Each Android phone brand likes to do their own thing when it comes to the launcher and overall look of their phones. Some (like Xiaomi) choose to make their phones more like Apple’s iOS, but Samsung has spent years and years developing its One UI.
Like most people, I have a love-hate relationship with One UI. Samsung falls into the trap of bloating its phones with gimmicky features that no one ends up using. That said, in recent years One UI has become pretty decent out of the box. However, there are still quite a few things that I turn off shortly after turning on my new Samsung phone for the first time.
RAM more
It’s more like a minus if you ask me.
There’s a global RAM crisis right now as I write this, but phones have been low on RAM for much longer. Android has a heavier overall memory footprint than iOS, because Apple uses pretty aggressive memory management, but Samsung said “hold my beer” and came up with what amounts to a swap file for your phone.
It’s called “RAM Plus” and is on by default. It reserves a portion of your phone’s SSD as extended virtual RAM, but there are problems with this. As reported by our friends at XDA, RAM Plus can slow down your phone. Most people probably don’t even need it if their phones have more than 8GB of RAM.
Disabling RAM Plus will not harm your phone in any way. Try using your phone without it. You might notice that it’s snappier and unless you’re getting low memory warnings or apps complaining about RAM or crashing, then you didn’t need this feature.
To disable it, go to Settings > Device Care > Memory > RAM Plus and reduce the amount or preferably deactivate the function.
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Snapdragon 8 Elite Generation 5
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Customization service
Spy software tailored just for you
He Samsung Customization Service is a very polite name for a set of “features” on Samsung phones that allow the company to observe and record what you do with your phone and then use it for direct marketing and other various purposes.
It’s easy to “accidentally” activate this during the initial setup of your phone, so there’s a good chance it’s running on your phone. I think these kinds of things are the same as ACR technology spying on televisions. I prefer that the device I paid a lot of money for not collect or share my data.
To turn it off, or at least customize it to your own comfort level, go to Settings > Accounts > Samsung Account > Security and privacy > and touch the Customization service entrance.
Toggle the switch at the top to turn everything off, then select Arrest to confirm. Your phone may warn you that this disables sleep data tracking, which it needs for the battery protection feature. If you really can’t live with that, you can turn on the general service, but scroll down to the bottom of the page and at least turn off the direct marketing option.
Scene Optimizer in the Camera app
I prefer it natural
One of the biggest draws of the Samsung Galaxy phones is the excellent camera system. Personally, I I love taking macro photos. and most of the time, the automation in Samsung’s camera app is more helpful than annoying. However, one feature I tend to turn off is the “scene optimizer”, or at least that’s what it was called before.
On my S25 Ultra, it is located in Camera Settings > Photo Enhancer > Scene Detection.
It uses AI to determine what type of object or landscape you’re pointing the camera at and attempts to automatically adjust settings to suit. If you like the way your photos look, then there’s nothing wrong with that. However, I prefer to adjust things myself.
Get up to wake up
My eyes!
There are some gesture features on Samsung phones that can be useful, but I turn off “Raise to Wake” because it’s generally more annoying than useful. At least for me.
The idea is simple. When the phone detects that you are picking it up, it will wake up the screen, but in the end, there are many more scenarios where I pick up my phone and don’t need the screen to wake up than the other way around. In any case, I use the Always-On Display feature on my phone, which means I don’t need the screen to light up to check the time, for example. I especially don’t need my eyes to be blinded by the screen lighting up in the dark if I move it.
To disable it, go to Settings > Advanced features > Motions & gestures > Lift to wake. Tapping the option will turn it on or off.
Edge panels
Make the little tab disappear
In a bid to make frequent features easier to access, Samsung has added Edge panels to a user interface. They function as a dock or taskbar on a desktop system. There is a small tab visible on the edge of the screen and when you swipe it, it reveals a context menu.
To disable them, go to Settings > Display > Edge Panels.
While some people may find this really useful, I find the little tab visually annoying and I never actually use the edge panels. So it makes sense to turn them off. The app folders in the main quick access bar at the bottom of the screen are more than enough for my needs, and I suspect most people reading this will be fine too.
