NOTICE: We’ve created an archive of all major developments related to the Samsung Galaxy S10 lineup. We are continuously updating that page with latest S10e/S10/S10+ news so that you don’t need to search for information related to the device on daily basis. Head here to access that page.

The ever increasing popularity of Android is hugely influenced by the gigantic number of third party apps. With over 2.1 million apps available via Google Play alone, the Google made OS even beats Apple’s iOS in terms of app availability.

statista_no_of_apps_android_ios_2018
Image source: Statista (Click/Tap to zoom)

On the other hand, readers may recall the death of the Windows Mobile platform, primarily because of the lack of apps.

Samsung, being one of the largest smartphone makers in this planet, dropped Windows Mobile support a long time ago. After a brief amount of tinkering with Tizen, they solely dedicated their resources to Android for designing phones and tablets.

The 10th anniversary edition of the Samsung S series aka Galaxy S10 unveiled a number of cutting edge techs, such as in-display ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, ‘Infinity-O’ display with punch hole front cameras and support of 5G (via a particular variant).

s10_5g_front_back
Galaxy S10 5G

Samsung’s skinned version Android in the Galaxy S10, known as One UI, comes preinstalled with a number of inbox apps. Some users consider them a bloatware, and we wrote an article to show how those unwanted apps could be removed – even without root.

Nevertheless, people are always looking for innovative (sometimes funky) apps to enhance the UX of their phones. In one of our previous stories, we highlighted a couple of such apps.

samsung_nicelock
NiceLock, an alternative launcher of Samsung Good Lock modules

In this article, we are going to show you another set of 10 must have apps for your Samsung Galaxy S10e/S10/S10 Plus. Without further ado, here we go:

01 Hidey Hole

Love the phone but can’t deal with the punch hole(s) on the gorgeous AMOLED display? Legendary Android developer Jorrit Jongma, popularly known as Chainfire has you covered with his Hidey Hole app.

hidey-hole-0

The app automatically aggregates community made wallpapers that can ‘obscure obscure the camera cutout (hiding the hole)’. It also gives users the ability to re-align/scale images.

Shameless advert, but PiunikaWeb also maintains a curated list of these ‘hole punch’ wallpapers. Please take a look at this post to pick one from the collection.

02 Holey Light

Chainfire unleashed his true potential by publishing Holey Light in order to emulate the missing notification LED of the Galaxy S10 lineup by illuminating the edge of the front camera hole.

The developer has open sourced the app, and he is constantly bringing new features as well as fixing existing bugs. You can find the support thread here.

03 Arc Lighting

XDA member epicality came up with Arc Lighting, which is another app to bring the notification LED features via camera cutout animations. Moreover, the app supports plethora of customizations.

It’s extremely customizable and has endless combinations of setups. For example, there’s a setting category called ‘Default Effect’ which lets you have a solid color, dynamic color (based on the current app), smooth gradient or a sweep gradient, and also lets you run a rotation animation on it.

In addition to that, you can set up different indicators such as a charging indicator, a low battery indicator, a critical battery indicator, a low battery indicator, a notification indicator, a device overheating indicator, and an audio visualizer. In addition to all of that, you can add a glow effect to spice up any of those indicators.

04 Battery Ring

As you can predict from the name of the it, this nifty little app can create a ring around the cutout to display the remaining battery juice.

battery_ring_s10

The developer made the app truly portable, thus it should work on other phones besides Galaxy S10 lineup.

Although Battery Ring works on any phone, its worth trying on phone with hole punch camera lens like Samsung Galaxy S10, S10e and S10+, Galaxy A8s, Huawei Nova 4, honor view 20, new nokia x71 and many more hole punch camera lens phones.

You can grab the app from Google Play (Free, Pro) or XDA forums.

05 Borderlight

Originally developed for OnePlus 6, Borderlight shows a slowly moving colorful border around your screen’s edges. You can think it as a more artistic enhancement as well as replacement of the built-in Edge Lighting feature.

borderlight_play_store

You can reach out to the developer via the official support thread.

06 Wings Font [Samsung]

Tired of the limited collection of fonts offered by Samsung? Can’t find your favorite comic font in Galaxy Store? Using Wings Font, you can choose from hundreds of new fonts from the built-in font catalogue. Moreover, they can supply local TrueType Font (TTF) files as well.

s10_teamwings_font_download

The Galaxy S10 phones are supported by the release candidate version of the app. For more details and download links, click here.

07 bxActions

Using bxActions, it is possible to completely remap the Bixby button to any action or app you like. You can even completely disable the button.

bxactions

The full feature list is as follows:

No root needed!
Zero battery consumption!
Double and Long press support!
Remap the Bixby button to any action!
Remap the Volume buttons to any action!
Skip tracks with the volume buttons
Different actions when phone is locked or unlocked
High performance! No lags!
No annoying ads

08 SoundAssistant

Here comes the first Samsung made app in the list – SoundAssistant. For a granular audio control, this is a must have app.

Allow you to control the media volume instead of ringtone when pressing the volume keys
Support individual application volume (You can control the volume of music and games differently)
150 steps of fine volume and support Floating Equaliser
Create and activate personalise sound settings
Support mono audio and left/right balance

This app can be downloaded from Google Play or Galaxy App store.

09 Adhell3 & Disconnect Pro

Block system-wide ads – check; no root access required – check; no background service – check; no battery drain – check!

If you don’t mind little amount of manual configurations, opt for Adhell3.

adhell_3_samsung

On the other hand, if you don’t mind to pay $25 for one time, then search for Disconnect Pro in the Galaxy Apps.

disconnect_pro

10 Google Camera (Port)

You guys should already know how Google Camera ports can dramatically improve the camera performances, especially in the low light conditions.

View post on imgur.com

Interested readers can find compatible Gcam ports for their Snapdragon Galaxy S10 models (US, Canda, Hong Kong) here and Exynos Galaxy S10 models (rest of the world) here.

FYI, the Exynos port is little bit inferior than the Snapdragon one, as few features are not working on the former one.

Honorable mention: Magisk

I know, I know – Magisk is not a typical app. But once you’re rooted with Magisk, you can literally do whatever you like!

You can use iOS emojis, change your boot animation, install Google Pixel exclusive apps – the list just goes on!

Are you already using any of the suggested apps? Let us know by commenting below!

PiunikaWeb is a unique initiative that mainly focuses on investigative journalism. This means we do a lot of hard work to come up with news stories that are either ‘exclusive,’ ‘breaking,’ or ‘curated’ in nature. Perhaps that’s the reason our work has been picked by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and more. Do take a tour of our website to get a feel of our work. And if you like what we do, stay connected with us on Twitter (@PiunikaWeb) and other social media channels to receive timely updates on stories we publish.

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S10

Kingshuk De
896 Posts

I came from a mixed background of Statistics and Computer Science. My research domains included embedded computer systems, mobile computing and delay tolerant networks in post-disaster scenarios. Apart from tinkering with gadgets or building hackintosh, I like to hop on various subreddits and forums like MyDigitalLife and XDA.

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