The Samsung Galaxy J7 is an Android phone that has more than a few tricks up its sleeves. If you’ve just purchased the phone, have had it for a while, or are looking into it, I have a few tips for you that will unlock the phone’s potential. I’ll go over tips for your general use, the camera, customization, and even battery usage.
If you haven’t learned anything new or useful by the end of this, I’ll write you a sonnet about how good the Samsung Galaxy J7 is.
Tips for Everyday Galaxy J7 Use
Before I dive any deeper into J7, I’ll start on the surface. The J7 doesn’t have any motion gestures to talk about, so instead I’ll give you some general tips to help improve your everyday use.
1. Manage Your Daily Usage with the Smart Manager
If you haven’t used the Smart Manager before, now is the time to give it a chance. You can find it in your app drawer, labeled Smart Manager. It can help monitor:
Battery
Storage
Ram
Security
Here you can easily check your battery usage, clean up any cached RAM, and even improve your security. I recommend that you look at your Smart Manager at least once a day.
2. Setup Phone Profiles for Multiple Users
Setting up user profiles can work as a security feature, but additionally functions as a good way to share a phone between users. You can quickly switch over to a new user, or create on if you:
Swipe down from your Quick Settings menu
Tap the user icon to launch the profile switcher
If you haven’t made any profiles, you’ll only see yourself and a guest, but you can create more from here to switch to as you please.
3. Enable USB On the Go (OTG)
USB OTG is a helpful feature that’s more prominent in Android phones now. Thankfully, this can be used on the Galaxy J7 as long as you have a OTG cable. USB OTG usefulness varies from user to user, but if you haven’t heard of it before, I recommend taking a look.
4. Quickly Change Your Input Language
Changing your input language is something not everyone will do, but it’s helpful without a doubt.
To change it:
Navigate to your Settings
From Settings, go to Language and Input
Tap on the Samsung Keyboard to see your options for keyboard inputs
You can change this as much as you wish, so feel free to if you have another prefered input language.
5. Two Ways to Quickly Open Your Camera
I’m going to get to what you can do with your camera in a few seconds, but first I want to show you two quick ways to get it open. The first way, which I prefer is to:
Tap your home key twice, quickly to open the camera from anywhere, even the lockscreen.
The second way is on your lockscreen only:
On your lockscreen, press and hold on the camera icon, and then swipe it up and to the left.
Tips to Make Your Pictures Shine
The Galaxy J7 is sporting a 13MP camera in the back, and a 5MP camera in the front with an added LED flash. All together it isn’t too shabby, so you should take full advantage all of the tools your phone has to make your pictures look as amazing as possible.
6. Set the Quality on Your Own
While your camera starts out with the best quality possible at default, there are situations where you’d prefer to turn it down. First:
Open your camera
Tap the gear icon in the lower left corner while in landscape mode
Then at the top of the setting menu, tap Picture size for either the (rear) or (front)
Here you can choose the resolution, and quality of any pictures or videos you record.
7. Switch to Pro Mode for More Control
On the direct opposite side of the gear icon is the Mode button.
Tapping this brings you to a new overlay menu that lets you select a new mode for your camera to use. Pro mode lets you control more functions of your camera, rather than letting the J7 change settings automatically.
If you’re looking to get more than just a quick snap, Pro mode is where you should be to make every shot look picture perfect.
8. Take a Continuous Shot or Use Panorama Mode
Next to Pro Mode, is Continuous Shot, and Panorama Mode. Continuous Shot is just what it sounds like, it lets you take multiple shots easily, one after the other. This can be used for frame by frames, and taking pictures of something in motion for stills.
Panorama Mode is for shots of sweeping areas, and getting pictures of wide venues that you wouldn’t be able to normally. Both are helpful in taking pictures that would be hard to do in the camera’s default mode.
9. Give the Screen a Quick Tap to Focus
Sometimes the autofocus on the Galaxy J7 will take more than a few seconds to function. In this case, give the circle on the screen a quick tap before hitting the camera button, or a hardware key when taking a photo.
