hand, and you can just hit the plus here to add those additional fingerprints.

Side Button Remapping

Now if you're a bit old school when you're used to a power button being a power button, or you've just switched from iOS, well, I think you're going to appreciate these settings. So if we go into the settings menu, scroll all the way down to Advanced Features. This is where you'll find the side button menu. It used to be called the power key, but it's not actually your power key anymore; you can make it one if you want it to be. So the long push and hold of the power key right now activates Gemini. But maybe you're not going to use that so much. And if that is the case, you might want to go to long press and then set it to the power menu. That way, when you push the power key, you get the power menu just like the old days.

Wallet Shortcut

And if we go back to the side button menu, you'll notice that the double press of the psyche opens up the camera, which is okay, but if you're coming from an iPhone, you're probably used to double tapping to get to your Apple Wallet. On this phone, you can remap it. So if you have your Google Wallet installed on your phone or any other wallet that you might use, you can go to apps here and then choose it from this list. So with that set up now whenever you need to pay for something, you can just double tap here that will jump straight into your Google Wallet.

Galaxy Store Updates

Now, if your phone is literally box fresh, it's going to look quite similar to this. And something you absolutely need to do straight away is go to your Galaxy Store, because this is where all of your Galaxy apps get updated. If you don't activate the store and update it out of the box, it'll be a while before you get the latest updates for all of your apps, so make sure you go through the original update process for the Galaxy Store. Once you've done that, go to the menu and at the top here if you see any updates, make sure you do all of those on day one. This just guarantees that you get all of the latest Samsung Galaxy features.

Multimedia and Sharing

Dolby Atmos

When it comes to watching content on your phone, you can actually improve the sound quality of the content. Here's how you do that: Go into your settings, go to Sound and Vibration. Scroll down on this page until you see sound quality and effects, and tap here, and you'll notice Dolby Atmos is available at the top.

Whenever you're watching movies, I recommend you use Dolby Atmos, and if you want a quick way to activate it and switch it off when you don't need it, here's the best way to do that. Bring down your quick settings by swiping from the top right corner. Hit the pen and then if you hit the add control at the bottom, scroll to see the sound section. And if you tap where it says Dolby Atmos, this adds it to your quick settings.

And then you can resize the quick setting to be a bit bigger. And now when it comes to using Dolby Atmos, you can just tap this button right here and that will activate it. But if you hold it down, this actually jumps you into another menu, which again, a lot of people don't know about, where you can select the type of content—movie, music or voice—and this will enhance that audio.

Quick Share and Blip

Now, one of the most useful quick settings, in my opinion, is the Quick Share. So if you are on Android and all your friends are on Android, the Quick Share can be found in the quick settings, and it looks like this. This allows you to send files, photos and things back and forth between the devices very quickly.

But here's a little pro tip for you guys. If some of your friends are on iOS, or if you work on an Apple Mac, for example, you'll appreciate this. Go into your Google Play Store—this is your app store for Android phones—and search for this app right here called Blip.

Make sure your friends also get this app, and if they do, you can now use it to send files back and forth between Android and iOS devices seamlessly and very, very quickly. Just to show you how effortless this is, if I go to the photo gallery here, I have this wallpaper of Master Yoda. I just hit the share button and then I hit Blip from the list. Now I can simply send this to an iPhone like this. I've now got access to that image, and it works fantastic for video too.

WALLPAPER REMIX

So the first customisation tweak that most people will do with a new phone is customising the wallpaper. And there are some really cool ways to do this now on Galaxy S26. And this is a fairly new one. So if you swipe up to bring up your app drawer, in the list here, you should see Creative Studio. This is a new and improved Samsung app. And essentially, what you can do here is type in text prompts to create images. But what I want to show you is something a bit different. So in the bottom right corner here, you'll see this little pen. If you tap on this, and then instead of typing something in, if you hit the little image icon right there, you can bring in an image from your gallery. And for this demonstration, I'm going to grab this very popular wallpaper of Darth Vader. And as you can see in that bottom left corner there, the theme selected is 3D cartoon. And we'll leave it as that.

And in this box at the bottom, what I want to do is adjust this image so that it matches my purple Galaxy S26. So I'm just going to type in, “make this more purple,” and then hit generate. And there we go. Instead of just adjusting the image with effects, this has actually recreated and kind of remixed the already very popular wallpaper that I had to match my phone, and it actually creates something different every single time. Here's another version of that same wallpaper remixed using the same app, using pretty much the same prompts as well. And you can see I've got a completely different result, and you can keep modifying the picture just by altering the text at the bottom. Once you have created something that you do want, you can hit the little download icon at the top and save it to your device. You can set it as your wallpaper, or you can even just create a sticker from that image.

PHOTO WALLPAPER TRICK

For the next tip, we're going to use a photo from my gallery because there are going to be some people out there who want to use photos they've taken themselves as wallpapers. And let me show you how you can tweak them and improve them using some Galaxy AI tools. So first thing to do: open up your photo gallery. Choose an image that you might want to use as wallpaper. Once you've done that, you hit the little AI sparkles at the bottom of the phone, and then you get your AI options. If there are photo bombers in the image, you can use the AI eraser to circle them and get rid of them. You can adjust the image and actually straighten it up, and it will use generative fill to fill in the outside of the image.

And if you want to, you can hit Style on the side and use one of these image generation tools to completely restyle the image using a preset that you like. Let's go with the sci-fi one and see what it does. So yeah, that's pretty cool. You get the idea of what you can do with that. But what I really want to show you is this. Go back to the original image, and this time I'm going to hit Create. And you'll notice the text field pops up at the bottom of the screen. Here's where things start to get really interesting. You can literally type in stuff here to add to the image. Let me add a DeLorean in the background. And there we go. It's added the car to the back of the shot, and it's actually even moved my arm a little bit, so you can see a bit more of the car.

And then if you go to Keep Editing, we can keep stacking more things on top. And check this out. If you hit the little image icon right here, you can even go into your photos and add parts of other images into that image. So this is Yoda, just to see what happens. And once you've extracted that bit of that image, you can ask it to blend it in a specific way. So I'll just put “sitting on the ground” and generate. What you might find is that if the image is copyrighted, which Yoda definitely is, it might not work. So you can extract parts of images and have them blended into the existing image. And you can also change outfits. So let's say I change my outfit to a “business suit.” There we go. It's very convincing. And you can see how it could be extremely creative when it comes to creating a background for your phone. And once you have created something that you like, you just save a copy and then go to the three dots in the top right corner and then set it as a wallpaper.

THE VARIATIONS

I do realise that some of you guys will not be into any of this AI stuff, or Star Wars wallpapers, or anything like that. You probably just want to keep things simple, and if that is you, I think you'll appreciate this little customisation trick. So if you haven't changed anything on your phone, your wallpaper will probably look something like this, with the default Samsung animated wallpaper, which is very nice. But this is also customizable, so let me show you how to do that.

If you hold your finger down on an empty part of the screen and go to Wallpaper and Style, bottom left corner, and you tap on the wallpaper you want to customise — so let's just go to the home screen one — at the bottom of this screen, you should see Variations. If you tap on that, you will see the other versions of that same wallpaper that also animate. So maybe you prefer this one, for example. So have a look at these and see if you prefer any of these. And before we move on to the next tip, I do want to show you one more thing. If we go back to this little icon in the top left corner, this brings us to the wallpaper menu. And when you scroll across here, you'll see some of the other Samsung defaults. And when you scroll down, there are even more. Some of the cool ones worth checking out are these down here — the interactive ones.

They actually shift colours throughout the day, so they become darker as the day goes on. And by the time you get to the evening, they'll actually turn into a more comfortable hue, so it doesn't strain your eyes. So yeah, these are very nice. And just like before, if you do choose one of these, at the bottom of the page here, you can go to Style and actually even modify the style of these dynamic wallpapers too.

WALLPAPER MODS

Here's one more wallpaper trick, and this one's ready for anyone who has wallpaper downloaded that they want to use. But maybe it doesn't match the colour of the phone or the case that you're using. So I'm going to use this wallpaper right here just for demonstration purposes. This is definitely one of the fan favourites here on this channel, but this kind of pinky grey doesn't really match the purple of the phone. So here's what we can do about that. First of all, we need to set it as the wallpaper. So if we go to the top right corner, hit the dots, and go to Set as wallpaper, I'm going to set this just as my home screen wallpaper. Now, once you've done that, you'll notice some extra options pop up across the bottom of the screen. If you go to Suggest, the phone will try to predict what you might want to do. I don't suggest you do that. If you go to the Gallery, you can change the image entirely, and if you want to put a frame around it, you can do that.

But what I want to focus on here is the Effect. So this is completely different from remixing the photos as I showed you at the beginning. This one takes the existing image and kind of modifies it. So for home screens, I do like to add the blur effect sometimes if there are lots of sharp edges on the image behind. This allows you to focus on the app icons. But for this particular image, I want to show you something different. There is the blurred background option, so if you have a photo of a person, it will blur the background, which can be quite nice. There's a grayscale background, which does look pretty cool, but it's still not what I had in mind. And then there's this one: custom colour background. Now this is where it starts to get a bit more interesting. See the little colour icon in the bottom right corner? If you tap on that, this brings up your colour options. And if you really want to be pro, you can go to the colour wheel and dial in the exact colour, and even use the spectrum if you prefer.

Once you've done that, it applies the colour to the background, and you can even use the opacity slider to change how much of that colour is overlaid. So you can bring back some of the details that exist underneath. So this is kind of nice, but it's still not my favourite. So let's go back and go across to the next one, which is this one: dark background. So essentially, this just modifies the back of the image. And again, you have the little colour icon. So if you tap on this again, you can adjust the intensity of that overlaying colour, but it just applies it to the background. And I think that looks pretty cool. You've kind of got a little bit of purple tones in there, and you've got a darker colour that allows the icons to stand out from the background. So I'm going to apply that. There are a couple more effects that you might want to check out here as well. So if you scroll across, there is the ink drawing background, the pastel background, and there's also an oil painting, which looks very cool, actually, but I'm sticking with this dark background.

CUSTOM COLOURS

So here's another tip that would differentiate your phone from your friends, even if they have the same phone. So if you hold your finger down on the home screen, go to Wallpaper and Style. This time we're going to go to Colour Palette. It's kind of important that you do your wallpaper before you do this, so hopefully you've done that. When you tap on the palettes here, you can enable it. Essentially, what this will do is grab colour schemes based on the wallpaper that you're using, and it will present them down here. And up top, you have a little demo of how this will affect the user interface. So have a look at the options that are presented to you and pick your favourite one.

If none of them is what you like, you can swipe across, and there will be more options, so you can spend as long as you like finding the colour scheme that you like. But if you want to keep it basic, just go to Basic Colours. Here, you could choose a solid if you want, and if you go across, there are two-tone options as well. And once you are happy with the colour configuration, you can just hit Apply, and that will apply it to all of your system settings and menus. And just to show you how that's affected the UI, when I bring down the quick settings, it's all colourful now. Before, it was all kind of grey and black and white.

COLOUR ICONS

And there is one more step to this, which you may or may not want to do. And you may have to change your entire colour palette setup just to make this work. But let me show you what it is. If you go back into the Colour Palette right here, you can apply the palette to app icons as well. Now, when you do this, it changes all of your app icons to a colour from that palette. And up here, you'll see what colour they will be.

So right now they appear blue, which is not really ideal for the wallpaper that I've chosen. Now I've got dark blue app icons, and to be honest, I'm not a big fan of how this looks, so you do have to spend a bit of time to get it right. So I switched it to grey, and this looks way better now.

LOCKSCREEN TIME

Now let's set up a custom lock screen. So an easy way to get there is to hold your finger down on an empty part of the screen, go to Wallpaper and Style, and then tap on the lock screen. Now, to make this demo a bit more interesting, I'm going to add an image to my lock screen. So I'm going to change this to my Yoda wallpaper and hit Done. And now that I’ve got that set up, I can customise the clock to work with this image. So when you tap the clock, you can change the different styles, the different fonts, and even the size of the numbers. There will be different options depending on the fonts that you choose. So, for example, this one here, you'll notice there are a bunch more options. And some of the other ones I showed you already. And you can even have full-on calendars here on your lock screen if you want to.

And when you are choosing the style of your clock, do have a look at this as well. You've got the option to enable the weather information, which will sit either above or next to the clock that you've chosen. Once you've done that, you can adjust the size of the clock as well. And the cool thing about this particular clock is that it actually adjusts to the image that you're using. So you can see how it kind of changes shape based on where it is in the image. If I move it across to the side, for example, the numbers adjust around his head. So definitely play around with your lock screen clock and the overall style.

LOCKSCREEN CUSTOMIZATION

Here's another tip for your lock screen. Again, if we jump in using the shortcut here, tap on the lock screen here, and just underneath the clock that you've just set up is a space for up to four widgets. I'm just going to delete the ones that I have. You can choose from any of the widgets available here. One of the ones that I think is probably most useful is the Voice Recorder, because you can actually activate this from the lock screen without opening your phone. So that's one that you might want to add. Another one that you can activate as well is the Interpreter listening mode. If you are in another country and you think some people might be talking about you in their language, well, you can activate the listening mode and find out what they're saying. So make use of the space, but be aware that you only get four spaces. You could just use individual one-by-one icons if you prefer, but I do like using this one so I can see how long it's been recording if I need to record.

And before we leave this page, there are actually three more things I want to show you, and one of them is very useful. So the two icons down here, the phone and the camera — those are the default shortcuts on your lock screen. If you find you're never going to use those, you can customise those two just by tapping on them. You'll see the options that you have available, and you can remap them to do whatever you want them to do. And the last thing is this: across the bottom of the screen, if you go all the way to the end, you will see the weather option. If you tap on this, it adds a dynamic weather effect based on your location on top of your lock screen, so you can figure out what the weather is like outside without even looking out the window. And there's really only one downside to adding this effect, and it's this: you get the little AI-generated thing at the bottom because it's adding this weather effect over the top and altering the image. So yeah, because it's modifying the image, it has to show that badge. I think it's a legal thing.

GRID SIZE

So if you've just got a brand new Galaxy S26, your home screen layout is going to look like this: four icons across, possibly five app icons at the bottom. And if you did get one of the bigger phones like this one, the Galaxy S26 Ultra, I'd recommend you make the most of the screen real estate, and you'll see why when we get onto the next tip. But first, let me show you how to do that. So if you hold your finger down on the home screen and go to Settings, this brings you to your home screen settings. And here is where you will find the option to adjust the grid size for your home screen. I do recommend you set it to 5x6. This allows you to have five columns and six rows. And also, if you go back in, you might want to adjust the app screen to five columns as well, and your folder size to 4x4.

Since you do have so much screen to play with — if you do have the smaller S26, you might want to skip this one anyway. Now you've done that, you've got a lot more screen space to play with, and you can also increase the size of the app icons if you want to. So now you can see how much space that's freed up. And if you do want to declutter your home screen even more, what you can do is go back into the home screen settings and switch off Show app labels on the home screen. This is something that I do all the time now, because I'm very familiar with what the app icons look like. I don't need the text underneath to tell me. So if you want a more minimal look on your home screens, then yeah, you might want to do that too.

MAXIMUM SPACE

Now, let me show you something that you should definitely be using to maximise all of the spaces on all of your home screens. This is really quite fundamental, but it is also extremely useful. That's why I'm showing it to you. So when you've got a lot of space to play with, you can start to populate your home screens with widgets. So all of these bigger icons here, these are all widgets. And here's the basics of how to add them and how to add even more behind them so that you can maximise the amount of shortcuts that you can have in one space. So here's the first step. If you hold your finger down on an empty screen, at the bottom of the screen, you will see Widgets. Tap on that. Up top, you'll see some of the suggested ones. And when you scroll down, you'll see all of the other options that you have. One of the ones that I really like to have is the Digital Wellbeing and Screen Time widget. So this just lets me know how much I'm using the phone and what I'm actually using it for. So this is just kind of a visual cue.

But you can add functional widgets as well, and you can add them to the same spot. To do that, just hold your finger down on the existing widget and then go to Create stack right here. So if you want a functional widget that can actually help improve the speed of your device when it starts to slow down, the Device Care one is a good example of that. So if we add this to the stack, we've now created a stack for the first time. And this widget right here allows you to clear RAM usage very, very quickly. And now that we've created this stack, you can add more to it even more easily. So just hold your finger down on it and go to Edit stack. And this brings up a slightly different user interface where you can hit the plus at the end and add more stuff to it. For example, maybe you have lots of Samsung gear, and you want to add the battery widget. So definitely play around with your home screen layout. Create widget stacks to make the most of the space on each one of your home screens.

