Android Tools & Software
Android is the best!
Android has a huge list of features that have been in the OS ever since the beginning! and its inception! There are still features that Android has that still haven't been brought over to Apples iOS. I love having split screen multitasking, Apple still hasn't brought this to there iPhone yet tho they don't have a native first party Calculator App on iPad. Samsung Ups the amount of multi tasking you can do with Pop-out Windows. Samsung with there S Series phones even allow for a Desktop interface that only there recent Fold 4 Phone now has, and doesn't include on there flip series phones yet.
I really enjoy rocking Android S9+ everyday even tho it no longer gets updates its still pretty fully featured compared to a lot of other newer Samsung devices. Motorola and other device makers have there own tiny things going on and don't have much compatibility with other devices.
If you use Samsung's Galaxy Buds on anything but a samsung device then you can't change how things sound, you can't enable gaming mode, no native EQ for audio, No quick auto connect (This is where the phone is able to detect that the ear buds are automatically in range when your ready to use them this is the experience you have when not on a samsung device. You just have to manually connect them each time, but when used with a samsung device it auto connects and detects that you want to use it). Features with Samsung Notes can only be used on samsung devices, you can't even sync Samsung Notes on Windows without a native Samsung made windows device, I have tried this by finding a samsung notes application installer and it wouldn't sync with my phone or samsung account because I wasn't using it on a Samsung made laptop.
There's tons to do with Android and many flavors per model of device you can use.
Native Samsung Mods?
Let's talk about mods! and there are many from samsung. First start with Goodlock and then continue to fall into that rabbit hole. Samsung also will cherry pick mods your device supports so if your using an A-Series phone there are some features you won't be able to have access to, your also not allowed to even sideload the features from Flagship devices either.
Things like Battery Guardian is also absent from A-Series phones, this is a feature for sleeping and deep sleeping apps when not in use, and on most other phones when you stop an app from running it can and will later start right back up in the next minute, Samsung has cherry picked this feature for their flagships only.
Samsung Flow is great for File Transfer, Remote control over wi-fi with your Samsung device while on the same network.
Sound Assistant brings Per-application sound control, EQ, Dolby-atmos support for connected earbuds.
Theme Park brings Android 11 - 13 material you theming for your whole device to even if your running Android 9 or 10, samsung keyboard, settings, quick launch controls, everything clock, calendar, pretty much the whole device interface control. With newer versions of android this has more power and controls for more of the system with the version of OneUI that your running.
Smart things this is Samsung's version of Google Home for just Samsung smart home things and even finding your Samsung watch and buds you have.
Goodlock brings to your fingertips different modules you can install to customize your device. A-Series have limited features. If you use a custom launcher such as Nova launcher then some features maybe limited as well. If you use a custom app for your lock screen then same applies as well.
Link Sharing this allows you to share 5GB of data and host a link to it for a limited time before it expires useful for SMS with iOS and files with your PC. You can install this also on your PC upload the data and then reach the link or the data you shared and download it on to your phone.
Swiping away apps isn't closing them
There's a debate for if you swiping away the app out of memory if that truly closes out the app completely or fully closes out the app fully. Well theres a few parts to how this works.
When you first launch an app you are starting a session. Your also allowing the ability for the app to push notifications if there are any updates such as if Instagram says there's a new story or post from a favorite person you follow.
Applications like Instagram also love eating up Storage/ Cache on your phone which is used for having a short memory of videos and photos for later so the app isn't having to always keep having to fetch new data. You can see this in effect by turning off your data an going into Airplane mode. When you go to your personal profile all the content at the top is always stored on your device and the first 10 to 15 recent posts on your feed all this is done in the background.
When you close the app from your task manager/ switcher your not fully quitting the app from still lingering and running in the background checking for updates like GPS, notifications, updating cache, running widgets on the homescreen, checking mail sync.
If you want to fully stop the app running in the background then you have to press and hold the app, press app info and then on the lower right stop the app from running. You have to do this process for each and every app installed on your device. You can do this manually or use an accessibility app to manually close them but just running an accessibility app is worse than an app just just running in the background.
Accessibility apps have a higher process cycle and can drain your device overall quicker than normal. One example of this is copying the feature from Moto's Chop-chop flashlight feature or flick your wrist to open the camera. Samsung devices don't natively have this feature you can add it to your Samsung device but to achieve it you having to run it in accessibility mode where your streaming the checking of your motion sensors and gyroscope to detect 3d space, the down fall of this copying of this in accessibility is that it can lead to a worse experience of false triggering of the feature.
