DO YOU FANCY THE NEW FEATURES ON THE NEW SAMSUNG GALAXY S5? HEART RATE MONITOR,PEDOMETER, DOWNLOAD BOOSTER, SELECTIVE FOCUS, ETC.? WELL, HOW ABOUT IF I TELL YOU THAT YOU CAN GET THESE FEATURES ON YOUR CURRENT ANDROID PHONE. WITHOUT SPENDING A SINGLE PENNY...
You can get most of the Galaxy S5 features on your Android device . However, features that are fully dependent on the hardware components may not substitute in the form of an app, like the fingerprint scanner on Galaxy S5, it cannot be substituted by just an app. But the heart rate monitoring has a completely different story. Apps like these could utilize the your phone’s camera to get heart rate, we’ll discuss on this in detail later.
Hmm...So before I start let’s take a look at some of the new features of Samsung Galaxy S5. Thankfully, Samsung has released an ad video detailing upon all the new features of its flagship device Galaxy S5.
Here's the video:-
Here's the video:-
Let’s see now what alternatives we can use in order to get these Galaxy S5 Features on almost any Android device out there. We’ll go sequentially with explanation of each feature and apps that can be used as an alternative for these features.
HEART RATE MONITOR
There’s dedicated hardware support on Samsung Galaxy S5 which lets users monitor their heart rate/pulse instantly on the phone. It works just by placing the tip of index finger on the heart rate checker (located on the back of your device, just below camera) for a few seconds and your heart rate bpm starts showing up on screen.The button is quite similar to what we saw in LG's G flex.
It’s exciting, but there is nothing new. Heart rate monitoring apps are available on Android since 2009 (5 years). Let’s have a look:
ALTERNATIVES: 2
The two apps provided below can check your heart rate without a dedicated heart rate sensor on the phone.
HOW? Heart rate can be monitored just by placing the tip of your index finger on your phone’s camera. The key part is that your index finger should be near some light source — if your phone has flash near the camera then it’ll surely work for lightning up your index finger, otherwise after placing your index finger on camera move your finger near some light source (a torch or a lamp) and you’ll be good.
- INSTANT HEART RATE
Instant Heart Rate is one of the oldest heart rate monitoring app available for Android. This app works great and gives you highly accurate heart rate measurement with graphs/charts to make it easily understandable. It also alerts you if your heart rate is good, average or bad.
- RUNTASTIC HEART RATE
Runtastic Heart Rate is a relatively newer app for monitoring your heart rate but it’s somewhat advanced than its older brother Instant Heart Rate app. Runtastic has intractive UI and allows you to compare or share your heart rate with friends and family on various social networks Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.
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DOWNLOAD BOOSTER
Samsung has introduced an amazing new feature on Galaxy S5 that combines all the available internet connections on your device and then lets you use the combined data speed to boost download speed of your device. The WiFi and LTE/2G/3G/4G connections are combined and then their commutative data speed is used to boost your download speeds.Interesting isn't it you can get super high speeds plus it will optimise your usage so that you don't end up using one.ALTERNATIVE
- SUPER DOWNLOAD – Fast
The Super Download – Fast app will do the same magic of combining data speeds of all your available internet connections available on your device and then use it to give a boost to your current downloads. However, as you know this is kind of tricky stuff, the app requires root access to be able to combine these download speeds from WiFi and 2G/3G/LTE/4G.
On a good point, the app is also works as a download manager with support for increased concurrent threads to further boost your download speeds.
DOWNLOAD SUPER DOWNLOAD LITE – Fast (FREE) | PAID VERSION
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PEDOMETER
Another fitness bonus that Galaxy S5 comes is an built Pedometer which intelligently counts all the steps that you have taken all throughout your day and then uses that data to show you how much health benefits you’ve gained just by walking. The Ghardware component to get the job done and
unfortunately only three other phones on the market currently have dedicated hardware for counting steps — Nexus 5, LG G2 and Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition.
Anyway, the good news is that even if your device don't have the dedicated hardware component you can still manage to count your steps. While a hardware component might help in saving some juice of your battery but then its no big deal. The job can also be done using other available sensors on your Android device — Accelerometer and Gyroscope.