WIDGET TRICK

Now here's a little customisation tip for widgets. See this one that I've added up here? The Device Care one is a bit ugly, and I feel like it's ruining the entire look of the home screen, but you can actually do something about that. So if you hold your finger down on that widget and then go to Settings, you can customise the opacity of the background, so we can reduce it right down. Some widgets will let you remove the background entirely. And when you scroll down, you'll see you can customise the shape of the background too, to make it less ugly.

Now there is one widget that I do want to show you guys, because it's very cool and I use it on my work and business page. So once again, I'm just going to go to the widgets, and then in the list, I can go all the way to the bottom to Samsung's own weather app. Now, if you scroll down, there's a pretty big one that looks like this. If you add that, it's all bright and colourful, and it will match whatever time of day it is. But if you want to keep it more minimal, hold your finger down on it, go to Settings, and then right here you can switch off the background.

CUSTOM FOLDER

Here is an organisational tip that can help you get to where you want to be on your phone more quickly. And this is going to be extremely useful for you if you like to keep things in folders. So this is kind of my practice screen, just to show you guys. So your home screen will probably look like this on day one. And you'll probably have a Google folder that looks just like this. Here's how you can customise it to make it more useful. If you hold your finger down on the folder, you will see the option to Enlarge folder. So if you go to that, it does exactly what you think it does. It enlarges it, but it also makes all of the apps inside the folder that you can see openable without having to open the folder first.

So that's pretty cool. But this is what I really want to show you. If you hold your finger down on the folder and go to Settings, here you can rename the folder to be whatever you want it to be, and you can also colour-code that folder. For example, I have all of my money apps in one folder, and I make that folder green. If you don't like the shade of green that it is giving you, you can go to the colour wheel on the side here and choose the exact colour. And you can even use a spectrum if you want to. Once you find the colour you want, you can adjust the opacity. And again, you want to choose colours that work well with your background. So this one's quite nice there, I think. Definitely customise those and colour-code your folders so that you can find things faster.

NO NOTIFICATIONS…FOR NOW

So here's a question for you. Do you have an app on your phone that is constantly blowing up and distracting you when you're trying to be focused and productive? If the answer to that is yes, then you definitely want to change this little setting to take control and customise when you will receive these notifications. So to find this setting, we need to jump into the actual Settings menu on the phone and scroll down to Notifications. And on this page here, if you scroll down again, at the bottom of this page, you'll see Advanced settings. Go to this, and here you'll discover a feature that's switched off, and I highly recommend you switch it on. It is the Show Snooze button.

So when you are getting bombarded by notifications for whatever reason, and you don't want to read them, or you're not interested, what you can do is swipe down your notification pane, expand the notification that is annoying you, and then you should see this little alarm icon right here. If you tap on that, here you can choose how long you want to snooze those particular notifications for. The maximum is up to two hours. If it needs to be longer than that, well, then you need to go into your notifications and manually turn off all of them. But this is a nice, quick way to mute them for a limited amount of time. So let's just say two hours.

HANDLE IT

This next customisation tweak is to a feature that I think more people should utilise, and I'll explain how you can maximise its potential. But first, let me show you what I'm talking about. So if you go into your Settings and go to Display and scroll down, you should see this little switch for Edge panels. If it isn't switched on, switch it on. Now, once you've done that, tap on where it says Edge panels, and this brings you to all of the settings for the Edge panels. Now the first thing to do is tap on Handle. And this is the little line here at the edge of your screen. You can customise the colour of the handle, as well as its transparency. So if you want it to be very, very minimal, you could reduce the transparency all the way down. You can make it smaller so it's less distracting, and you can even change the width so it sticks out a bit further. Since my wallpaper is kind of purple, I think maybe a blue or something like that might work quite well. So let's go with that. And you'll notice the little lines here as well. You can drag this up and drag it down. And I recommend you keep this further up on the screen because you don't want to swipe it by mistake when you're trying to swipe across screens.

And if you're left-handed, you can of course switch it over to the left side if you prefer. Now that you've customised the handlebars, let me show you what you can use the Edge panels for. So when you bring out the Edge panel, you will see a little pen at the bottom. Here you can customise the apps that exist on the Edge panel. Now, what I recommend you do is populate this with apps that are important to you, but that you don't necessarily need all of the time. For me, I found that having my authenticator apps here is the very best use case for the Edge panel. Also, sometimes I need access to all the files on my device. If I've downloaded something and I can't find it, I can use the file manager to find it, and the Samsung Find app lives here on my phone as well. I'm always losing my keys and my earbuds, and this helps me find them. And I've also got my security apps here as well, which again, I don't use all the time, but it's nice to have quick access to them. So now whenever I'm logging into something, and I need an authentication code, I don't have to look around — it's right there at the top.

MORE PANEL

So when you swipe out the Edge panel, you'll see the little settings icon pop up down here in the bottom left corner. If you tap on that before it disappears, this shortcuts you to the Handlebar and Edge panel section. So right here is where you can add more panels. If you tap on Panels, here are some recommendations. The clipboard is very useful. Let's say you've copied a very important address or something like that, and then the next thing you know, you've had to copy a one-time passcode. You might feel like you've lost that address which you had previously copied, but if you have the Clipboard panel, it actually keeps a log of the last few things that you've copied, so you can still recover that information, and it's not lost.

Another very useful Edge panel is Tools. So when you enable this, let me show you what you can do. When you bring out the Edge panel and swipe across again and again, you get a compass by default. But that's not it. There is more to this. If you hit the three dots at the top, there are even more tools, including a surface level, which is very handy. As you can see, my desk is almost perfectly flat. There is also an emergency tool here, which could be a lifesaver, quite literally. If you go to the torch tool, you can switch the torch on and adjust the brightness, but also baked into this tool is this S.O.S. feature. So this will actually use the torch to emit Morse code patterns to let somebody know that you're in trouble. So just be aware of these tools because, as I said, they could save your life one day.

WHERE TO GET THIS CLOCK

Now, I know at some point someone's going to ask, “Where did I get this clock from?” I get this question all the time. So I'm going to show you guys how you can get it for yourself. So if you go to the Google Play Store, type in Google Clock, and you should find the official clock app from Google. Install this, and that widget comes with it. And there's more than just the one that I have set up. If you hold your finger down on it and go to Settings, there are some other styles to choose from as well.

But the scallop one, in my opinion, is by far the best. And you should be aware of the fact that the colour of the clock will be affected by the colour palettes that you choose, and also by Light and Dark Mode. So this is how it looks in Dark Mode. And if you don't know what I'm talking about when I'm talking about Dark Mode and Light Mode, definitely check out my absolute beginner's guide to this phone. I'll link it at the end of this video.

CUSTOM SEARCH BAR

Okay, here's another Google-related customisation tip, and it is in regard to this. So this is the Google search bar. Pretty much every single Android phone has one. On the Samsung phone, you can delete it entirely, but I do find it is quite useful, and you can really tailor it now, which is really cool. If you hold your finger down on that search bar, go to Settings. Now it jumps straight into the customisation options. It was so well hidden before. So if you want to, you can go to the device theme. You can set a custom colour theme for it and change the hue to whatever you want it to be, the saturation, and even the transparency.

And if you scroll down, you can add shortcuts. One of the cool ones to add is the AI mode. So if you are researching something on Google with the AI mode, as opposed to just searching the entire internet, it can pull information from lots of different places and bring it all into one area. There are some really useful things, including song search, but just be mindful of the fact that you can only have one. So for me, it is the AI mode. So there we go. We've customised the home screen, we've customised the colours, the wallpaper, the widgets, all of that good stuff. And I just want to take this opportunity to say thank you for making it this far into the video. It's much appreciated. I do have four other parts, so this is a 26 Tips and Tricks series. And as a reward for you guys making it this far into the video, I have saved a couple of bonus tips and tricks.

CUSTOM CALL DISPLAY

So let's start with a customisation tip for your Phone app, which is this one down here. If you open it, go to the three dots in the top right corner, go to your settings, scroll down, and you will see this option right here: Call display while using apps. If you tap on this, the default setting is a small pop-up. This will appear as an overlay on top of whatever it is you're doing on your phone now. If you want it to be less distracting, you can set it to mini pop-up, and it will still appear; it will just be much smaller.

And if you really want to focus on the phone call fully and allow it to block out everything that you were doing before the phone call came in, you can set it to full screen. And there is a fourth option, which is actually on by default, and that is Keep calls in the pop-up window. So if you don't want to be distracted from what was going on on your phone before the phone call came in, you could tick this box here, and a little pop-up call window will disappear once you've answered the call. It is kind of a feeling-out process with this one, so test out the different options and see which one you like.

CUSTOM CALL BG

Here's another phone customisation tip. Let's go back into the Phone app again. Hit the three dots, top right corner. Go to Settings again. This time, we're going to scroll halfway down, and you should see the Call background option. The default one is what you see right here at the bottom of this page. You'll see the background. If you tap on that, you can choose from any of the featured backgrounds, which are quite nice.

And there's even this one here, which is a video background, which can be customised with your own Galaxy avatar. And if you go back, you can even choose a custom image from your library. And it could even be one that you've created yourself, like this.

CUSTOM CALL CARD

And here's another customisation tip for your phone. If you go into the Phone app again, this time you're going to go to your Contacts. At the top, you should see My profile with your name. If you go to that, you should see your phone number, your name, and if you go to Edit at the bottom, you can customise the profile card. You can add a style, you can add text, and you can choose the image that you want it to be. And you can also customise your own little picture icon.

And once you have created that, you can actually share a QR code, which will give that person all of your details, essentially your calling card, just by scanning your phone with their camera.

THE DOUBLE TAP

Here's another very quick customisation tip that can save you time in the future. If you go into your Settings, go all the way down to Advanced features, and in here go to the Side button. This is the power key on the side of the phone. If you go to Double-press, you can remap this to do anything. If you have the Galaxy S26 Ultra, you could even set it up to activate the privacy display. What I like to do, though, is I like to set it as an app.

And if you hit the little settings next to the app here, you can choose which app it is. For me, I always set this to Wallet, so whenever I'm in the shop, and I need to pay for something quickly, I double-press the power key, and it jumps straight into my wallet, and I can pay. I can find all my loyalty cards and all that good stuff.

FOR SPORTS FANS

And here's the last tip. And if you are a fan of any sports at all, you will really appreciate this one. So if you go into your Settings, scroll down until you see the Lock screen and AOD, tap away. You'll see Always On Display, and make sure you've got the Now Bar switched on here. Also, you might want to set this to Auto as well, just so that this works a little bit better. Now, if we go back to Lock screen and AOD settings, and go to Now Bar. And on this page, go to See all. And this is where you'll find all of the things that can be shown on the Now Bar, on your lock screen, and on your Always On Display, and in your notifications.

The setting that I recommend you switch on, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, is Sports from Google. Now, once you've done that, tap on where it says Sports from Google, and in here go to Sports from Google settings, and then this will load up the official Google Sports page, where you can search for your favourite teams and follow them. Once you've done that, you will now get live updates via the Now Bar whenever your team is playing, and it will show on your lock screen. So if you find yourself stuck at work behind a desk and you're not allowed to watch TV or even listen to the radio or anything, you can keep an eye on the scores even while your phone is locked.

The Sonos Play speakers are some of the most unique portable speakers available today. Visually, they look like mini Sonos Move speakers, but they have distinct features that set them apart. At a launch retail price of £299, they are an investment, so let’s dive into who they are made for and why they carry a premium price tag.

Design and Build Quality

Most portable speakers are designed for a younger demographic, featuring brightly colored plastics and flashing lights that look great at the beach but out of place on a bookshelf or mantelpiece. Sonos has taken a different approach, designing the Play to be classy and premium so it seamlessly fits into a fashionably designed living space. This upgraded material choice contributes to the manufacturing cost.

• Premium Materials: The speaker features a beautiful metal mesh that wraps completely around the sides.

  
  

• LED Indicators: Behind the mesh are two LED indicators: one for charging/low battery and one for connectivity status.

  
  

• Shape & Base: It sports an oval shape from the top—a recurring design theme in modern Sonos speakers—and has a thin rubberized base to absorb shock and reduce unwanted table vibrations.

  
  

• Controls: The top panel includes physical, clicky buttons (play, pause, volume up/down) beneath a rubberized surface, full cutouts for microphones, and an LED-equipped voice command button. This is very similar to the design of the Sonos Roam.

  
  

• Rear Panel: The back features a signature Sonos groove, a Bluetooth pairing button, a microphone switch with a green accent, a power button, a multi-functional USB-C port, and a handy loop for hanging the speaker.

  
  

• Durability: Despite its premium look, the speaker has an official IP67 rating, meaning it is watertight and dust-resistant. You can confidently take it to the pool, the beach, or out in the rain.

Connectivity: Wi-Fi vs. Bluetooth

While most portable speakers rely entirely on Bluetooth connectivity, the Sonos Play stands out by offering both Bluetooth and newer dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) Wi-Fi chips. While Bluetooth is excellent for portability, unlocking the full potential of the speaker requires a Wi-Fi connection.

The Advantages of Wi-Fi Connectivity:

• Performance: Wi-Fi offers better signal strength, faster speeds, greater distance, and superior overall audio quality.

• Smart Features: It unlocks Apple AirPlay, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Sonos's own hands-free voice control.

• App Integration: Through the Sonos app, you get access to Sonos Radio, customizable EQ settings (treble and bass), and all your favorite music streaming services in one place.
  

• Trueplay Tuning: You gain access to Sonos Trueplay, which automatically adapts the speaker's sound signature to its surrounding environment.

• Multi-Room Grouping: Over your home network, you can group an unlimited number of speakers together and control their volume levels individually, turning the Play into a fully-fledged multi-room smart speaker. These multi-room features are not available over Bluetooth.

  
  Note: When you are out and about, the Bluetooth connection is still highly capable. The Play can pair with almost any device, be grouped in stereo, and its multi-functional USB-C port can even charge your phone on the go.

Battery Life and Charging

One of the most mind-blowing similarities the Play shares with the much larger Sonos Move (which is about three times its size) is its impressive 24-hour runtime. This massive battery life is exceptionally impressive for a compact speaker and factors into the higher price point.

The Sonos Play ships with its own dedicated charging dock, featuring a long, non-detachable USB-C cable. It does not come with a charging brick, so you will need a 45W charger (standard for fast-charging modern smartphones) to get optimal charging speeds.

Sound Quality

Under the hood, the Sonos Play features a mid-range driver, two outward-angled tweeters for high frequencies, and dual passive radiators to enhance bass output, all powered by Class-H amplifiers.

• Audio Performance: It punches well above its weight class, particularly in the mids and bass frequencies.

• Clarity and Volume: At volumes below 70%, the vocal clarity and detailing are fantastic. You can push it way past 70% to get very loud, though the highs may start to sound slightly sharp.

• Sound Dispersion: Even as a standalone mono speaker, the bass radiates beautifully, and the sound travels an impressive distance.

• Stereo Pairing: While a single unit lacks massive audio separation, pairing two Play speakers together in stereo dramatically expands the soundstage, offering much richer detail and instrument directionality.

The "Hot Take": A Missed Opportunity?

If Sonos wanted to move boatloads of these speakers, there is one feature they should add: the ability to use them as rear surround channels with a Sonos soundbar. Many users with Sonos soundbars don't want to run permanent cables for a 5.1 setup. Being able to temporarily place two Play speakers behind the couch on movie night would be a game-changer and a massive selling point.

Who is the Sonos Play For?

Ultimately, the Sonos Play seems designed for users who plan to use the speaker indoors about 70% of the time, while taking it out to the garden, pool, or on holiday the other 30% of the time

This speaker is for you if:

• You want a portable speaker with serious firepower that looks classy enough to sit on a desktop or mantelpiece.

• You are already invested in the Sonos ecosystem, as this will seamlessly integrate into your existing multi-room setup (which third-party speakers cannot do).

• You have older analog equipment; Sonos sells a £20 USB-C to analog adapter, allowing you to use the Play as a wired desktop or stereo speaker.

  If you need more raw power and don't mind a larger footprint, you might prefer the massive Sonos Move. Conversely, if you need something incredibly lightweight for your backpack, the smaller, Wi-Fi-enabled Sonos Roam is a highly portable alternative, though it won't match the audio quality of the Play.

You know what the problem is? Sometimes people are listening, but they ain’t really hearing. And that is precisely why products like this — the Sony LinkBuds Clip — exist. These are open, free earbuds. And really, there are two big advantages that these types of earbuds have over regular earbuds. One — based on the fact that they don't go in your ears — means that they're much more hygienic, especially if you're going to use them for the gym.

And the second big advantage is, if you are the type of person who does a lot of street running with earbuds in, or rides a bike to work whilst listening to music… with these types of earbuds, you can listen, and you can hear, avoiding that plugged-in feeling. So you could be more like Agent Smith in The Matrix.

