New to Samsung - and have a few questions :)

[alex_ncfc]

Hi, 

Hoping someone can help me with some questions I have, I've just got myself a Galaxy S20 phone. I've never had a Samsung before so I had a few things I could do with some advice on!

1) How fast should fast charging be? It doesn't seem to be particularly fast to me and my previous Huawei P20 charges much faster. I did notice this option:

These are the defaults and I see Fast Charging is disabled but Super Fast Charging is not. I'd assume Super Fast Charging is better, but why does it let me tick both these options? And do I need the top "Fast Charging" enabled to make the phone charge quicker?

2) Battery life - the battery life of the phone seems really poor. Usually when you get a new phone it lasts for 2 or 3 days because the battery is brand new (this was the case with my P20) but for instance the phone was charged to 100% this morning and after 2 medium phone calls I was down to 79%, which doesn't seem right to me, what can I look out for in settings? Does the battery just need a few charge cycles?

3) Is there any way I can transfer my notes from the Huawei Notepad to Samsung's Notepad app or is this a no-go?

4) I saw in settings under Device Care that Anti-Virus was not enabled by default. I enabled it, but see I cannot disable it:

Is this something I want to have enabled, because I know Google Play Services already scans apps. I was just wondering if it will be something that will use extra battery, and as I said above, the battery already seems poor. I only enabled it out of curiosity, thinking I'd be able to turn it off again - is there anyway to do this, or do you recommend leaving it on anyway?

5) An aesthetic one, is there any way I can change the shape of the icons in the app launcher and home screen? Also launcher related, how can I make it so that when I bring up the launcher that it defaults to the first screen (as in the start of the alphabet) rather than the last screen that I left it on?

I hope at least some of these can be helped with (and no doubt I will stumble across more things I need help with!) 😀

Thanks!

[JAMES4578]

Hi @alex_ncfc  Hope I can help with your querey.

1.  For super Fast Charging you need a 45 watt charger and in any case only supported on S20 Ultra.  Is this the model you have?  If do not have Super Fast charger suggest you select Fast charging.  According to these tests should not take much more 75  minutes, though could be a bit longer. https://gadgetguideonline.com/s20/how-to-charge-galaxy-s20-battery/  https://www.phonearena.com/news/Samsung-Galaxy-S20-Ultra-vs-S20-Plus-vs-S20-Charging-speed-compariso...      I do not have an S20, however by comparison my S10 takes around 90-100 minutes to fully charge. 

2.   When phone is new it tends to discharge a bit quicker but should improve over time as the AI recognises patterns. 

Though does seem a bit concerning, there are some tweaks  you can make to maximise battery life.  For instance you can use Adaptive Power Saving or alternatively optimised or Medium Power Saving.   Higher Performance may look better but will use more resources.  Can check this in Device Care.   You may wish to consider putting some Apps to sleep  in App Power Management , there are Sleeping Apps and Deep Sleeping App options.    This and more ideas here though you may not wish to do all of these.  I think best to have  balance of battery life  and best experience  https://insights.samsung.com/2020/08/18/8-powerful-tips-for-maximizing-your-smartphones-battery-life... 

However unless you are a light user Battery not likely  to last much more than a day https://www.gottabemobile.com/how-to-fix-bad-galaxy-s20-battery-life-problems/ 

3.   Have not come across way of transferring Huawei Notepad to Samsung's Notepad , think  issue due to difference in apps. You could transfer to  Google Keep and access that way. More detail here: https://www.guidingtech.com/transfer-notes-new-phone/ 

4. I do not think the Anti Virus is necessary as you have the  Knox Security as well as the Google Protection.  However to disable follow these steps:

1. Open Settings.
2. Open Apps.
3. Tap on the ⋮ (3 dots) options button in the top right corner of your phone's screen.
4. Tap on Show system apps.
5. Scroll down to Device security.
6. Tap on Device security.
7. Tap on Storage.
8. Tap on Clear data.       Same info basically in this link for reference:  https://www.diytechguides.com/disable-device-security-on-a-samsung-galaxy/ 

5  For changng Icon shapes see here: https://gadgetguideonline.com/s20/customize-app-icon-shape-on-galaxy-s20/ 

[alex_ncfc]

Thanks @JAMES4578 for answering my questions, that's so helpful and I really appreciate it. I'll go over the points made:

1) I don't have the Ultra model, just the standard S20 5G. However, as per the screenshot I sent, it seems that "Super Fast Charging" is turned on and also when I plug the phone in to charge, it comes up saying it is "Super fast charging" - is this normal to have this setting on a model which isn't the Ultra? I'll set it to just Fast Charging and see how it goes, although I still find it confusing how both Fast Charging and Super Fast Charging can be enabled at the same time, I thought it'd be one or the other.

2) Thank you so much for the link, I'll have a look at those app sleep options in Device Care, as I am wondering if there is an app which is draining my battery. I've looked in the battery usage screen in Device Care and can't see any apps which seem to be using too much battery, where is the screen which shows the hardware which is using the battery?