Check out these cool apps given below to see it in action yourself:
ALTERNATIVES: 2
NOOM WALK: PEDOMETER
Noom Walk has smoother interface, advanced features, with some social sharing options, Infact you can match up over the number of steps you take with your friends interesting isnt it. And most importantly the developers boasts that Noom Walk utilises even less than 2% battery during a day of use.
- RUNTASTIC PEDOMETER
Runtastic Pedometer is another amazing app to count the number of steps you walk throughout the day while using your phone. And while it’s almost similar to Noom Walk feature wise, It has just one additional feature that it can tell you How fast you are walking.? That's Cool, right?
SELECTIVE FOCUS
Galaxy S5 lets you create a blurred out background or foreground on your photos even after you have clicked them. It makes the photos look beautiful and gives your photos more detail now this is something for which DSLR camera’s are popular for.
I have seen some great apps on Play Store that lets you do the same thing, but then I have to admit that on Galaxy S5 it’s painlessly simple to do that, as compared to the alternative apps that I have shared below:
ALTERNATIVES: 2
AFTER FOCUS
AfterFocus is the most robust and slicker app available on Play Store to defocus and blur out the background or foreground on your photos. However, unlike Galaxy S5 it doesn’t automatically blurs the background at one-touch, you have to select the area which you really want to bring in focus and the app will then blur out everything else on that photo.
EASY FOCUS
Easy Focus is just another great app to perform SLR camera like blurring on background objects in your photos. The app’s interface is simple and like AfterFocus, you just have to select the area which you want to keep focused in a photo. You should give this app a try too along with AfterFocus.
S HEALTH [Samsung's fitness app]
The S Health app on Galaxy S5 comes pre installed on other Samsung Galaxy devices as well. It helps you to keep a track of your fitness and sports activities.
There are plenty of such apps available on Play Store for tracking your fitness level and chances are that you might have already tried some of them. In case you haven’t, follow the links below:
Runtastic: Runtastic has we already pointed out is the widest range of fitness apps available on Play Store.So do check out their apps.
Endomondo: Endomondo is another great app to keep track of your fitness and sports activities.
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POWER SAVING
"Samsung GALAXY S5 can last for 13 hours at battery level as low as 35% only"
Samsung has loaded in the best power saving features on Galaxy S5 ever possible,It could last for almost 13 hours at battery level as low as 35% Imagine!! no more need to keep those square portable bricks with you. There’s this ‘ULTRA Power Saving” mode on the Galaxy S5 that once you turn on your device display to Grayscale display it will block every background process on the phone keeping only the Call and SMS function active. We could easily imagine how much battery that can possibly save on a phone.
We did not find any app on the Play Store that could bring in such wonders, since it requires deep integration to system files of your device. And as of now I’m not aware of any custom ROM which can do that much power saving. But hopefully soon enough some developer might take up this idea and integrate it into a customized ROM.
Anyway, we have got some apps below that can still help to save you a good amount of battery power and are quite similar to other power saving modes available on the Galaxy S5:
GREENIFY
Greenify lets you freeze background apps from running in background and take extra spin on your ram killing your battery. Once you freeze an app with greenify it’ll no longer be able to drain your battery ever, unless you use it often. If you have root access on your device then in that case you can even freeze system apps, but be very careful with that since it can lead to an unstable system if you freeze an app that’s actively required for the system processes.
EASY BATTERY SAVER
Easy Battery Saver takes the pain of you toggling between connectivity WiFi/Data/Bluetooth options to save your battery power. Plus, it couple of enhanced automated options for blocking certain apps from using data in the background and consuming both phone’s resources plus network data causing unnecessary battery drain. A must have app for your Android devices.
HDR (Rich Tone)
HDR is short form for High Dynamic Range, this feature lets you capture photos with natural colors under any lightening conditions. With HDR, the camera captures the same image at different levels of exposure and then layers them up to create one fully optimized photo. It helps you to take pictures in high contrast situations, like near to an open window or when the sun is behind your subject.
Samsung names it “Rich tone” on its devices.
If you bought your phone last year then chances are that you already have these feature on your phone. Check in your camera app. If not, you can download this HDR Camera app from the Play Store (link below)
Download HDR Camera
Comment below if you have any queries regarding this.Or tell us if you have more to it.
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