UNBOXING

So let's do a quick unboxing. As usual, we're trying to come up with fully recyclable packaging. There is a QR code for the app on the front, up top. A few of the key features for these earbuds are shown, and also the battery life is displayed here — you get up to nine hours on a single charge in each bud, and up to 28 hours with the charging case combined. So as always, we get a whole bunch of paperwork, including Sony's map of the Midwest. And here is something quite interesting. These are little adjuster slider things to adjust the tension of this C-clip that wraps around your ear.

When it comes to the setup process, it is super simple. You just download the Sony Sound Connect app, clip the LinkBuds Clip onto your ears, and then you're ready to go. First, let's get a look at the case design and the earbud design. So the case design is quite similar to other LinkBuds that I've seen in the past. This is kind of like a little hamburger shape, and it's two-tone. So you've got the nice shiny bit up top with a little bit of Sony branding, and then you've got the matte surface at the bottom, which makes the case a bit more grippy, which is nice. I really like how this is presented, and unlike some other popular open earbuds right now, the case on this one is nice and compact. So let's get one of these out of here so I can show you what Sony has done with the design.

DESIGN

So as you can see, they have a C-bridge. This allows the earbuds to clip onto your ears, as opposed to being plugged into your ears. And there are two parts to it — this part that houses the battery, and then there's the driver unit. And then there are these little pieces, which Sony calls the air-fitting cushions. These will literally just clip onto the C-band, and they can be adjusted backwards or forwards to increase or reduce the strength of the grip.

Alright, so let's try this on. It just clips onto my ear there, and then I can adjust the little air-fitting cushion. And if I want to, I could really make this tight onto my ear. So if I go for a run or anything like that, it's not going to fall off. So you can see how these are firmly gripped onto my ears.

THE APP

And something else that is important to know about these earbuds is that they do have an official IPX4 water resistance rating, which makes them splash-resistant and, more importantly, sweat-resistant — and this makes them perfect for outdoor activities. And if you are on Android, you'll see the pop-up pairing options straight away on your phone. As you can see, Gemini is supported via the earbuds, allowing you to have a full-on conversation with AI if you want to. So when you pair them up for the first time, it walks you through how to fit them correctly, and then it talks you through the touch operation. So you tap the main unit at the back of the earbud, and you can also tap on the band. And here are the inputs that are recognised: double tap, triple tap, and repeat taps. Tap on either side to raise or lower the volume. And this is how the app looks — at the top of the screen, you get the battery life in each bud, and also in the case. There are three different listening modes:

• Standard

• Voice booster (if you want to hear what people are saying around you)

• Sound leakage reduction

So this is kind of a reverse noise-cancelling feature that reduces the amount of sound that other people can hear when they're sitting next to you. And you'll notice on the app the codec defaults to SBC, and if you scroll down, you can switch the codec to prioritise quality instead of stability. Quality is what you should switch to if you care about audio quality. And I will tell you guys, what I think of the sound quality in a minute. But before I do that, I should do this software update for the earbuds. So one of the exclusives that you'll get with the Sony LinkBuds Clip is Sony’s DSEE — Sony's Digital Sound Enhancement Engine — which can upscale lower-res audio to sound more like high-res audio. So if you listen to the radio or lower-quality audio a lot, you’ll appreciate that feature for sure. And my first impression of how they feel when wearing them is that they’re extremely comfortable.

SOUND TEST

Anyway, let's do a sound test of these earbuds. The touch controls are quite sensitive. Here are my opinions on the sound quality. The loudness and sound will change depending on how you position the drivers in front of your ear canals. So it might take a little time to find the sweet spot. But generally speaking, it’s pretty nice. It’s not the bassiest I’ve ever heard — and recently I’ve been spoiled by Sony’s XM6 earbuds — so that has affected my opinion. But compared to other open earbuds, they are definitely on par, and the bass is respectable.

For the sound test, please watch the video.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

So here are my first impressions of the Sony LinkBuds Clip. I really like these earbuds. I think they’re going to be very useful for anyone who needs to be aware of their surroundings at all times. I personally think these are really cool, really unique, really futuristic — and more stylish than a lot of other open earbuds out there right now.

The sound quality is exactly what you would expect from open earbuds. The loudness is more than enough for me. The comfort is incredible — very lightweight, very secure on the ears. The battery life is very good. The software features are also very good. And the case is nice and compact.

You'll notice instantly that there is a difference in the field of view. Some are wider. The center image has been hit with a lot of cool tones to balance out that warm light, which is interesting, and it does look good. The colors are closer to real life in the image on the right. But aside from that, which one actually looks like the best overall in your opinion? And definitely keep a little tally as to which one is winning here. I would be very interested to know which phone wins overall on your scorecard.

This is a 1x shot, and there is, in fact, a bright spotlight right on this. So this would be a good time to zoom right in and check those highlight details. Now, while all three phones have delivered fantastic details, I'm sure there's one here that's standing out to you. And also, while we're this close, check out the details on the mechanical elements here — all of this money printing, shredding device.

You'll also notice that there's a similar theme when it comes to the white balances. So based on that alone, you might actually be able to guess which one is which. Anyway, now's your time to decide.

There's a pretty big difference between the phones when it comes to skin tones and also AI processing. In the photo on the left, my skin looks incredibly smooth, which is nice, but maybe not true to life. I do like the warmth in this image, though. In the center image, my skin looks less smooth and ultimately more true to life. However, I don't think I was that pale on that day. I do really like the details and the shallow depth of field here in that centre image. And finally, the photo on the right: the details are really nice. There is not much AI in play, but there is some, and I'm not sure my face was actually that red. That looks like the face of a person who'd been up late the night before drinking…

Here's a 2x shot. Typically, the phones will use a sensor crop as opposed to a zoom, so we shouldn't see any loss of detail here versus 1x. This is another good one for white balance, and again, you might be able to guess which phone took which just based on that, but also on the details. And that's really what I'm going to say about this one. But there is one question for you: war — what is it good for?

Here's another ultra wide, and this one is in a much darker setting. And this is interesting because it's in such a challenging lighting scenario. There are bright back lights, there are red lights, there are blue lights, there's a lot of shadows — and all these things can kind of throw off the accuracy of colours. And on top of that, to make it even more challenging, I'm wearing dark clothes, so this would also be a good test of the dynamic range when it comes to ultra-wide. So let's zoom in and check the details here.

And just while we're here zoomed in, see that little portrait just over my shoulder in the back? Let's do a long-range Zoom test. Let me know what you think. Which one won the Zoom test in your eyes?

And now I'm going to just roll a few more photos from the Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience exhibition in London, and then we'll get into some more natural lit and lower lit scenes.

So now I am at Leake Street, the famous graffiti tunnel started by Banksy. So I kind of figured, let's take some graffiti-centred shots from here, because it takes a lower light source around here. Let me know how the three cameras are performing against each other. And again, you get to have a look yourself. Here is a portrait shot. This is where the phones add this kind of blurry background effect to the image using post-processing. And this really is an interesting balancing act for the phones.

I think the real key to success here is making the subject of the image not look like a sticker on top of a background. And I think there is one phone here that's kind of doing that, and there's also another one that's doing surprisingly well. I'm sure you can figure out which ones I'm talking about anyway. It's not up to me now — it's up to you.

So this one is a fantastic test of the three phones' HDR abilities. It's also a great test for the sensitivity and the quality of those primary sensors. And I'm going to draw your eyes to a few things to consider. Look at the shadow detail on the ceiling — there's a big difference there. Also, look at the details on the tarmac. You can see the points at which the details start to fade and disappear altogether into the darkness. And the reality is, there are a number of reasons why this could happen. It could be less light intake through the lenses, a less sensitive sensor, or it could actually be a creative choice by the brands to crush the shadow details and create this more contrasty look.

Also, zoom in to where I'm standing in this image so you can see how much detail has been retained on me and my clothing, because phones that have better HDR processing will typically look better in these kind of areas.

Here's a lower light ultra wide, and I think generally speaking, they all look really good to me. Here are some of my thoughts: Maybe the highlights are a bit too bright in the image on the right. I like the wider field of view in the centre image, and maybe the colours in the photo on the left are a little bit too warm. That's just my personal opinion. What about you?

Now this photo is pretty decent, but you know what would make it a lot better? It would be a lot less people. So let's test out the AI eraser features on the three phones real quick and see which one does it best.

Allow me to introduce this genius work of art. It is a pretty awesome piece, and there is, in fact, a light shining down onto it, which could completely disrupt the colours, but actually, the colours are pretty close in all three. Let's get a zoom in, get a good look at the details, and then you can decide which one wins.

If you've watched any of my other camera comparisons in the past, you know it wouldn't be a great camera comparison without a burger shot, because everybody takes photos of their food from time to time. So this is the BrewDog Oklahoma burger. In terms of colour accuracy, I know which one I like. However, in terms of which looks the tastiest overall, well, that's another question. So I'm going to leave this one to you. Once you've decided, add up your scores, and then you'll find the answer to which phone won this camera comparison.

Just for context, so you know how big the battery inside this phone is, it is, in fact, double the size of the battery found inside the regular iPhone 17, and here is another power move by iQOO: there is, in fact, a power brick in the box, and it is a 100-watt charger, which is the peak charging speed supported by the iQOO 15. This is especially useful because it is powerful enough to recharge laptops or even portable gaming devices. Now listen — if you’re thinking about getting an iQOO device, or if you already own one, stick around, because I’ve got some really good news for you. But first, let me give you a guided tour of the design.

Design

iQOO has designed the iQOO 15 with the golden ratio in mind. It’s much more compact than a typical flagship, which of course makes it much easier to hold. The frame is metal, the sides are flat, the corners are rounded, and it’s got these sleek, angled curves. And if you look closely at the top, you will notice there’s an infrared blaster for when you inevitably lose your remote control down the side of your sofa. The device is thin at just 7.9mm, and the weight is just 202g, which is hard to believe when you consider the size of the battery inside this phone. They’ve also managed to make extra room for another game changer in regard to connectivity, and we will come back to that when we get to the gaming segment of this video. Hidden under the display is an ultrasonic 3D fingerprint scanner, and around the back, hidden beneath the surface here, is a 6.5K vapour cooling chamber known as the Ice Core At 6.5K, it’s just another way of saying a 6500mm² vapour cooling chamber, which is on the larger side for a phone of this size. And just to make the gaming segment a little more interesting, I will show you guys what the Ice Cool looks like after a prolonged gaming session with a thermal imaging scan.

And before we move on, I should really address the elephant in the room. The pattern on this version of the phone is so nice. This particular colour is actually called silver, but it’s kind of a checkered silver. And actually etched beneath the surface are these kinds of fabric-like patterns, which kind of gives it this organic look. And I really like it. It stands out from pretty much every other phone. And not only is the iQOO 15 built to withstand the heat, but it’s also built to withstand pretty extreme conditions. It has an official IP68 rating, which is flagship level, but it’s also IP69 rated, which means it can survive high-pressure water jets. The camera module floating design is also pretty interesting. I will run through the camera specs and show you some camera samples in a moment, but first, let’s get a good look at this display. It is a 6.59-inch, 1.5K AMOLED, 1260 by 2750 resolution, with up to 5000 nits peak brightness in high brightness mode. And it does support HDR10+, and I think you’ll agree it is impressive. The colours are nice and accurate, the brightness is incredible, and the animations are fluid. But what is most impressive is the fact that this display does support 144Hz, which does make it perfect for gaming. And when you combine this display with that game-changing feature that I mentioned in the intro of this video, you will truly understand why this deserves the title: powerhouse.

Camera

Now let me show you what these cameras are all about. The floating camera module houses two cameras: a 200 megapixel Sony LYT-700V with optical image stabilisation, which is of course, the primary camera and star of the show. There’s also an 8 megapixel ultrawide, which is certainly handy to have around. Around the front, the sensor behind that selfie camera is 32 megapixels. So check out these photo samples from these cameras and let me know what you think. When it comes to video, it can shoot up to 4K 60 frames per second. Around the front with the selfie camera, you can also shoot 4K 60.

Performance

Now, let’s talk about a secret game-changing weapon that the iQOO has equipped the 15 with. It is, of course, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor. This is a 3-nanometer chip, just like the flagship elite chip from Qualcomm. And even though this is one step down from the top, it is still more powerful than almost all of the smartphone flagships released in 2025. And this doesn’t just make this phone a beast for gaming — it also makes it much more power-efficient.

When you combine that with the massive battery, you could expect two-day battery life here. And not only that, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 assists with its camera abilities and improves the AI processing speeds. And this chip isn’t the only bit of good news for you gamers out there, because there are actually two more upgrades inside this device that I think you’re going to want to know about.

Gaming

One is iQOO’s own Q2 supercomputing processor. This takes some of the workload off of the Adreno 829 graphics built into the Snapdragon chip, and it’s this that allows the iQOO 15 to upscale lower-res games to 1.5K resolution to match the display. And if the game you’re playing doesn’t support 144Hz or even 120Hz, the Q2 chip can boost the frame rates using frame interpolation, which ultimately makes the game’s motion look smoother than it actually is. Now, this all sounds good, right? But what happens when you have bad data signals? Well, here is that second game changer: iQOO have equipped this with a third chip designed to do one thing — boost and stabilise signal strength. They call it the Z1, and apparently, it can reduce latency by 20%. And also when it comes to signals, because this is a new phone for 2026, it also supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. So you’re going to get fantastic wireless speeds here for audio and for data.

And something you should know about this phone is that you can actually enable bypass charging, which allows the phone to run off the external power source as opposed to the built-in battery, which can potentially keep the device even cooler. All right, now let’s do the thermal imaging scan after more than 20 minutes of intense gaming here on PUBG. Okay, so this is a pretty interesting thermal scan. I’ve not seen one like this before. Typically, the heat is stored in the top right corner of the device, but on this phone, the heat is spreading down so quickly that the hottest part is just below the camera module. And the temperature there is just 35 degrees, which is very good. Anything close to 40 is not so good. The sensor mark is actually 34 degrees as well. So that shows that the heat has been evenly spread across the back surface of the phone, which is great because it allows the heat to escape more quickly. And this, in turn, helps the processor run at maximum speed. So it’s a big thumbs up for iQOO’s Ice Cool.

The Software

Let’s talk about software. This phone is currently running on OriginOS 6, the same software running on vivo smartphones, and iQOO offer four years of operating system updates, and six years of security patches. And this software is packed full of awesome features. And here is that bit of good news that I talked about in the intro of the video: I have made a dedicated tips and tricks guide to highlight the best features of OriginOS 6. If you guys have a Vivo phone or an iQOO phone right now with OriginOS, you should definitely check that video. And if you don’t have one of the phones yet, well, definitely take a look at that, because then you’ll get a good idea of what you can do with phones like the iQOO 15.

THE FOUNDATIONS

The very first thing to do when you connect up your earbuds for the first time is this: familiarise yourself with how to get to the settings for the earbuds. So jump into your Settings, and at the top you will notice there's a dedicated section for the earbuds settings, and we are going to be using this a lot throughout this video, so make sure you know where it is and how to get there. Now there is a little hack to get there a little bit quicker, which I'm also going to show you. Now, if you hold your finger down on your home screen and go to Widgets, you can go to the Galaxy Buds app right here, and then you can add one of these widgets to your home screen.

Just make sure that you have room for it. And if you don't, and your phone is already fully set up with widgets and things like that, you could add it to a stack. So if you hold your finger down on an existing widget, go to Create Stack or Edit Stack, swipe all the way to the end, and then hit the plus. And then you can add the Galaxy Buds widget here. So I'm going to go with this one because this is the right size for that particular stack. And there we go. So this little button here will allow you to switch between the ANC modes very quickly, but if you tap the top of this widget, it will jump straight into the settings. So it's a nice little shortcut.

PERFECT THE FIT

And now that that is done, let's move on to tip number two. You have to put the Buds in your ears for this one. Just place them in your ears the natural way that you would. Don't adjust them or twist them. Just place them in and check that they're comfortable. And now, if you jump into the Buds settings using the shortcut you've just created, you can scroll down and go to Sound Quality and Effects. And right here is where you're going to find the Earbuds fit test. If you go to this and hit Start, it will play a tone in your ears to check if the seal created by the ear tip is the perfect fit for your ear or not.

Now, if you see something pop up, you might be tempted to just adjust the earbud in your ear and repeat the test, and that actually can return the result you're looking for. However, what I recommend you do is actually talk a little bit, maybe even chew some gum or something, because then what will happen is the earbuds will fall into their natural position within your ear, and then run the test again. If you still get the same result, that's when you want to think about changing the ear tip.

THE VERY IMPORTANT TIP…TIP

And I know it sounds simple, but there is a bit of a trick to it. So let me show you that. So if you find yourself in a situation where you're going to have to change the silicone tip on the end of the earbud, here's how you do it successfully without completely destroying or ripping the existing ear tip. What you want to do first is turn it fully inside out so that it looks like this. Now, once you've done that, you want to grab this lower part of the silicone.