Tips to Customize your J7 Experience
If there’s one thing I like feeling on Android, it’s feeling that my phone is really mine. You can experience your phone in the way you want, when you want, and can change that at any time.
10. Download a New Theme
Rather than changing your background, you can download an entirely new theme from the theme store. In your Settings, go to:
The personal tab, which has Themes under it
If you don’t see any themes you want to install already, tap the theme store down below
You’ll need to agree to some terms before you can download themes. Once you’re done, you can download as many as you want, and switch between them freely.
11. Switch to Easy Mode if the Stock Experience is Overwhelming
Easy Mode is a different UI configuration that makes buttons and text larger, and generally makes the J7 less overwhelming to new users.
You can toggle Easy Mode from your Settings, and then under Easy Mode.
12. Customize Your Toggle Menu
Custom toggles aren’t very custom unless you change them yourself, which thankfully now you can. If you swipe down to bring down the toggle bar, there’s an EDIT button in the upper right corner next to the gear icon.
Give it a tap, and you can remove, add, or swap around the icons you have on your toggle menu at a moment’s notice.
13. Download a New Launcher to Completely Change Your Experience
While you can already download new themes on the Galaxy J7, what about an entirely new launcher? A launcher can change your UI entirely, and allow you to customize it even further.
Out of all of the paid Android launchers on the market currently, the one I can recommend most easily is Nova Launcher Prime.
14. Hide Apps in Your Drawer
I’m not talking about stuffing apps in your sock drawer, but about making sure certain apps don’t appear when app drawer searching. There could be apps on your phone you don’t want prying eyes, to see, or there’s an app in your drawer you’re sick of looking at when you scroll past it.
Whatever the reason, you can hide an app by tapping the EDIT button in the top right of the app drawer. Then tap the minus button on any app you want to hide. This won’t uninstall it, but it won’t return results when searched for. You can disable this by finding the app again in your applications manager.
15. Root Your Galaxy J7
There’s one last tip for customizing your Galaxy J7, and that’s to open it up for a root. Once the J7 is rooted, you can customize it to your heart’s content without any manufacturers, or carriers, stopping you.
Rooting is the first step to opening your phone up to limitless possibilities.
Tips to Keep Your Battery Long Lasting
Your battery is arguably one of the more important parts of the phone. Thankfully, the Galaxy J7 has a removable battery, so any problems can be fixed easily. However, just because it can be replaced, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take care of it.
16. Power and Ultra Power Saver
In your Settings under Battery, there are a few options to toggle to increase battery life at the cost of performance. These can be set to engage once your battery reaches a specified percentage (10% or lower, etc.) or on demand. The normal power saver shouldn’t impact light usage.
The Ultra Power Saver, however, will shut down several functions in order to conserve as much batter as possible. If you need your battery to absolutely last through the day, this is the way to do it.
17. A Black Theme or Background
Have you ever heard that you can save battery life by using a dark or black background? It’s not a myth, using a black wallpaper actually works, to a degree. If you have a black background you like using, it won’t hurt to try it.
18. Battery Apps Other than Smart Manager
While I like Smart Manager as a battery monitor, it never hurts to get a second opinion. There are plenty of apps on the market that drain your battery faster than most people realize, and you already have some of them on your phone right now.
19. Alter Your Brightness Settings
The auto-brightness on the Galaxy J7 is so wonky that it’s actually non-existent. You’ll need to adjust the brightness yourself constantly, so be on the lookout for your brightness draining your battery.
20. When in Need, Bring a Spare
One of the biggest perks of having a removable battery is that you can quickly replace it with a fully charged one.
Charging packs are always a viable option, but just being able to put in a new battery is appreciated. If you remove the back cover of the J7, the battery is easily accessible.
Conclusion
Have you learned anything new, or anything useful? If not, I’ve got a sonnet with your name on it. The Galaxy J7, along with the J5, is a fantastic phone for the price and has a lot to offer. I hope I was able to show you a little more of what that offering is.
If you have any more information about the Galaxy J7, or just want to judge my iambic pentameter, leave us a comment!
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