3) I'll just have to transfer them to Google Keep like you say, good advice

4) Thank you for this, it worked! Just a few questions: What is the Knox Security, I don't know much about it - is it always running to protect the phone? Secondly does anyone else keep the McAfee disabled/disable it? I just wondered if it was a battery hog or not. If not I would happily leave it enabled.

5) Thank you for the guide!

Oh and a new question to add into the mix - I'm really missing my notification LED from every previous Android I've ever had. I know they haven't included one on here, but the idea of the Edge Lighting sounded really cool so I was looking forward to that, until I realised it only stays on briefly when a notification comes through and then goes off again. So it is kind of pointless really unless I am looking at the phone at that moment, in which case I wouldn't need the notification light anyway. Is there any way to make the Edge Lighting stay on until the notification is cleared like with the LED notification on other phones?

Thanks again

[JAMES4578]

Hi @alex_ncfc  ok, thanks.   I was not quite right there, seems the S20 supports super fast charging  via USB Power Delivery  .   Just not the   2.0.  See here https://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/what-is/super-fast-charging/     You could try just Fast charging and see how that goes.   As a matter of interest  how long is your charging taking?

Knox provides multi layer security protecting users against malware and malicious threats.   Data Encryption and Isolation is provided,  yes it is always running.  see more here https://www.samsungknox.com/en/secured-by-knox  I do not use the McAfee  myself ,think benefit limited and imagine could be battery hog.   However if some folk use it can they let us know their experience. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/104827-android-antivirus-apps-are-useless-   heres-what-to-do-...    Know that from previous threads there seemed to be limited interest in 3rd part Virus protection.

As far as Edge Lighting  goes  there are options to use it when screen is on, always or when screen is turned off.  You can also have notifications for just specific apps. However  it may not  work as you prefer.

See more here:  https://www.samsung.com/Edge Lighting 

[alex_ncfc]

Thanks again @JAMES4578, some useful tips there.

It's handy to know that the Knox security is always there protecting, I've never been too keen on installing 3rd party anti-virus on phones as they just use too much battery like you say.

It's also good to know that my phone does support Super Fast Charging. To be honest it actually seems to be charging quicker now, I'm not sure why. I'd say it takes about an hour to fully charge to 100% (although I try not to let the phone get down below 20% too often) does that sound about right? I think maybe my expectations were slightly higher and I just expected it to charge much quicker but it doesn't seem too bad now - I will monitor it.

The battery issues are still remaining and I'm not sure if there is anything going on - basically I did an experiment last night, I charged both my new S20 and my old Huawei P20 to 100% and left them overnight in flight/airplane mode. When I woke up this morning, the Huawei was still on 100%, something I was used to with my old phone. The Galaxy S20 was down to 95% even though it had not been doing anything and all connectivity was turned off. The battery also seems to go down quickly during the day. 

Investigating in settings > device care > battery, I see that an app I use, "Timehop" seems to be awake during the night, but it says it's only using 0.1%. Also Google Play Services seems to be using battery too, but again not that much, see below:

I only use Timehop once a day to look back on memories, so not sure why it should be one of two apps running during the night. Would you recommend setting that app to sleep? But then again, it doesn't look like it's using much anyway. I imagine Google Play Services is harder to solve as that is obviously a big part of Android. But you can see on the grey graph chart above that the battery is going down but I've barely touched the phone today. I think the battery is my biggest annoyance with the phone at the moment as I expected so much better, so any advice would be great.

Thanks

[JAMES4578]

Hi @alex_ncfc , glad you find the advice generally  Beneficial.   Good that charging is a bit quicker  and i would say an hour is pretty good to charge a further 80%  and then would roughly work out at 75 minutes for a full charge.    However you are right that in modern smatphones it is best not to fully discharge, though I tend to go for around 15%.   This article though does mention the 20% figure https://www.wired.com/story/smartphone-battery-care-last-longer/     I fine first 5% does discharge fairly quick but settles a bit after  that.   So me though say best not to fully charge it.  probably would not make a great deal of difference with Timehop and Google Play services but if there are more apps you can put to sleep would be advisable.   I tend not to charge my S10 overnight  but usually  keep it on (mainly for alarm)  with connections turned off and it roughly discharges around 5%.  Know there have been  some  members not really happy with the S20's Battery Life.  Think a fair bit of this I will have covered but you can see if any further help in this article. Whilst relating to the Ultra should still be useful guide  https://www.slashdigit.com/how-to-fix-galaxy-s20-ultra-battery-drain-issue/ 

[JAMES4578]

@alex_ncfc You may wish to check a few other threads here if you have not come across them. You may wish to post in one of these threads and may get feedback from S20 users.

https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/galaxy-s20-fe-galaxy-s20-galaxy/battery-life/m-p/2072126

https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/galaxy-s20-fe-galaxy-s20-galaxy/disappointing-battery-s20/m-p/19...

https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/galaxy-s20-fe-galaxy-s20-galaxy/battery-going-fast-s20/m-p/20438...