Grab it as far down the stem as you possibly can and pull it from here. Now the ear tips actually lock in beneath the surface of the earbuds this year, so it creates an even better seal, and that's why they're so difficult to take off. Just make sure you do it using that technique, and that way you can test the different tips to find the appropriate size without damaging them. So there we go. It turns out my right ear requires a smaller silicone tip than my left. Okay, so that's the very fundamental stuff out of the way.

SOME SOUND ADVICE

Now let me show you how to make your Galaxy Buds 4 or 4 Pro sound even better. Once again, we're going to jump into the settings for the Buds within the Settings menu. Again, we're going to scroll down to Sound Quality and Effects. And then here is where we go to the Advanced quality options. And at the top of this page is a setting you should absolutely, 100%, turn on on day one. It is the UHQ audio quality.

This essentially unlocks Samsung's own high-res audio codec designed specifically to work with Samsung audio devices like your brand-new earbuds. So if you're already happy with how the earbuds sounded before switching on UHQ, you will be even happier. And if you stick around, I'm going to share with you guys my custom EQ, which I believe makes them sound even better, especially if you're into more of the heavy bassline types of music.

VOICE PICK UP UPGRADE

And let's move on to the next one within the earbud settings. Once again, we're going to go back to Sound Quality and Effects. We're going to go to Advanced quality options. And underneath the UHQ audio setting, you will find Samsung's Super wideband speech feature, which will be switched off by default.

If you leave this off, the audio quality that people will hear from your earbuds when they phone you or when you're on a conference call will literally be halved. So this doubles the quality of your voice, and I don't see any reason why you wouldn't want to switch this on. So switch on Super wideband speech on day one.

UNDERSTAND THE AUTO-SWITCH

Let's jump back into the settings for the earbuds. And right here at the top, staring you right in the face, is a feature that you might actually overlook. And it is a pretty awesome feature, so let me explain what it does and how to set it up. Where you see Auto switch to ambient sound, if you tap on this, now here is where you'll find two options that could be very, very useful. So if you enable Voice detection, when you start to speak, the earbuds will auto switch into ambient mode so that you can have a conversation with the person you're speaking to and actually hear what they're saying. That could be very handy. However, if you do like to sing along to your music when you're on your own, you probably shouldn't switch this setting on. Now, one scenario where you absolutely should switch this on is when you're on a flight or something like that, because when they're bringing the drinks round and the snacks, you can just start speaking, and it will auto toggle into ambient mode so you can actually hear what they're saying to you.

Now, the next one, which I highly recommend you switch on straight away, especially if you're the type of person who likes to go jogging or cycling with your earbuds, is this one: Siren detection. So with this on, your earbuds will be listening for sirens—for example, police cars, ambulances, fire alarms, those kinds of things—and it will allow those particular types of sounds to switch your Buds into ambient mode. And there is another little hidden setting here, just beneath the two, which is very useful as well when you are on phone calls: Switch to ambient mode. This is good because you'll be able to hear the sound of your own voice. It kind of reduces that sort of boomy effect that you get inside your ears when you're talking on a phone call. I do think it improves the voice call experience. So yeah, you might want to test it out and see if you prefer it too.

UNLOCK MORE MODES

Staying within the Buds settings, there is something I need to make you aware of. When you toggle between modes using the Buds stems, it will actually switch between noise-cancelling and Ambient mode, and that's it. So that one right there in the middle—the Adaptive mode that adjusts on the fly to the surrounding noise in your environment—isn't accessible unless you open the app and switch to it here. You can also do it from your widget on your home screen. You just have to remember what the icon looks like. It's this one with the person with the little lines. So this actually is a pretty cool feature that you need to be aware of. And let me show you now how to access it even easier than having to go into the app or use a widget, and you'll only need to do this once.

So, back within the app, if we go to Earbud controls at the top, this is the page where you can take control of your controls. And the default controls are very basic, and most people might never need to change these. But let me show you this on the right earbud, just for example, because I am right-handed. If you tap where it says Switch noise controls, go to the noise controls, and tap on this. Right here is where you can add the Adaptive mode to be part of the pinch and hold gestures to enable it. As you would expect, you just highlight the box and hit Done. And if you want to, you can turn noise controls off completely, which, if you're power-conscious, is a mode you might want to use from time to time. So now that that's been set up properly, when I pinch and hold the earbud, it will switch between all four of the available noise-cancelling modes instead of just the two that most people will have access to.

A LITTLE ASSISTANCE

Here's another tip for improving how you use the earbuds. If we go back into Earbud controls again, let's go to the left controls. You'll notice they're set to the same as the right controls. And if you are right-handed, I'd recommend you keep your noise controls on the right side—and vice versa if you're left-handed, which means we can free up the left-hand side to do something completely different. So if you go to the left controls, you can choose whether you want to map this to a digital assistant like Google Gemini, the brand new Bixby with Perplexity, or if you want to, you can even use one of the Samsung apps. Now, I've found that this mindfulness app from Samsung is brilliant for trying to get to sleep or just relaxing. And if you want to customise this, you can hit the little settings to the side and change it to another Samsung app, which you might find useful.

So if you are on holiday, you could use the Interpreter, or the Voice recorder if you want to record meetings. And if Spotify is your streaming service of choice, you can choose that here. Just be aware of the fact that Spotify doesn't offer high-res audio, which is a bit disappointing, really. I think it's because so many people don't realise that they're getting lower streaming quality, and because of that, probably Spotify won't ever change, and so we would have people complain about it. Anyway, moving on: if we go back one step and go to the digital assistant (I set it as Google), there will be some permissions that pop up, and with this set up, you could actually just start a Gemini conversation using the pinch gesture on the left earbud.

PLAN AHEAD

Here is another little setting that you might not want to switch on, but you might find some scenarios where it could be useful: Head gestures. So if you go to this, with this enabled, you can answer calls by nodding, and you can cancel calls by shaking your head. The problem with this is you might end up accepting a call that you didn't want to accept, or you might reject a call that you didn't want to reject.

So I would suggest only switching it on when you know that you can't use the gestures, but you are expecting a call, and that way you can kind of be ready. For example, if you're in the gym lifting weights, or your hands are dirty while you're cooking, or your hands are busy, and things like that. I'm sure you can think of some more scenarios, but yeah, just be aware of this. You don't necessarily have to use it.

TALK TO ME

Let's get into some of those more well-hidden features within the settings. If you scroll down, you will see a section called Advanced features. Tap on this. Right here is where you can enable Read notifications aloud, which can be extremely useful, can also save time, and can also be extremely annoying from time to time. And that is exactly why you need to do this. At the top, you can choose whether you want the notifications to be brief or detailed, so you can select that there. But more importantly, underneath you'll see the option to customise for individual apps. Tap on this. This is an absolute must if you're going to use this feature. Go through all of the apps that you do not want read out in your ears and switch them all off. For example, I get so many emails—if I left Gmail on, I would be interrupted continuously whilst listening to music, so there's no point in that being on in my opinion.

Messages I don't mind, and WhatsApps I don't mind either. Maybe my security alarm is a good one to leave on. If something kicks off whilst I'm listening to music and I'm away from the house, I might want to know about that. And maybe I'll set this to detailed so I know exactly what's happening. So you get the idea: go through your apps, switch off everything that you don't want read out, and choose whether you want it to be brief or detailed. And there we go. You've done it once. You don't have to do it again unless you install a new app. This is going to be important to you.

I’M LISTENING

Here is another advanced feature to look at on day one. If you scroll down the settings menu for your earbuds and go to Advanced features again, surprisingly, this feature is actually switched off. It is In-ear detection. And essentially, it gives you control of the wear-detect sensors in the earbuds. So by default, when you take the Buds out, and you're on a phone call, it will switch to the phone's earpiece and microphones, which is cool. But while playing, the media is actually switched off. So if you are the type of person who listens to podcasts or audiobooks, I think this feature is one you want to switch on, because as soon as you take one of the earbuds out, it will auto-pause the media until you put it back in again.

And here's my opinion on this: if someone's talking to you or about you, you might want to take out an earbud. For example, if you're at the gym and someone's being annoying or something like that, you might want to take out an earbud to hear what they're saying, and you don't want to miss a key part of your podcast or the audiobook that you're listening to. Yeah, I don't know where I'm going with this, but you get the idea. If this sounds like something that might happen to you—or has happened to you—yeah, switch this on. So when you take one out, they'll know that you're paying attention.

DON’T BREAK YA NECK

let's do another quick advanced feature within the settings page. Scroll back down to Advanced features, and then here you will see the Neck stretch reminders. If you're the type of person who spends a lot of time staring at their phone—which is a lot of people, if we're being very honest—if you enable this, this will start the calibration process, and then it will give you reminders from time to time when you should be stretching your neck a little bit. Once you've set that up, whenever the phone feels like you've been staring at it for too long, it will tell you to stretch your neck a little bit.

SYNC UP

Let's stay in Advanced features for this other little bonus feature. If you go into the Labs section, you will see that there's the option for Gaming mode, and it's greyed out. Now, you might be wondering why this is greyed out, and it is because the UHQ codec is enabled right now. So if you are a gamer and minimal latency in your audio is more important to you than the sound quality itself, you need to go back to Sound quality and effects. And then in the Advanced quality options, switch off UHQ. Now you have to go all the way back again to Advanced features, and in Labs, and in here you can enable Gaming mode. This brings down the quality of the audio, but also brings down the lag on the audio significantly. So your gunshots and things like that, when you pull the trigger, will be perfectly in time with the animation.

360 / SPATIAL / ATMOS SOUND

Here is another setting that you need to be familiar with from time to time, and it is this. If you go into the settings, once again, go to Sound quality and effects at the top of this page. You probably spotted it earlier: the 360 audio feature. Now, the only time you'd really want to use this is when you are listening to 360 audio via one of the streaming services. The only problem with finding these kinds of tracks is the fact that all of the different companies call them something else. So we've got Dolby Atmos, we've got spatial audio, we've got immersive audio, you've got 360 Reality Audio. So, for example, in Tidal, if you type in Dolby Atmos, you'll find entire albums and playlists with Dolby Atmos support. The 360 format will work perfectly there. And you might feel tempted to use this for watching movies, but there is, in fact, a better way to get a similar—actually, maybe a better—effect when watching movies. And that's what I'm about to show you next.

MORE IMMERSIVE MOVIE SOUND

So on your home screen, if you swipe down from the top right corner, you get your quick settings. These are the default ones. I've played with the layout a little bit here. What you want to do is hit the pen at the top and then tap Add control at the bottom of the screen. Here, if you scroll down, you will find, eventually, the sound menu, and you'll notice the Dolby Atmos feature is not added to your quick settings yet. So if you tap on this, that adds it to your quick settings.

You can resize it if you want to, so it's easier to find. And whenever you're watching movies now, you can simply swipe down from the top right corner and enable Dolby Atmos. And this is definitely more well-suited to Atmos formats. The 360 audio will work on pretty much anything, but this particular calibration was designed with Dolby, so this one might be more accurate—and is fantastic for movies too.

CUSTOM LEVELS

So this next tip is going to be extremely useful for you, especially if your ears have taken a bit of a hit over the years. Maybe you party too hard. But even if you haven't, you still might want to take a look at this. So if you scroll down, go to Accessibility. There is a feature here called Adapt sound. If you enable this and then tap where it says Adapt sound: if you want to do this the quick way, you can just choose your age group. And then if you want to test it, just go to the settings, and then you will hear the difference that it makes just by using these two buttons down here.

However, I don't recommend you do this. The better option is to do the Add personalised sound profile. This essentially is a very thorough hearing test, so make sure you set some time aside to do this. And once you complete the hearing test, this bit of software will detect any deficiencies in your hearing abilities and create an EQ to balance that all out so that you can hear the music properly with your own custom EQ. I'm not going to do it right now because it does take quite a while.

AURACAST AUDIO SHARING

This is something that's kind of a rare use case, but it's worth knowing because you do have it in your Buds settings. If you scroll down, you'll see the option to Listen to Auracast here. You can actually broadcast your own audio as well. So if you share at the bottom, whatever you're listening to on your phone can be shared with another pair of Galaxy Buds or another pair of earbuds. This supports Auracast. And if you want to broadcast your voice via Auracast, you can do that too. Just by toggling across to Voice, they will need the password in order to tap into your Auracast broadcast.

But let's say, for example, you've got a group of friends with you, and you're in another country, and you're the tour guide. You can actually speak to all of them using Auracast, but the only limitation is that their earbuds must support Auracast. Anyway, you might find you never use it, but at least you know you have it, and now you know what it does. Remember, you can also log in to someone else's Auracast broadcast using the Listen feature right here.

THE EQUALIZER

I did promise you guys my own custom EQ, and also I want to show you how to use the EQ. If you go into the Buds settings, go to Sound quality and effects at the top. Here you see Equaliser, and right now it is set to Custom. This right here is my own custom EQ. I have spent a number of days fine-tuning this to perfection for the types of music that I listen to. If you do like kind of bass-heavy stuff, I recommend you give this a go.

If you just want a simple EQ that sounds really, really good, Dynamic is definitely one of the best. But for those of you who know what they're doing when it comes to EQ audio, nothing is stopping you from creating your own one. I do wish they would allow you to save your custom presets, but at this point, you only get one.

Unboxing

this is a really nice box, probably the nicest I've seen on this channel. And I do believe this will open up like this. I'm liking this presentation so far. There are a few compartments here. So we'll go through them one at a time. We have what I believe is the cables, charging cables. And there's more than one. So maybe there is more than one device in this box that requires cables. These are actually wired earbuds. And they're quite nice ones too, that they are in fact the classic earbuds with the inline remote and microphone built in here with usb-C on the other side. Now, right here, I believe we have the wireless charger. Yes, this is a magnetic wireless charging puck. And the Infinix Note 60 ultra charges wirelessly at 50W, which some flagships charge out via a wire. And this can do it wirelessly. So that's pretty incredible. Let's see what else is in the box on this side.

So I've got a feeling that this is going to be a phone case. But it's not just a case. It's also a screen protector. Have a look at this as well as a little install guide with the wet wipes and dry wipes inside. Let's get a look at the case itself. This is kind of a hybrid aramid fiber with a plastic edging. So that really is quite nice. And it's got this kind of v shaped aramid fiber pattern on the back, which is really cool. And this gives you a good idea of how big the camera module is on this phone. Next out of the box is this. This is the charging brick. The charging speed on this one is an incredible 100W, which means you could use this charger to recharge laptops and other devices that require a bit more power. And that is it for the left-hand side of the box.

Let's see what's in the right-hand side. What we have right here is a Pininfarina desk ornament designed to look kind of like a car. And this is in fact a very stylish wireless charging dock, which this fits into. So underneath it, run the cable through the back here and then plug it into the wireless charger. Then you can just place your phone on top of that and get your 50 watt wireless charging on the go. And there's some really premium materials used here, and a nice bit of branding there on this aramid fibre. It's got this really nice solid weight to it to. And the last thing on the right-hand side of the box, I believe, is this. This just might be the most unique SIM ejector tool that I've ever seen. It kind of looks like a car.

First Look at the Phone

You'll notice straight away some of the key specs for this phone are on this little cover. And don't worry, I'm going to highlight all of the main need-to-know things about this phone. This is truly unique amongst phones right now, so this looks really, really nice. The back of it itself looks like aramid fibre, a very tight weave and are actually four colours. There's this one, the Torino Black. There's also the Monza red, Amalfi blue and Roma silver. There are some really nice details on this phone, and the material is also very, very premium.

The frame is a high-strength aluminium alloy polished with high purity. 205 zirconium is nicely rounded at the corners and even at the back. The volume rocker is located on the right side. It feels nice, and then you've got the red accent button for the power key, and then beneath it is a very unique little sensor. Now, you might assume that this would be a camera button, but actually, it's not. I'll explain what this is in a moment. And on the left side, we've got the Pininfarina branding, plus an additional Mappable button. And up top, you'll see the speaker grille, micro and infrared blaster, and a bit of JBL branding because they have tuned the speakers on this device for Infinix, and yes, it does have stereo speakers and that bit of glass on the back there is so nice and something that some people don't know about Pininfarina. They didn't just design Ferraris; they've also had involvement in other sports cars like Alfa Romeos.

Something that I really like about this camera module design is how everything is all hidden underneath that one piece of glass. There are no extra bits and pieces. It's all just under that one piece of glass. And I don't know if you'll be able to see it on camera, but this actually has a little bit of a red tint to the glass. It's also got these really nice little ridges down the side. The glass, as well, which looks really cool, adds to the premium look of the phone. And of course, there are a couple of hidden features which I'm going to show you in a minute. Yeah, this is really, really nice.