Where as with Moto they have a special chip that handles that all along with software without having to take a long route for a simple feature that can just be done natively and without having a huge impact on battery.
Super Useful Apps
There's so many apps to list, I am going to share the ones I know and use most often.
SyncThings
This one is super awesome and great. Open source it takes a bit of time to figure out and setup but is useful for backups of your gallery downloads whatever is on your device. No more need for using the Onedrive/ Google Photos/ Google Drive.
With this software you need to also setup the pc/ osx application and it can turn your desktop/ laptop into a server and push updates for backing up your photos essentially very useful.
Google Photos and iCloud has been under fire for searching devices for CSAM if you don't know what it is search it up it's not something to mess around with and anything you put on the internet private or not it's in there terms of service that basically any photos you take can be subject for scanning or data collection and or marketing to you for future use. Same deal with using the voice assistant and voice to text typing is stored in the cloud for 5 years before being deleted.
There's a software module called OCR, it has the ability to take text and make it searchable not to mention it can also detect faces, and different objects as well.
So if you want to avoid that and backup your photos to your computer this is how to do that.
Spark Email
I wish I had known about this one sooner it's so good! Apple iOS/ MacOS users have been enjoying this application for managing there emails for a long time. It eventually came to Android. Its Free! You can manage many email accounts. It is even as a bonus on Windows after being long awaited. This email client is heavily productivity focused, which means you can have a shared inbox with a group of employees, this feature I believe is a paid tier. With that flexibility you can also leverage a Google docs live writing functionality which is ultimately really cool with in Spark. They aren't using Google Docs to be clear but your using multiple Spark accounts with other employees to have live writing in a single email. They even have Dynamic Email templates so if your having to write emails based on numeric values that are changing and you have written that value like maybe 5 times and you have different 3 different values that are critical and need to be updated Spark and bring that productivity into your email. I think what Spark has going for themselves is really cool!
Enpass
I have been using Enpass for over 7 plus years I got in with a lifetime license of $3.99 and its been my favorite password management software ever! they are now offering the lifetime license for $79.99 or $23.99 a year like wow what a contrast to what they first launched with.
I always hear about Lastpass and some of the other online password management having data breaches, leaks, hashes being posted.
With Enpass none of that can ever happen its local to your machine. It syncs with Google Drive, Box, Drop Box, Onedrive, all the cloud storage options basically and it just syncs the one 256 hashed file that stores the data for the whole vault. I haven't heard of many other people who even really know about it in the first place. But if I was storing passwords I wouldn't want them in the cloud. Its already bad enough saving passwords in Google Chrome.
NewPipe
An Open Source Youtube Client. "NewPipe has been created with the purpose of getting the original YouTube experience on your smartphone without annoying ads and questionable permissions."
Newpipe as well doesn't allow for you to be tracked my google when watching youtube videos when using NewPipe so you aren't being tracked my google at all. You are also able to backup and export your data to another phone too. So if your attached to your google watch history and data then that's the only thing your not going to be able to bring over really.
Code is Github this is similar to Youtube Vanced and Revanced but as being open source, where the 2 Vanced projects don't seem to be open source and the orginal normal vanced project was sued by google there has been and uprising to keep the custom clients alive. Revanced is the second version of youtube that came alive after the suing of the first Vanced project that got to popular and got to close to the sun and burned up by Google.
Timbre
All your mobile conversion needs Audio, Video, Trim, mp3 you name it you can do it. Very handy to have as a mini swiss army knife for anything your trying to do on your device. It's great to use on Samsung Dex (Desktop interface for android, turns your phone into a laptop. Only S-Series Flagships can use this Dex feature) along with using a video editor like Kinemaster.
AdGuard
This is a Ad content blocker. it can block a huge majority of ads in most apps. The major apps such as (Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, iFunny, and others) aren't blocked due to breaking functionality within those respective apps thats just a small list of what I know personally. It doesn't prevent App tracking or google still listening to your mic or the sites you visit on your IP address traffic to try and market to you back just on the traffic it seems to be a newer way of ad tracking and stuff going on thats hard to stop unless you end up using a VPN all the time so that ads can't figure out what websites your visiting to then re serve you ads based on your web traffic. Still overall being able to block about 90% of ads is really pretty nice and adds functionality to Google Chrome on mobile that doesn't have proper ad management its only designed for blocking the spooky ads but thats not all that effective. Samsung internet has support extensions that you can use like Adblock plus but thats only by you using the browser its not a system wide adblock.
Anymore?
If there are anymore I will add them above. Everything above is subject to my own personal experience and what I use on a personal basis everyday.