The Case and Accessories

Now, before I get logged in and show you guys all of those unique features that separate this phone from the other flagship phones out there right now, let's try on the case real quick. Now, sometimes cases can really ruin the look of a phone, but this case right here looks like it's actually part of the phone. And something you should know. The phone itself doesn't have magnets, but the case does. So now with this on, you can use magnetic attachments like this one that I have from Peak Design. This is a little magnetic kickstand. So that will just lock in there. And then you can kick the legs out. It does also magnetises onto the charging dock as well.

Software and Standout Features

Let me walk you through some of the software aspects, and then we'll get into those standout features, including that Wolverine one. I know how you feel about it, Wolverine. But the first thing to note about the Infinix Note 60 Ultra is that it is running on a MediaTek Dimensity 8400 Ultimate chip. This is the first of its kind. It uses all large cores. It's designed for power and speed, just like a Ferrari. This is backed up with 12 gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of storage.

The software itself is highly customizable. You do have built-in Infinix AI. This kind of works with ChatGPT. You can, of course, have Gemini on here. There are so many customisation features, including the ability to map that one tap button on the side. Now, on the other side, this little area, which I showed you guys when unboxed, is in fact a heart rate sensor. So you can set this up to take measurements and keep tabs on your health without having to wear a ring or watch to do it. There are a lot of personalisation options here which are really, really nice. You got 3D effects and all that good stuff. You can customise the Always-on and all of the lockscreen stuff. Very similar to some very popular phones out there right now.

Hidden Camera Module Features

Now remember how I said this camera module has some hidden features? Well, check this out. If I shake the phone, it shows the time. There is a dot matrix display built into the camera module, and you can use it to show various notifications. You can have it show where music is playing when you're using the AI, and if you want to, you can even have little animations on there. When you jump into the Matrix Studio and go to Lighting Effect, you can choose the kind of animation you want.

Now, something else that is really cool that you can do here with this area is you can actually play games with the matrix mini play feature. You use the built-in gyroscope to move your little spaceship back and forth and shoot the little aliens. It's essentially Space Invaders, and there is another little hidden feature within the camera module. There is a little Knight Rider light that runs underneath the camera module, kind of like a tail light on a car, and you can use this for notification alerts. It will also show when you're charging the phone and when you're wirelessly charging the phone.

Camera Hardware

But let's talk about the real highlight of the camera module. It is, of course, the hardware underneath. So the main camera here uses a 200 megapixel sensor from Samsung, which utilizes 16 in 1 pixel binning. So this essentially uses all of the information from that two and two megapixel sensor combines it together to create better images. So here are some samples from that camera.

Something exclusive to the ultra variant of this phone is the periscope zoom. So you can go 100 X with the periscope and get fantastic detail. And I will apologise for this really badly painted AR two-unit, but you get an idea of the kind of quality you can get from this camera, and it will use AI to upscale. I'll be honest with you guys, Periscope Zooms might seem like a bit of a gimmick, but they do come in handy. There's been plenty of times when I've been at airports that I've wanted to read the timetable from far away, and the scenario is that that way is super, super useful. The selfie camera also has an impressive sensor. It is a 32 megapixel sensor.

Self-Healing Battery

Now it's time for me to tell you about the Wolverine feature on this phone, which I think might be the absolute highlight of this device, and it is in regard to its battery. So you already know 100 watt wired charging, 50 watt wireless charging, and even reverse wireless charging are fantastic specs, but this phone has something that I've never heard of before, and although Infinix don't state that is a world's first, I do believe it just might be one of the concerns some people have about silicon carbon batteries and super fast charging speeds is that they can degrade quickly because you're pushing them to their limits, but not on this phone.

Apparently, this phone is quite the opposite. The battery in the Note 60 ultra actually recovers 1% of battery for every 200 charge cycles, and that's because of the type of battery it's using. The battery type here is titled Silicon carbon negative electrode battery. The silicon content is 10% versus 5% on pretty much all of the other batteries that you see out there today of this type, essentially doubling the amount of silicon. And it is this that separates this phone's battery from pretty much every other phone right now. And that is what this phone has in common with Wolverine. It does self-heal its battery.

Full Satellite Network Use

There is another awesome feature hidden within the settings, and this again separates this phone from pretty much every other phone out there right now. If you go to satellite network, this phone, unlike other phones that can connect to satellites for emergencies, can be used entirely via a satellite network connection.

So Infinix have partnered up with Three in order to make the most of this particular feature; you will have to get a SIM from them. But if you do, this basically means you can use this phone anywhere. So if you live somewhere with zero signal all of the time, this literally would be the perfect phone for you. And the satellite connection is powered by Infinix Direct to sell technology and it's very, very unique to this phone and the other Infinix Note phone.

Price and Final Thoughts

And here's that bigger news that I mentioned in the intro of this video. This isn't priced in line with Ferrari stuff. If the rumours are true, apparently this phone will retail in the US for under $600, which is kind of incredible for the cutting-edge tech that this phone has, the style that it has and the power and speed that it has. So when it comes to ultra phones, this one has kind of raised the bar.

Samsung recently invited me for an early briefing on their latest release. This is the Galaxy A57, and there are ten major upgrades that you need to know about. Let’s dive in.

1. A Superior Display

The display has received a significant upgrade. Samsung has now equipped it with a Super AMOLED Plus panel featuring a 120Hz refresh rate. It offers 1,200 nits of brightness in High Brightness Mode, with an impressive peak brightness of 1,900 nits.

Samsung has also managed to shrink the bezels all the way around. Most noticeably, the bottom bezel is now 0.8mm thinner than its predecessor.

2. Significant Performance Boost

There has been a pretty significant performance boost this year thanks to the upgraded Exynos 1680 chipset. This is a four-nanometer, octa-core chip. The CPU performance is up by 12.5%, the GPU by 13.8%, and the NPU has seen a massive 42% jump.

Additionally, when it comes to random access memory, the LPDDR4 version has been leveled up from 5 to 5X.

3. Redesigned Camera Module

The camera module itself has undergone a very interesting redesign. It now features a clear, halo-like effect around the lenses, which looks great when the light hits it.

4. Advanced Photography (The ISP)

The camera performance has been leveled up thanks to the upgraded Image Signal Processor (ISP), which is part of the new chipset. One of the primary upgrades we can expect is enhanced low-light performance.

While it still features the 50-megapixel primary sensor with HDR and Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), the shutter speed has been significantly reduced. This means when you press the shutter button—even in lower light conditions—the phone takes the photo incredibly fast, much quicker than before.

5. Macro and Ultra-Wide Improvements

The macro lens is 5 megapixels and there is a 12-megapixel ultra-wide lens, just like last year. however, you will see improvements in image quality thanks, again, to the upgraded ISP.

6. Battery, Charging, and Cooling

Here is something quite interesting: the battery capacity remains the same and the charging speed is still 45W. The difference this year is that the cable provided in the box finally supports the full 45W speed. Additionally, there is a new vapor cooling chamber that is 13% larger than before.

7. Lighter and Thinner Design

Something that will be instantly noticeable if you hold this and an A56 side-by-side is that the A57 is 19g lighter, despite having the same size battery.

This is another massive change this year: while you might not notice it immediately, the phone is 0.5mm thinner. It is also shorter and slimmer overall. In fact, this is the thinnest Galaxy A50-series phone to date.

8. Connectivity Upgrades

There has been a significant connectivity upgrade across the board. Wi-Fi 6 has been upgraded to Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.3 has been upgraded to Bluetooth 6.0 on the A57.

I also really like the design of the frame; they have contoured the edge near the power button and volume rocker. The entire frame is aluminum, and the back is made of Corning Gorilla Glass Victus Plus.

9. Bixby 4.0 and Perplexity Integration

Something else new to the A57 is that Bixby has been upgraded to version 4.0. It now features Perplexity integration, which means you can ask Bixby to open an app, start your washing machine or dishwasher, or even check what is in your fridge. It can handle all of that seamlessly.

10. Long-Term Support and Storage

In true Samsung fashion, you get six years of security updates and six years of software updates, which means this device can go all the way up to Android 22.

Furthermore, the Galaxy A57 is the first phone in the A50-series in the UK to be available with 512GB of storage and 12GB of RAM.

Color Options

The color options available this year are:

• Awesome Icy Blue: Which looks somewhat like white.

• Awesome Lilac: Definitely the brightest color in the lineup.

• Awesome Gray: My personal favorite.

• Awesome Navy: An all-new addition for this year.

So, there we go. Those are the upgrades you can expect on the Galaxy A57. If you want to check out the latest prices and deals, I will have some affiliate links below this video. I appreciate you guys watching. See you in the next one! Nice.

Would you like me to create an image of the new Galaxy A57 in "Awesome Gray" based on these descriptions?

GETTING AROUND

So this is likely how your phone is going to look on day one. You should see the Settings app icon. If you don’t see that, another way to get to Settings is to swipe down from the top right corner and hit Settings. Once within the settings, if you scroll down to Display and then scroll down again, you will find the navigation bar options.

Now, some people will find the buttons more convenient, and this is actually what the Galaxy will default to. However, if you are coming over from iOS, you will be much more familiar with the swipe gestures. It is exactly the same as the iOS swipe gestures. So you need to make a decision. Are you team buttons, or are you team swipe gestures? So pick your poison, and let’s move on to tip number two.

UPDATED INTELLIGENCE

Check out this next setting. This will help you in the future, so you might as well do it now. So let’s jump into the settings again. And this time, right here at the top, you’ll see the Galaxy AI menu. If we go into that… Now, when you look at this, if there are any arrows pointing downwards next to any of these AI features, that means you don’t have the AI packs installed. I have already downloaded and installed all of my AI packs. The question is, have you?

And if you haven’t, and you do see the arrows next to any of these, then download those straight away. Now, for those of you who are very security conscious and you want nothing to do with online AI, on the same page, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you can tick this box right here. And this tells your Galaxy to process your data only on the device and not via a server.

THE LATEST EVERYTHING

This is very, very basic, but very, very important. So you should have the Samsung Galaxy Store app on your home screen. If you don’t see it, you can swipe up and search for it here just by typing in Galaxy Store. Or just scroll through the apps in your app drawer to find it. Once you do find it, open it up. And at the top of the home screen here, you will see Updates. And right now I have two, but if you got a brand new phone, you’re probably going to see way more than that.

And some of them are going to be critical updates to improve the overall performance of your Samsung device. And these don’t always happen automatically for you straight away. So if you want the best, start with your new Galaxy device, go to the Updates section and hit Update all in the top right corner. And you will see what I mean about the important apps that will be listed here. Some of them will be security-related, some will be AI-related, but all of them are important.

MORE STORES

This one’s quite similar to that last one. If you’re coming over from iOS, something you’re gonna have to wrap your head around is that there is more than just one app store. So you’ve got the Galaxy Store and then you’ve got the Google Play Store. The Play Store is the one that you would use for pretty much everything, and the Galaxy Store is for the Galaxy-exclusive apps. So this time we’re going into the Google Play Store. We’re going to hit the icon in the top right corner. That should be a picture of you, or whatever icon you set up. And in here, if you go to Manage apps and device, it will scan the apps that you have installed on the device.

And if you tap here, you’ll see all of the updates that are available. Again, on day one, there’s going to be some really important security features and AI features and software upgrades that you need to install straight away to make sure your device is running as fast and securely as it possibly can. So just hit Update over here, and let your phone do its thing. And again, this doesn’t happen automatically for everybody, so I recommend you take manual control over this on day one, just to be safe.

EYE’S ON

If you like reading on your phone, whether that be websites or books or whatever, I think you’re going to appreciate this. If you go into Settings, scroll down and go to Display, and in here, if you scroll down, you will see this Screen timeout option. And so if you go to this, this should be set to 30s. That’s really the sweet spot. I’ve set it to ten minutes just for the video. But here at the bottom of this screen, you will find one of the well-hidden but very, very useful settings, and it’s this: Keep screen on while viewing.

So what you’re doing when you switch this on is you’re allowing the front camera to register when you are looking at the display—for example, if you’re reading a book or something like that. This feature will keep the display on for you, so you’re not constantly having to tap the screen to keep it awake.

UNLOCK EASIER

If you’ve just switched to a new phone, one of the things you should really streamline first on day one is the ease of use. And one of the best ways to do that is this: Go into the Settings, scroll all the way down, go to the Security and Privacy section here. On this page, if you scroll down, you will see Screen lock and biometrics. I’m guessing you set up a PIN number and probably added a fingerprint, as the phone does prompt you to do that when you first set it up. But what you might not have done is set up multiple fingerprints.

And if you haven’t, this is my recommendation for you. Go to the Fingerprints section down here. At this point I’ve only registered one digit, and that’s my thumb on my right hand. Here’s what you should do: add another fingerprint and add the thumb on your other hand, and also add your first finger on your dominant hand. So you have three ways to unlock the device. Just go to Register and then scan that fingerprint. Once you’ve done that, hit Add fingerprint again and then register your other thumb or finger.

PRO UNLOCK QUICK TIP

So no matter which way you pick up the phone now, you can unlock it very quickly. Here’s where it gets a bit more pro. And here is one of the tips that even some of the pros don’t know. What I recommend you do first, just to make sure this is going to be easier for you, is name each one of the fingerprints. So this is my thumb on my right hand… this one is the first finger right hand, so I’m just going to call it first… and then the fingerprint three is the thumb on my left hand.

And now it all makes sense as to why I recommend you do this. When you tap on one of these fingerprint scans, you see the option to Improve accuracy. So if you are a tradesman or a chef and, for whatever reason, your fingertips are very, very tough and the skin is thick, what you can do here is improve accuracy, and then scan your thumb or finger again to significantly improve the fingerprint reader’s success rate.

CONTINGENCY PLAN

So you got a new phone, and my guess is you don’t want it to get stolen. If it does get stolen, you want to be able to do everything you can to recover it, or at least secure the data on it. And if you don’t do this next step… well, you’re going to be in trouble. So let me show you what I’m talking about. Go into Settings. At the top of this page, you should see the Samsung account menu. Tap on this. Now, if you do see this banner at the top, I highly recommend you add recovery methods. And this should ideally be emails and phone numbers that you have access to off this specific device. And spend a little bit of time setting up your security questions. Once you’ve done that, there is another step to this. Go back to your Samsung account, scroll down, and here you will find the Samsung Find option.

So go to this and make sure that this feature is enabled. This is one of the best ways to keep tabs on the location of your device if you do lose it. Also, all your other Galaxy devices will exist here too, so you can track those down—for example, your buds, your watches, your phones, your tablets, computers, everything. So just for your own peace of mind, set up Samsung Find.

KEY TO POWER

This next tip is for those of you who just want to use the phone as a phone, and you don’t really care that much about the AI and… yeah, you’ll see what I mean. So if you go to the Settings and then scroll down, you will find Advanced features. If you go to this, you will find the Side button menu. And you’ll notice the default settings here: double press for camera, push and hold opens up the AI assistant. Now here’s the thing: there are several ways to wake the assistant, so you don’t necessarily need to have this set as a long push and hold. And if you are a bit more old school, you can switch this to the Power Off menu, which can be very useful when it comes to powering down the device.

Because the out-of-the-box way to power down the device is to hold the volume down and power button together to bring up the power menu. The problem is, sometimes I get it wrong and I push the volume up and take screenshots. So I have a bunch of screenshots on my phone which are not meant to be there. And you can avoid all of that hassle by just changing this setting right here and turning the power key back into what it originally was: a power key.

PAY THE EASY WAY

This next one’s going to be very useful for anyone coming over from an Apple iPhone. So, within the settings menu, go back to Advanced features. Again, go back to the Side button. And this time, where you see Double press, tap on this. Much like the AI feature, there are a lot of ways you can open up the camera on your device without having to double-press the button, so you might actually prefer to remap this button to open up your wallet.

And for me personally, this is the shortcut that I absolutely use the most. So to remap this, just go to Apps at the bottom here. You can then choose the app that you want it to open. It can be anything, but I’m going to choose Google Wallet because that’s where I keep all of my bank cards and my loyalty cards. Now that I set that up, whenever I need to pay for something, I just double-tap and straight away jump straight into my wallet, and I can pay using NFC. And this perfectly sets up the next tip.

NFC and contactless payments

So if you go back into the settings, go to Connections at the top. Here, tap where it says NFC and contactless payments, and underneath, go to Default wallet. So, what you can do here is actually choose what your preferred wallet is. For me, as you know, it is Google Wallet. And with this enabled, what you can do is actually pay without even having to open the app first, just by tapping your phone on an NFC point on the card reader.

But one thing you need to be mindful of is, if you have several bank cards within your Google Wallet, it will use the default one, so you won’t actually get to choose which one it is. But if you have only one that you use, well then, changing this one little setting is going to save you a ton of time.

Someone’s phone is ringing

So I’ve made an entire customisation guide for the Galaxy S26. However, I want to show you this real quick, because this might be one of the first things that you might want to do with your new phone. Go into your settings and then go to Sound and vibration. And here, go to Ringtone.

This is where you discover all of the pre-installed ringtones on your phone. And you’ll notice some “beats” songs up top here. If you scroll down, you will see there are so many, including some classics like this. And if you do have any locally stored music on your device, you can hit the plus in the top right corner and add a custom ringtone. This way, it really is that simple.

FIND YOUR TONE

Let’s say you don’t have any music to choose from, but you do know what song you want, or what notification sound you want, from maybe a movie or something like that. There is a really easy way to get it on your phone, so let me show you how to do that really, really quickly. Go into the Google Play Store. Type in Zedge. This is an app that I’ve been using for years. Install this. There are a lot of ads on there, so I’ll give you that sort of heads up in advance. They, of course, will remove the ads if you’re willing to pay. Once you open up Zedge, skip past the ads, swipe back when you get to the sign-up page, and here you have access to all of these in your library. So if you go to Ringtones, you can type in whatever you want.

Let’s say “K-pop demon hunter”. That’s very popular right now. You’ll see all of the wallpapers, the video wallpapers, and the ringtones, and then you can simply click on one of these, download it, and instantly set it up as your ringtone. It is that easy. And the same thing applies for notification sounds as well. So if you do want custom notification sounds, here is where you’ll find them. And they really do have a fantastic library of wallpapers and sounds. So yeah, you can thank me for this one later. Just be wary of the ads.

KNOW YOUR NOTIFICATIONS

If you find yourself ever missing important notifications, then I think you’re going to like this next setting. Go into Settings. We’re going to go to Sound and vibration again, and in here we’re going to go to Notification vibration.

There are a lot of different patterns to choose from. What I recommend you do is go through these and pick the one that immediately stands out to you. Some of these are aggressive. Some of them are more subtle. What you need to do is pick the one that will be most identifiable to you when it’s in your pocket.

BEEF UP YOUR SECURITY

This next one is a very important step. Go to your settings. Go to Security and Privacy. If you see any red flags—or in this case, orange flags like this one—I recommend you tap on that and switch it on. This is Samsung’s app protection feature. And essentially, what it does is it scans any apps that you might be installing before they’re installed.

So if, for any reason, you do have to download an APK from somewhere else on the internet and not from the Galaxy Store or the Google Play Store, that’s when this will be very, very useful. It will help protect your phone. It just adds an extra layer of security on top of Google security and Samsung’s own Knox security. So I do recommend you switch this on. And once you’ve done that, you’re good to go to the next tip.

MORE EFFORTLESS WRITING

Here’s a tip that’s going to help you every time, and any time you need to write anything on the Galaxy S26. So I’m just going to open up a notepad app, like this. And then straight away, you’re going to see the Galaxy Keyboard. Now this will work perfectly well on day one, but you can actually improve the performance, and specifically when it comes to predicting what it is you’re trying to write. Go into Settings, and in here you will see Predictive text.

Make sure that you have downloaded the language pack for this and switched it on. Once you’ve done that, the next step might be one of the ones that the pros miss, and it is this: Auto spell check. This is switched off straight out of the box. If you turn this on, whenever you misspell a word, it will auto-correct it for you.

WRITING ASSIST…ON YOUR WRIST

Here’s another tip when it comes to writing anything on your phone. Jump back into your settings. Go to General Management. This is another way you can get to the keyboard settings. On this page, if you go to Samsung Keyboard settings, and then here at the top, if you go to Writing assist, this should be switched on. But this isn’t what I want to show you. Hidden at the bottom of this page is a setting called Suggested replies.

This is switched off, and it’s going to be extremely useful for you if you have a Galaxy Watch, but it also allows the keyboard to predict what you might say next based on your past conversations. Which, if you’re on the move or you’re running or something, and you see it on your watch, you can reply in just one touch as opposed to many. And when you receive an annoying text message that your answer is always the same to, well then it should be able to predict that too. And again, this is one of those settings that a lot of the pros probably don’t even know.

EMBRACE THE DARK

Now, if you’ve just got one of these phones, you might be wondering why all of my settings menus are black and not white like yours might be right now. Well, that’s because I’ve set it up in dark mode. And the reason why I believe this is better is because it’s more power efficient. And I also think it looks better. And in my opinion, it’s a bit more gentle on the eyes. So if you do want to switch on dark mode, here’s how you can do it. Within your settings menu, scroll down, go to Display, and at the top, you will see the option to switch between Light and Dark.

Now, one of the cool things you can do here: if you go to the dark mode settings and set it to switch on a schedule, so when sunset hits, it will switch to dark mode, and when sunrise hits, it will switch back to light mode. But if you’re all about power saving, then you should definitely use dark mode. And whilst we’re here, a couple of settings that you should also take a look at are these: adaptive brightness (which I have to switch off for this video just while I’m filming), and also extra brightness can be very useful if you live in a sunny country… which is not a problem for me because I live in England. Now, honestly, it’s actually quite nice sometimes, but you’ve got to be real careful about what you post online these days.

STAY OPTIMISED

Now you might not realise this, but sometimes your phone’s been on for far too long, and it starts to build a backlog of little processes and things that could slow it down in the long run. And actually, there’s a feature built into the Samsung phone that can help correct this at the best possible times according to your schedule. So here’s how you can use this feature: Go into your settings and then go to Device care. Scroll down, and this is where you’ll find Auto optimisation. Go to this and enable it, and set it to Restart when needed.

And if you want to be more specific, you can tick this box here and choose when it happens on a weekly basis. For now, I would recommend you set it to When needed. And it’s not going to randomly shut down while you’re using it, so don’t worry about that. It will only happen when you’re not using the device, and it will reboot itself. And you just need to put your PIN number in again, and that’s it. It essentially resets the phone so that everything can run as quickly as possible. So thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video. Of course, there’s a couple more tips still to go, and these ones are extremely useful in my opinion.

FIND YOUR APPS EASIER

So first of all, when you get a new phone, you will have some pre-installed apps. If you’ve transferred all of your apps to an old phone… When you swipe up from the bottom of the home screen, this is your app drawer or app tray or whatever you want to call it, and what you will find is that there is no method to the madness here. It tries to organize it so that the apps you use the most are near the top. However, this is a bloody headache when it comes to finding things.

Yes, you can type in down here what you’re looking for. You could even use your voice. But sometimes the old school ways are still the best way. So when you swipe up from the bottom of the screen here, hit the three dots in the top right corner, go to Sort, and change this to Alphabetical order. And this is going to make your apps so much easier to find, because they will be exactly where you expect them to be: in alphabetical order.

ADD PLACES

If you got the Galaxy S26 Ultra—and even if you don’t—I think you’re going to like this feature. But it might be even more important if you do have the Ultra, because you will have the brand-new privacy display. I go into all the advanced settings for that in my first Things to Do video, so definitely check that out after this one. But let me show you why this next setting is important, and how it will improve how you use your phone. Let’s go back into Settings again and back to the Samsung account at the top. Right at the top of this page, you will find Places.

Now this is where you can add your home address, your work address, and any other places that you visit frequently. For example, maybe the gym or something like that. Hit the plus at the top of this screen, add those locations, and try and add as many as you can that are relevant to you. Now, the reason this is important is you can actually set up specific actions to take place when you’re in specific locations. For example, when it comes to configuring the privacy display, you can have it switch on or switch off according to where you are. And if you give the phone some context, it can be even more useful.

Whether you’re a long-time Echo user or just getting started, you know that Alexa is always there to help. But now, it’s time for the next evolution of the smart home experience.

Introducing Amazon Alexa Plus: a smarter, more conversational, and deeply personalized AI assistant designed to do more than just answer questions—it’s here to get things done on your behalf.

Meet the Expert: Molly Wade

To help explain this new era, we spoke with Molly Wade, Product Manager for the Amazon Alexa and Echo team.

"Alexa Plus has been completely redesigned from the ground up," says Wade. "There’s loads of things that it can do now that it couldn't do before. For starters, it’s so much more conversational. You can have a free-flowing, natural conversation without saying 'Alexa' every single time."

According to Wade, the upgrades focus on three key areas:

1. Street Smarts: She can answer questions on virtually any topic with greater intelligence.

2. Personalization: She gets to know you and your family to make recommendations more relevant.

3. Real-World Action: Most importantly, she can take action—from booking tables via OpenTable to managing your favorite music providers.

1. Advanced Home Awareness

Alexa Plus now features a much better understanding of spatial references. It knows where you are in the house and which smart devices are around you, making it easier to move audio between speakers.

User: "Alexa, let’s move it to the left."

Alexa Plus: "Okay."

User: "Alexa, let’s play this everywhere."

Alexa Plus: "Moving your music wherever I can."

This intelligence even extends to your security. You can now ask Alexa Plus to search your Ring doorbell footage for specific events:

• "Did that package get delivered on Monday?"

• "One sec. Yes, I found two package delivery events on Monday the 16th of March..."

2. Effortless Smart Home Routines

Previously, creating a complex smart home routine required a bit of tech-savviness. With Alexa Plus, you can build them in seconds using only your voice. Because it has access to your calendar, photos, and smart tech, it can coordinate your entire morning without you touching your phone.

Example Routine Request:

"Create me a routine for 7 a.m. Turn on the lights and make them white. Turn on the humidifier and the diffuser. Tell me if I need an umbrella. Play me the news."

3. A Smarter Kitchen Assistant

Alexa Plus now understands the dietary preferences of your entire household. By knowing what ingredients you have in your fridge, it can suggest recipes that everyone will enjoy while avoiding things they don’t like.

• Contextual Cooking: If you have guests over, Alexa Plus can cross-reference their dietary needs (like vegetarianism or allergies) with your available ingredients.

• Smart Shopping: If you're missing an ingredient, just ask her to add it to your list. She can even monitor the price and remind you to buy it when the price drops.

• Dining Out: Too tired to cook? Alexa Plus works in tandem with OpenTable to book a reservation at your favorite spot and automatically add it to your calendar.

Availability and Pricing

Privacy and security remain foundational to Alexa Plus. Customers have complete transparency and control over how their data is used.

You can get Alexa+ for free with Prime Membership or sign up for a standalone Subscription£19.99 per month

Early Access began on 19 March. To be among the first to try it, you can purchase a new Echo device or register your interest online to receive an invitation.

I’m kind of a specialist when it comes to this kind of stuff. So let me walk you through 17 killer features and settings that every Samsung Galaxy S26 owner needs to know. And a little side note: if at any point this video feels a bit too advanced, don’t worry, because I’ve made an absolute beginner’s basics guide to the Galaxy S26.

WE WANT PRIVACY

Of course, it is to do with one of Samsung’s most exclusive features to date, and this only applies to the Ultra phone. I am, of course, referring to the privacy display. You should see it in your quick settings. It might be a bit further down. I have customised this, but right now, let me show you how to dial in the perfect settings for your privacy display, so you can toggle it on and off here, and you can change a few of the options. But if you go to details, this will jump straight into the actual settings for the privacy display.

And here’s where you can take it to the next level. So in this section, the conditions for turning on. If you tap on this, you can actually specify what apps you want fully blocked out. So for example, anything related to money might be a good idea. So I highly recommend you go through all of the apps in this list. So for example, authenticator apps are another one that holds sensitive information. You don’t want someone shoulder surfing stealing your security codes. Select all of the ones that hold sensitive information.

Staying within the privacy display settings, there are two more important settings to change on day one, starting with this one pin pattern, password and pop-up notifications. The great thing about these two settings is they will only apply to part of the screen. Showing those passwords or notifications. The apps that you’ve chosen here will actually apply the effect to the entire screen. Anyway, that’s how you set up the privacy display in a custom way that works best for you. And I do have some pro tips regarding the privacy display, which I’m saving for a future video.

PRIVATE POP-UPS

Now we’ve added this extra layer of privacy to our notifications. Here’s another little setting that you might want to play with. So if we go to settings again, go to the notification settings, right here, we’re going to go to notification pop-up style. So the default setting on the Galaxy phones is brief. So it kind of crops the message down quite a lot.

But now that you have the privacy effect, you might as well switch into detail. So you can actually see what people are saying without even having to open the full message. This is of course, personal preference. I do recommend you test it out and see if you prefer it or not, but in my opinion, this is a great way to make the most out of the new privacy display feature.

STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD

This is a standout feature on the Samsung Galaxy phones, and it’s definitely one that I know a lot of sports fans will really, really appreciate. So let’s say you’re into watching football or soccer, if that’s what you want to call it. Now, when you’re watching sports, as you know, you will get the crowd noise, which is nice, but if you’re struggling to hear the voice over the crowd noise, there’s this brand new feature.

If you swipe down from the top right corner called Audio Eraser, this was available with your own videos, but now you can apply this effect to any videos playing on the phone. And if you want to, you can hit the voice Focus. So just be aware of where to find this. Whenever you’re playing a video on the phone, swipe down from the top right corner and you should see the audio raiser at the top.

UPGRADE YOUR DISPLAY

Now, if you’ve got a Galaxy S26 Ultra, you might not realise this, but your phone is actually not set to its optimal setting straight out of the box. So let me show you how to fix that. if you swipe down from the top and go to settings and then scroll down to where you see display on this page, scroll down until you see the screen resolution.

And as you can see, the default setting is full HD plus, which is good enough for a lot of people. But you’ve spent the money on the best phone Samsung has to offer. Why wouldn’t you want to see the display in the best possible way? And to do that, just change this to qHD+. Yes, it will use a little more battery, but remember the chipset inside the phone is more efficient this time and the charging speeds are faster too. So that should help balance it out.

ANOTHER DISPLAY UPGRADE

Here is another display setting to change on day one. Go into your settings, go to display and turn on Adaptive Brightness and also the Adaptive Colour tone. This will shift the colours based on the lighting in your environment, which will improve the visibility of the display dynamically for you with minimal effort required.

IMAGINE AN IMAGE

When it comes to getting a new phone, one of the first things you probably want to do is customise the wallpaper. And Samsung have added a brand new tool, which I do believe you need to know about. So let me show you how to get to this. There are a couple of ways. The easiest one is to pinch the home screen and then go to Wallpaper Style, and then go to Change Wallpapers and here in the Creative AI section, there is a new option called Creative Studio.

Previously, we had the generative tool. And this is where you can create artwork based on these basic prompts. But now with the creative studio you can take it to the next level. So just open up the app, go to Create wallpaper, and you can write exactly what it is you want. Instead of having to use the fixed prompts. So for example, let’s say London in the summertime, and there we go, the first image is created.

But you can take this much further now. So if you go to view prompt and an edit prompt, you can add more descriptive language to this to add more things to it. For example, let’s add King Kong, and there we go. We’ve modified it again and if we want to, we can keep adding more and more text to this prompt to create something truly unique.

if you go to view prompt again and then edit, you can also change the style of the artwork as well. So right now, you’ll see it’s set to mark a drawing. If we tap on that. These are the different styles. So I’m just going to choose a different one and then hit generate. And there we go. We’ve got a 3D piece of art with a gorilla and Big Ben in London in the summer. So definitely play around with this because you can create something truly unique using your own custom prompts.

WHATEVER THE WEATHER

Here is another feature that doesn’t exist on any other phone that I know of just yet. If you pinch the home screen and go to wallpaper and style and then choose your lock screen, which is the image here on the left at the bottom of this page, scroll all the way across and you will see the weather effect. When you apply this. This will ask for your location permissions and if you give it permissions, it can show you the exact weather where you are in the form of an effect on your wallpaper.

And Samsung have made some massive improvements to this effect as well. You will actually notice that some of the raindrops appear to be hitting the subject of the image and actually splashing off, and then you will also see effects where it’s kind of running down. So definitely check out that weather effect.

EVEN FASTER

Your phone is extremely capable. It is basically a supercomputer in your pocket, but did you know you can actually make it even faster when it comes to certain tasks? So let me show you what I’m talking about real quick. Jump into the settings and then scroll down until you see device care. here is actually where you will find a lot of very useful power tools, including the one that I’m going to show you right now. So if you scroll down, go to memory, and it will show you how much of your RAM is currently being used. And you can see right now 8.4 out of 12, that doesn’t leave me much room, but here is a very quick and easy solution. If you tap which is memory straight away, the Galaxy is offering a way to clean up five gigs of the used RAM. But to kind of avoid this happening so soon in the future, what you can do is go to Ram Plus and then set this to 12 gigs, which maximises the amount of Ram on your Galaxy phone by utilising some of the onboard storage as Ram.

And I’m assuming since your phone is pretty new, you have some storage to spare right now, and you can always dial back in the future if you feel you need that extra memory. But for now, why not max out the potential of your device on day one so you get the best possible multitasking speeds and load times?

ONE CLICK, QUICK CLEAN

And here’s a little bonus tip if you don’t want to do this, but you still want the ability to clear backgrounding apps without having to go through all of these steps that I just showed you. What you could do is hold your finger down on your home screen, go to widgets at the bottom, find the Device Care app and add one of the widgets. I’m just going to add this one, for example, and then you can place this anywhere on your home screen.

Now whenever you see either of these two bars reaching the top, you can just hit the little brush here to clean all of the background processes and start again from fresh. And this will help you make the most of the RAM that you have set up on the device.

NEED TO KNOW CAMERA STUFF

The Galaxy phone has some fantastic cameras onboard. And here’s a couple of tips to help you make the most of them. When you have the camera app open at the top, you’ll see how many megapixels you’re currently shooting at. It should be 12 megapixels by default, which is fine. However, if you switch this to 50 megapixels when you take a picture in good lighting and you crop into a part of that image, the detail will remain.

If you want to go even farther than that, let’s say you’ve got this really nice landscape shot set up and it’s really well lit. Could even set this to 200 megapixels for maximum detail. And again, if you want to crop in on that picture, even down to just a small section of it, you’ll find you have fantastic resolution within that image. And you’ll have to forgive me for this really badly painted R2-D2 android.

LEVEL UP YOUR CAMERA SKILLS

So this is the second camera setting that I recommend you switch on on day one. When you open up the camera app. If you hit the four dots, this brings up all of your options, plus the settings for the camera app. So open the settings, scroll down and here you will find the composition guide. If you turn this on, this will give you guidelines and also a spirit level. And if you tap here, you can choose to have just the gridlines or just the level. I think both is the best options.

So when you enable this, you get the classic rule of thirds grid, but you also get this crosshair that lets you know when you're tilting the phone and also when it's off-axis as well. So it's super, super useful. You'll notice it also shows you when you're perfectly horizontal for top-down photos, as well. So yeah, this is super, super handy.

NEW HORIZON…TRICK

Here’s a brand new feature when it comes to shooting video with your Galaxy S26. If you open up the camera app, go to video at the bottom. There is a brand new stabilisation feature at the top. So right here, you’ve got a little man with the line. If you tap on that, these are your stabilisation options. The new one is this one. It's called the horizon lock.

So now, when you’re filming a video, you can tilt your phone all the way to 90 degrees, and it will keep it level. And you can do this either way. So if you're running alongside somebody while skiing down a mountain or anything like that, the footage, regardless of how much you're moving left to right or the angle the phone is changing, will stay steady and locked to the horizon.

OFFLINE AI

Some of you guys might not realise this, but Samsung have significantly levelled up Bixby on a device because they teamed up with Perplexity to make it even more intelligent than before. However, there are some settings that you need to adjust on day one to make sure that it's working properly and to the best of its abilities. Here's how to do that. Go into your settings and then scroll down until you see advanced features. And in here at the top, you'll see Bixby. The first thing that you want to do here is set up the voice registration and improve the voice recognition accuracy. Just run through these steps. Once you've done that, there is another step to this. Scroll down to the offline processing. So this allows Bixby to work even when there are no data signals. And this could be extremely useful in certain scenarios.

And the reason I'm showing you this is that this is what separates Bixby from the Gemini. This is baked into all of the Android devices. So just enable this and then go to update. This will download the offline data that it needs to assist you when you're away from the internet and mobile signals. And the last setting that you might want to look at here on the Bixby settings page is the full voice responses. If you want it to be able to talk to you instead of just showing you text. Yeah, you might want to switch this on.

YOU’LL FIND THIS USEFUL

Now. You might be wondering when you would even use Bixby? Why would you use it instead of Gemini? Well, Bixby has more insight into the device specifically, so if you want to find anything on the device, it's going to use Bixby and Perplexity AI to do that. But also, there's this brand new feature down here called The Finder. If you don't see the find it down here at the bottom of your screen, then you need to do this. How do you bring it down on the home screen? Go to settings and then scroll down and enable Show Finder on the home screen. Once you've done that, it will appear. Whenever you tap this, you can search for anything on your device. For example, if there was something mentioned in a text message or WhatsApp, or within an email, you can even use your voice to tell it what you're looking for.

And there is one more setting for this that I recommend you look at. If you open up the Finder and hit the three dots on the right side, right here, go to settings. You can enable the show web search suggestions, which can be very handy if you do have hidden apps. You might want to enable that too. And if you go back again, hit the three dots again. Go to Choose Apps to search in. If you want to revoke permissions for any reason, you can do that with any of these apps. And if there are any that are not enabled, right now, you can enable them here.

NOW… THIS IS BETTER

Here is one setting that you need to change that can improve the way the phone delivers useful information to you. So your home screen probably looked like this. And this right here is the now brief. This is Samsung's exclusive feature that keeps you up to date with news, the weather and other things. You can fine-tune this and kind of customise it. So let me show you how to do that. I'll just go back to my home screen. I have added in a widget stack up here. I do show you guys how to create these and how to customise these in my customisation guide, so definitely check that out. But for now, let's jump into the now brief. I'm going to scroll all the way to the bottom of the now brief and then go to settings. Now here's where the customisation begins. So if you want to you can enable the audio brief. So when you open up the now brief there will be a button to listen to the brief as opposed to having to read it.

That could be quite convenient. So here you can allow the now brief to be expanded even without unlocking the phone. If you're more of a private person, you probably won't want to do that, but something that I highly recommend you do is get richer insights and enable Gemini. So essentially, Gemini is Google. And what this would allow the now brief to do is give you more location-based information.

NOW…THIS IS USEFUL

Now let me show you another now brief feature, which is actually one of the most useful ones in my opinion. And it's switched off. So I'm going to show you an alternate way to get to it, as opposed to just going through the widget. So if you go into settings, scroll down to Galaxy AI. And in here you'll find the now brief gist here. This is another way you can get to the now pre-settings. And on this page, right at the top, you will see content to include. If you tap on this, here is everything that can be shown in the now brief. And there are actually two which I highly recommend you switch on.

And day one if you drive and it stays to the traffic updates and also the parking spot reminders. This has saved me a lot of time on various occasions where I've parked the car, forgotten where I've parked it, and if you scroll down, you'll see you also have YouTube, which you can switch on, and nano banana creation. So Nano Banana is the image generation tool that Gemini provides. So if you do any image creation via that method, it can show up on your now brief, which is just a bit of fun, really. But the YouTube one is pretty cool because it gives you highlights of videos that are trending, and it will suggest videos that you might be interested in.

VISUAL VOICEMAIL

Here's a brand new tool for the Galaxy S26 within the phone app. If you open this up for the first time, you'll probably see at the top the option to turn on your answering machine and enable direct voicemail. When you can't answer a call, there will be a new button that can send people straight to voicemail. I don't recommend you switch on the auto send to voicemail, because it might pick up for you when you don't want it to, but what I do recommend is that you enable the transcript assist.

So this will allow you to see what's being said on that voice. Note that someone's leaving for you in real time. You do need to enable the auto-transcribe voice recordings as well, so just make sure that is switched on for this to work properly. That is a feature that existed before, and it's very useful.

There'll come a time when you'll need to find a new laptop for study or work, whilst on the go, and this HP OmniBook X Flip, a Copilot+ PC is more than well-equipped to help you accelerate your productivity and make your work life easier... even if you’re not tech savvy.  so that you can free up more time for the more important things in life.

Whether that's casual gaming, chilling while watching a movie, getting creative... or anything else, you'll appreciate what HP has to offer here. And especially at this price point, you’re about to see what I mean. 

Performance

When buying a new laptop for work & productivity, one of the top priorities is performance & there are many different configurations to choose from. But a good choice if you want to use the ‘I need it for work card’, but secretly you also want it for gaming, would be the one I have here.  It has a 16 MB L3 cache, 8 cores, and 16 threads & Intel variants shown text graphic  

This particular setup is a nice blend of speed and power. As it can handle all your day-to-day MS Office tasks without breaking a sweat.  And it's also capable of some heavy lifting, for example, professional 4K video editing and graphic design apps. And of course, it's also powerful enough to handle those sweaty gaming sessions  The RAM & ROM selection here also significantly improves performance. An important side note is that the RAM is onboard and cannot be upgraded later, so you have to decide whether to upgrade from the base amount of 16GB up to 32GB.

And this is an Ai PC ( The Neural Processing Unit - 50 trillion operations per second ), which gives it some unique advantages. For example, with a quick tap of the Microsoft Co-Pilot key you can instantly use Ai to help with research and troubleshooting. Plus, there’s an excellent Recall feature that lets you navigate back in time to find any document, file, or website you've previously accessed.

Display 

So, now let me show you what you’d be working with if you decide to pick up an HP Omnibook X Flip 14” laptop.  The display is obviously one of the most important features. The aspect ratio here is 16:10, which is slightly taller than the classic 16:9. This is great as it frees up a little more screen real estate, which can be particularly useful when working in creative apps.  There are two display options available on HP’s website. 2K or 3K resolutions, both are OLED 10-bit panels.  This one is the 3K display with its higher resolution, which is perfect for content creators like me who need that extra pixel density for video editing and graphic design. And both panels are very colour-accurate and have amazing Brightness levels.

And because they are OLED panels, they’re very power-efficient & What makes them even more power-efficient is the variable refresh rates that they support. ( 48Hz-120Hz ) Thanks to this, the Omnibook can switch dynamically between the speeds when needed & this is great for power efficiency and also for… gaming.  It's a touchscreen display & it does support a stylus in the form of the HP Tilt Pen, which is fantastic if you're into sketching or graphic design.  And to ensure this premium OLED display is well protected, HP has fitted it with Corning Gorilla Glass 3. This is a very durable, scratch-resistant screen glass.

Battery Life 

So the Omnibook X Flip has a lot of firepower under the hood, and the display is also fire. And to keep it running, HP has equipped this one with a 59WH Lithium-Ion polymer battery that, according to HP's website, can last well over 10 hours on lighter workloads. Some say they’ve managed to get over 17 Hours of battery life on a single charge. 

On the flip side, if you plan to do heavy video editing or play some casual gaming, battery life can drop to just over 6 hours, which is still very respectable.  And when out of power, thanks to HP Fast Charge with the provided, very premium-feeling 65 Watt USB-C charger to boost it back up. ( zero to 50% & in just 30 mins. )

Design 

What really stands out is the build quality. Encased in high-strength aluminium, the 14-inch model feels premium and weighs just 1.39KG.The colourway is called Meteor silver, and it has a really nice sandblasted anodised finish with subtle details.  On base, there's a perforated area for air intake with its heat vents around the back. The hinges are sturdy and strong, and they need to be because this isn't just a regular laptop. The keyboard is also pretty interesting. They call this a lattice-less design; put simply, there is no frame around the keys, allowing them to be slightly larger. Which could be a big win for anyone with big fingers, but it also looks cool and modern, especially since it's backlit. 

And you’ll notice that there is a dedicated CoPilot key. This is a Copilot+ PC, and you use this key to summon Microsoft's online AI whenever you need it, which can assist you with questions you might have, help you research topics, or create images, and now supports voice commands too.  The trackpad has haptic feedback and gesture recognition, and it is glass. And underneath is where you’ll find two forward-firing stereo speakers. And I really like how HP has placed these so that they won’t be easily obstructed. ( DTS: X® Ultra / HP Audio Boost ) 

Up top, just above the OLED display, is a 5MP IR Camera for face unlocking and web calls, with a built-in privacy slider for when it’s not in use. And when you do need to use the camera, you can utilise this CoPilot+ PC’s Windows Studio effects (Features listed on the screen graphic), which will significantly improve your online meeting experience thanks to a variety of software enhancements.  If you purchase directly from HP, using the link below, you can get the HP Tilt Pen 2.0 included with this model. I think you’ll appreciate the design here too. It recognises 4096 pressure levels and has two mappable buttons.  And there are built-in magnets that allow it to snap onto the side of the Omnibook & the connection is so strong you can literally drag the laptop across a surface with it. 

Connectivity 

The connectivity is also very impressive. You get 2 USB Type-A ports As well as two USB-C ports, both of which support power delivery, so you don’t have to think about which is which when charging.  Both USB-C ports are display ports, which means you could use them to output to external monitors, and there’s a full-size HDMI 2.1 port, which you can also use to output to external monitors and, more importantly, TVs and projectors. There’s also a headphone jack/mic combo. And inside is a Wi-Fi 7 wireless card, which will let you get the fastest Wi-Fi speeds when available.

This is all good stuff, and ultimately, the reason I called this maybe ‘The Most Flexible Work & Gaming Laptop’ is the combination of its specs, AI features, and convertible form factor. When you need to sit down and type, and look professional you can use it as a classic laptop, if you want to draw or play a touch screen game you can use it in tablet mode, If you want to watch a movie you got the ‘media mode’ setup or if you want to play a more demanding PC game you can make use of ‘tent mode’ for optimal ventilation. 

And if you are into gaming, you’ll be happy to know that you get 3 Months Of Xbox Game Pass included with your purchase. But never forget the main excuse…I mean, the main reason why you would need to buy a laptop like this... It’s because you need it for work.

The Care Package

LaterCase has hooked me up with a little bit of a care package, and I'm assuming there's going to be phone cases in here. First of all, big shout-out to Latercase. Not just for sending this over, but also for the recognition. It means a lot to me. And at this point, I have no idea what's in here. So it is going to be a little bit of a surprise. And if you haven't preordered the Galaxy S26 Ultra yet or bought one, I've got some fantastic news for you guys to stick around for that.

Unboxing the Phone

So first let's get into this box right here. This is the cobalt violet version of the phone. Now, if I wasn't going to go for this colour, the other colour that I would choose would be the silver, because the back of the phone matches the natural metal frame on the device. Anyway, let's see what this one looks like. Now that is a really nice purple. When the light hits it, it looks kind of silver in some light. And you'll notice the camera module right here looks very similar to the Galaxy Edge found. It was released, which was the very thin one. Let's get the peel.

Now, the first thing that I notice about this phone, taken out of the box for the first time, is the difference in weight. So let's find out exactly how much. So right here I have a kitchen scale. Very scientific. Then this put the Galaxy S25 Ultra on here 221g. Now let's put the Galaxy S26 Ultra on here, 214g. That is a seven-gram difference. Now, one of the major changes, in my opinion, this year is the fact that Samsung have rounded the corners even more. So this is the S25 Ultra, and you can see how the battery icon sits kind of in that corner. Now, when you compare that to how the battery icon now sits in the corner, it's a bit closer to the right edge.

And this is just kind of a hot take and a thought. Wouldn't it be cool if Samsung brought back the note line and had the right-angled corners like before with the S-Pen, and then carried on with the ultra line, but without the S-Pen and a bigger battery? I honestly think if they did that, it'd be interesting to see how many people would choose the S-Pen over more battery, and how many people would choose the squared corners as opposed to the rounded corners.

Something Nobody’s Shown You Yet

But anyway, let's move on to the first thing that probably nobody's shown you in their unboxing videos yet. The Galaxy S26 Ultra is limited in the S25 Ultra, and that is kind of true. So this phone right here is the S25 Ultra. I have a digital caliper here and we're going to measure the thickness of this. This is 8.57mm. Now let's take the same measurement with the S26 Ultra. So the measurement there is 8.15. So yes, it is true to say the S26 Ultra is thinner than the S25. But if we're being entirely honest, the S26 Ultra is actually a bit thicker than the S25. And what might blow your mind is that's probably a good thing.

So right here is the maximum depth of the S25 Ultra, and it includes the camera module. And here is the measurement of the S26 for the camera module is 12.42. So technically speaking, the S26 is thicker. But the reason it's thicker is because it has much better lenses in front of the camera sensors. And one of the reasons no one's highlighted this in their unboxing videos is because it's not instantly noticeable, as Samsung has done such a good job of hiding the depth on the new cameras.

And here's how they've done it. So first of all, there's this metallic layer which matches the back of the phone. Then there's a clear layer, which is something we saw on Apple phones not long ago. Then we have the actual camera rings themselves, which have massively shrunk down compared to the old ones. And then you've got the black ring around the enlarged camera glass and camera lenses, and it does look pretty cool in my opinion.

And of course Samsung have changed the metal. It was titanium on this 25 ultra, now is armour aluminium. And there's actually two reasons why this change is kind of an improvement. First of all, signals get through aluminum a bit better than they do titanium. And second of all, it makes the phone lighter, which you already saw at the beginning of this video.

Bigger TIM and Benchmark Test

Here's something else that probably nobody's shown you in an unboxing video inside the Galaxy S26 Ultra: they have increased the size of the Tim. And if you're wondering what the hell is it, Tim, it is the vapour cooling chamber built into the phone, designed to make sure the chipset doesn't cook. And in another attempt to make this unboxing a bit more interesting than the classic take it out of the box unboxing, I want to show you guys how much of a difference the larger Tim makes after a 20 minute extreme benchmark test, so let's start that now.

Unboxing the Galaxy Buds four Pro

And while that's running, let's move on to the unboxing of the Galaxy Buds four Pro. I'll be honest with you guys, I am super excited to check these out. And I'm a little bit sad that they got rid of one of my favorite features on the buds three Pro. I'll explain that when we get to it. Let's pull the tabs and let's get a good look at these. So you got your usual warranty cards and the quick start guide. And here we have the new buds. And you can see straight away the case has completely changed.

Now I have heard that this case can double up as a kickstand for the Galaxy phone. I'll test that theory out. Something else hiding away inside the packaging is, of course, replacement silicone tips. So let's get a look at these. There's no markings for the size, but I'm assuming that's extra large. And that's probably small. So Samsung have completely redesigned these. They've moved away from that slightly wider but flatter design. They've gone for the more square and slightly thicker design. But I do think it's a nice change. They've kept the semi transparent design as well, which is also very very nice. I think at first glance you'll agree that this is an upgrade, but you will notice just stand when I open this case.

The lights no longer exist on the new buds. And that's the thing I'm a little bit sad about, because I did like the lights. You've got to admit, they did look cool. And also you could make them light up if you did lose one of the buds. I can't honestly say that I ever had to do that, but yeah, that's a feature that we don't have anymore. But in times the case, I really do like this. They still got the wireless charging coil inside. It's still semi-translucent. The backs of the buds are now metal and you've got this grille at the top. That's where your ANC mics are. Let's try them on for the first time.

So yeah these are super comfy. They look cool. And the fact that they do have that Stem design means that the voice pick up mic is actually pointed towards your mouth, which is always an advantage over bud style earbuds when it comes to voice pickup. Now, I did want to give you guys my honest first impressions versus the buds three Pro at this point, but unfortunately the benchmarks are still running on the two phones, so I can't test that out just yet.

Unboxing the Cases

So what we'll do instead is unbox the later cases. So I'm a big fan of the branding on these very unique and eye-catching. Looks like we have a cleaning cloth as well as what appears to be a charging cable. And I think this might be a magnetic ring attachment. There are a couple of them in there. This is the lighter case. In black. And this looks really nice. Is unbelievably light. It's crazy how light this is. It feels like you could just break it immediately.

But one of the best qualities of aramid fibre is when it takes an impact. What are the fibers tense up and strengthen up. So it's actually very, very strong on impact. And one of the things that I really like about this case is how it's all one piece. There are no additional bits of plastic or anything fitted. I'm going to have to keep this to one side for the moment, because the benchmarks are still running.

Let's get a look at this. Now this is new. The uncompromising screen protector. I've not seen one of these. I've bought stuff from Latercase in the past, but I never bought one of their screen protectors, so this is completely new territory for me. I wasn't expecting this. And that has gone on there absolutely perfectly. If you're going to keep your phone for a long time, you probably want to keep the screen safe. And this is a good way to do it. Okay, let's get a look at this. This is a new product. The cables. A lot of people don't realize how important the quality of a cable is sometimes, and also how important the speed is of a cable.

I believe these guys here are the fastest, and this cable right here might be one of the nicest braided cables that I've seen to date. You've got this kind of greyish blue colour to it. The little bit of green in there is super nice, and even the connection point itself looks a lot more premium than 99% of the cables that I currently own. And you get this nice little rubberised cable tie, which also feels very premium. This is a nice cable. And last up we've got the cleaning cloth. Very important for the Galaxy phones and for any phone, really. Yes, it's a nice little cleaning cloth, has got a nice little bit of branding on it too, which sets it apart from the rest.

Now, all this left to do is wait for the benchmark to finish. And both of these phones are feeling very warm right now, so that thermal readout should be quite eye-opening. And then once we've done that, I will test the Galaxy Buds four Pro versus the three Pro and give you guys. On his first impressions of the sound differences. And I almost forgot. We've got to try on the lighter case. Anyway. Let's do the readings. First up, the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Now the 26 ultra okay. So what we're looking at right here is the Tim inside the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Most of the heat is accumulating in the top right corner.

That's where the chipset is. The job of the Tim is to spread the heat across the back of the phone, to get rid of it as quickly as possible, and you can see it is spreading down, but it kind of cuts off. And that's probably because that's the end of the Tim inside the device. Now let's compare that to the S26 Ultra. Now, here you'll notice that the bright spot is actually a lot larger. And the heat is moving down in a bigger sort of wave than on the 25 ultra. So that's pretty interesting. It does seem to cut off at the same point as the S26 Ultra, but it does seem like the cooling chamber is a bit wider here on the S26 Ultra.

Sound Test: Buds three Pro vs four Pro

All right, now it's time to do a quick test of the sound quality differences between the Galaxy Buds three Pro and four Pro. Let's do three Pro first. Both phones recognise them, but to connect on the S25, because I have set up these with all the best codecs and all the best settings, I do have an entire video about that. If you guys check it out, look it at the end. Now this track right here isn't just your regular track. This is, in fact, a Flac, a high-res audio file stored on the device itself, not off a streaming service. So this is the highest possible quality. Let's go with this. The three Pro still sound so good.

Honestly, they sound phenomenal. Still, one thing that bothered me a little bit about the design on these was the angle here. It made it a bit hard to pinch for the pinch issues, which is definitely something there's not going to be a problem now with the new design, because you have square, flat sides to them. Okay, now let's do the full Pro with the Galaxy S26 Ultra. I have paired them already, so they pop up straight away on the phone and something is pretty cool. Now, if you go to the settings on the phone, there's an entire section here dedicated to the buds. I am going to do a first things to do guide with these, but there are some important settings to change on day one, which I'll explain in that video. Anyway, let's do the sound test with the same Flac file. No streaming services involved. Way more detailed straight away.

Better thump to the bass two. I think everybody has a kind of barometer in their mind as to what is good. And here was the Galaxy Buds three Pro, and here is the Galaxy four Pro and the slide and pinch gestures. Much easier. Now. There is no doubt that these are way better than the three, but the three are still very, very good. Samsung have definitely leveled up the audio when it comes to these, but now I know there will be some people that will be like, well, Samsung aren't really known for their audio products, but what those people might not know is Samsung owns Harman, one of the largest audio research companies on the planet, and they have a lot of very high end audio brands under that banner, which they don't actually use as part of their marketing, which is quite commendable to be honest.

Trying the Case + The Discount News

last thing to do now is try on the light case and let you guys in on the good news. If you are planning to get a Galaxy device now, that is slick. The camera module is fully protected here, which is important because it does stick out a bit further this time. Something else that I think a lot of you guys will appreciate about this case is how you can still see the accent color of the phone through these little gaps here. There's a little cutout for the S-Pen on that rounded corner and up top as well. You have the purple wax head of the device. Some cases will fully in case the phone, and you won't even know what kind of phone it is. And this one will still allow you to appreciate the original color of the phone, even with the case on.

Yeah, this is a slick case if you're into not modifying the original design of the phone and you want the best possible protection at the same time, this is a great option. It is so nice. And Samsung didn't put the two magnets in this year, but you do have options like this where you can attach a magnet to the back of the device or the back of a later case, and still use your magnetic or G2 charging devices.

All right, now time for that bit of good news. Samsung have hooked up an exclusive WhatGear discount for the viewers of this channel, and this applies to anybody who wants to buy one of the Galaxy S26 devices, the new EarPods, or any of the accessories. So if you are planning to spend some money at the Samsung store, definitely use that link to get there. And that way you'll get that extra discount on top. And don't worry, guys, I'm working on my tips and tricks series of videos for the Galaxy S26 phones. I actually have five in the chamber, so keep an eye out for those if you want to truly master.

Displays are everywhere. But big displays, or more accurately, giant displays, aren’t typically around when you would appreciate them the most. And that's why products like this are becoming more and more popular. These are the Rayneo Air 4 Pro glasses. They have been designed to redefine personal entertainment.

And Rayneo may have just done that because there’s some world-first tech here, as well as a killer feature that’s never been seen before on these types of glasses and a collab that will be music to your ears if you are a fan of entertainment on the go. And I know you’re probably wondering what you’d even use the Rayneo Air 4 Pro for if you bought it. Don’t worry, I shall explain. But first, let’s dive into the design of these uniquely special spectacles.

Design

The Rayneo Air 4 Pro ships with ( Watch The Video ) in the box.  In terms of style, they sleek and minimal look, they don’t instantly look like a piece of tech, which is nice. Something that I know a lot of people will appreciate about this design is that prescription lenses can be fitted here. And if you’re a Batman fan I heard there is a limited edition model out there that you might want to check out.

Unlike a lot of other AR glasses on the market today, the Air 4 Pro glasses are as the name might suggest, lightweight. They come in at 76 grams, which is heavier than your average pair of Wayfairer’s, but Rayneo has worked some magic here with the design. Particularly regarding the weight distribution. With 53.3% of the weight positioned to the rear and 46.7% towards the front. They call this the Golden Ratio. And they do feel lighter than they look. And to further enhance the comfort, you can, of course, switch out the nose pads to alleviate any pressure on the bridge of your nose. But also, the arms allow for 9 levels of adjustments near the temples to make sure they can be as comfortable as possible.

Now that the collab I mentioned. There are a total of 4 speakers built into these Rayneo glasses as well as an independent DAC. The drivers are large for this type of wearable, and Rayneo have used sound-tube fittings to better direct the sound to your ears and reduce sound reaching other people's ears. They say its 80% less sound leakage compared to the conventional approach to open-ear audio.

And here’s the cherry on top. This entire audio setup has been designed with B&O, a very high-end audio company. They’ve played a part in the physical design as well as the tuning of the DSP. And it’s important to remember that the audio is primarily tuned for entertainment so there is a B&O surround sound mode available and there’s also a whisper mode for more discreet audio.

Display

Ok, let's get to the main attraction here & that world's first feature. The Rayneo Air 4 Pro has Dual 0.6-inch Tandem Micro-OLED (5.5th generation by SeeYa) FHD Resolution ( 1920 x 1080 ) for both eyes. The refresh rate is adaptive and can reach up to 120Hz for gaming. And they’re bright too, with perceived peak brightness up to 1200nits.And for good measure and eye comfort, the displays use PWM anti flicker tech to massively reduce eye strain.

Now, here is the world's first Rayneo Air 4 Pro is the first wearable of this kind to support HDR10, which is a format commonly supported by all the popular streaming services. Put simply, the range from bright white to pitch black is wider than all the other wearable AR glasses out there right now. And the impressive colour range and pixel density & field of view further enhance the viewing experience. 

• Contrast Ratio: 200,000:1, providing deep blacks and high dynamic range.

• Colour Depth: 10-bit colour, supporting 1.07 billion colours.

• Colour Gamut: 98% DCI-P3 and 145% sRGB coverage.

• PPD & PPI: 49 Pixels Per Degree (PPD) and 3689 Pixels Per Inch (PPI) for high image density.

• Field of View (FOV): 47 degrees

• PWM Dimming: 3840Hz high-frequency dimming to significantly reduce flicker and eye strain.

• Certifications: TÜV SÜD certified for Low Blue Light and Flicker-Free viewing.

Power & Charging

Now let’s talk about power. One of the main reasons why the Rayneo Air 4 Pro is so light is because there are no internal batteries built in. The video signal and power are drawn from the device that you’re using. This is fantastic because it makes them easier to transport around, and you’ll never have to worry about charging. And the power is actually lower than you might think.

It’s estimated to be around 2-4 watts. And that's because those 5th-gen micro OLED displays are so power-efficient. However, I’d still recommend that you be mindful of your source device’s battery supply, and for longer viewing times, for example, on a flight, you should probably have some backup power.

Use Cases / Gaming / Movies / Work

Here are my thoughts on the best use cases before we get into that feature I have never heard or seen before on AR glasses. The number one use case is something I’ve already alluded to. It’s the long commutes, I’m sure you’ve probably done this at some point. You’ve downloaded a film to watch on a plane. Maybe on your phone, tablet or computer. And while that's fine, the viewing experience doesn’t get close to the perceived 200” OLED display that you get with the Rayneo’s.  Not only that, but when watching on a phone, for example, you’ve also got reflections from the windows and distractions in the field of view that can ruin the immersive experience. And the Air 4 Pro offers the solution to that. And of course, all of this applies to gaming as well.

Which is also fantastic, here the 120Hz OLEDs are the perfect partner for mobile gamers, but they can also be used with portables. However, keep in mind that some devices, like the Nintendo Switch, will require a third-party hub. And can also connect them directly to PS5 or Xbox via an HDMI adapter.  And this brings me to another use case: you can hook them up to your PC, which does mean you can use them for productivity. For example, in the case of video editing. And unlike simply working on your laptop screen, you can have that extra layer of privacy, knowing that only you can see that second screen inside the glasses. But what takes this to another level is the Rayneo Mirror Studio PC app. This allows you to create up to 5 screens in your field of view that can be placed & resized however you want.

Software & Updates

And of course, there is software for Android & iOS too and that killer feature I mentioned in the intro. So the glasses can work stand alone; however, with the RayNeo XR app installed on your device, you can unlock some more features like trackpad navigation, cloud and NAS drive access to media, head tracking, along with audio settings so you can tailor setup for yourself. But here is the killer feature that I think will blow your mind when you see it for yourself. Inside the glasses is a custom PixelWorks Vision 400 image processor. This chip can assess the incoming signal even without the app connected, and in real time, can convert 2D images into simulated 3D using Ai.

So this means you can apply this Ai 3D effect to pretty much anything you want to watch or play on the Rayneo Air 4 Pro. And this same chip can also take low-res content to the next level, too. Remember how I said that these are the world's first with HDR10 support? Well, the Rayneo can upscale SDR content in real time and output it in HDR format in the glasses. Honestly, this is the next lever feature. for movie lovers. I guess that’s why Rayneo say that they’re your personal cinema, anywhere. Now listen, you’re probably wondering what the deal with the price is? Well, check out my affiliate links below this video. I think you might be pleasantly surprised. 

Colours

Let's start with colours, because I'm assuming you want to make a mistake and get the wrong one. The colours are the same for the first time across all S26 models. And maybe the first question you might ask is 

Black

Yes...yes it does. last year it was a limited edition this year, it’s available everywhere. This is the Black. I placed this side-by-side with my Galaxy 25 Ultra in black & it's pretty much identical in shade. And you'll instantly notice a subtle design change here in this shot. The camera module has been redesigned with this raised camera island, with all lenses upgraded and are now allow in more light, and there's an all-new 3X telephoto camera sensor behind the scenes. Going back to the colour, the Black shade used here is classy, classic. It's not jet black, and the shade lightens in the sunlight… and can look like a gun metal grey at times...It's nice. However, it's not my favourite this year.

Sky Blue

Here's a new colour for 2026, it's called Sky Blue. This is an interesting one because, in some light, it's almost a baby blue, but when light reflects off the back, it almost looks silver.  And this is my second favourite this year. And here is another subtle change: Samsung has rounded the corners a little more this year. The S pen's eject button is asymmetric. And yes, now you do have to take more of this when you place it back in the silo. Now, let's look at the white.

White

This one differs from the others in one specific way. So, back is that classic white, and this one kind of adopts the room's lighting more than the others. And in cooler lighting conditions, similar to the sky blue, it can look silver. And this brings me nicely onto what makes this one unique. It's the only one with a natural metal-coloured frame… and yes, it is not titanium this year. The upside is that it is lighter and uses Samsung's 3rd-gen armour aluminium, which is the strongest to date. So, partly thanks to this, the entire phone is lighter than the S25 Ultra, and it's also a tiny bit thinner.

Cobalt Violet

Ok, here is Cobalt Purple, my personal favourite colour this year. I really like this one because it's a nice dark shade at night, you could mistake it for black. And in bright daylight, the purple shade lightens significantly.  But I'm going to be real. I'm definitely going to be putting a case on it. And if yes, I was wrong in my leaks and rumours video… There are no Qi2 magnets built in. But one thing's for certain, when I get this phone. I'm putting a case on it, and there are some decent official options with the magnets that you might want to take a look at.

Features 

All right, let's run through a few of the new features, and then I'll show you how to get the best possible deal. Here's what the biggest upgrade is this year. It is an all-new Samsung Privacy display. This is not a software feature; it is a hardware upgrade. Put simply, it minimises the viewing angle on demand. Preventing people around you from seeing your screen and blocking specific parts of the display, for example, your message notifications.

There have been some upgrades to image generation. There's a new horizon lock camera feature for next-level stabilisation. This is just a skim of the upgrades. I will be putting together a series of tips-and-tricks videos. And you should definitely check those out if you want to learn how to use all the new hardware and software features properly.

Two new sets of Galaxy Buds have undergone a massive design overhaul. I will be making tips and tricks for those, too.  Ok, below you'll find the discount links for the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and S26 Plus. If you order online, a couple of exclusive colours are available. You can also apply the discount to those, as well as the new Galaxy Buds.

s26 ultra

s26 and s26+

Galaxy Buds 4 Pro

Galaxy Book 6