Bill Hughes

Article / Updated 07-28-2022

The Play Music app allows you to play music files on your Samsung Galaxy S10. Similarly, you use the Video Player app to play video options. The Video Player is in your Application list and might even be on your home page. In most ways, playing videos is the same as playing audio with some exceptions: Many people prefer to buy music, but renting is more typical for videos. Video files are usually, but not always, larger. Otherwise, as with music files, you can acquire videos for your phone from an online video store — and you need to have an account and pay for the use. In addition, you can download video files to your phone, and the Video Player will play them like a DVD player. There is a great selection of videos on the Google Play Store and Amazon Prime Video. Each of these has great video selections that you can rent or buy. The following figure shows the Home screens for the Google Play Store and Amazon Prime Video. Using the three screens If you have a subscription to Amazon Video, I hereby grant you permission to watch any and all of the Amazon Video options on your Galaxy S10 (once you sign in and comply with all the terms and conditions set forth by Amazon). Once you install the Amazon Prime Video app from the Play Store, sign in with the email and password associated with your account, and all the content is there for you to stream. It is that simple. If you don’t believe me, give it a try. If you take a look at the Amazon Prime Video home page on the Internet, seen in the following figure, it shows your options for access to the content to which you subscribe. The original term for this was called serving the three screens. Three screens referred to in the strategy included your television at home, your PC or laptop, and your smartphone. The idea is that you get one subscription and have access to the same content and, importantly, can pick up where you left off. So, if you’re watching a video on your television, you can pick up where you left off on your smartphone. Amazon Prime Video is taking this one step further to ensure as many of its subscribers as possible have access. If you have a Smart TV that has an Internet connection, the chances are that Amazon Prime Video will run on the TV. If you have an old and/or a dumb TV, you can get Amazon through streaming media players, game consoles, set-top boxes, or Blu-ray players. Amazon is not the only organization to do this. Many cable companies offer this kind of solution, as do many of the video subscription services. The mainstream video services compete with having a broad range within their libraries that seek to appeal to as many customers as possible. Keep in mind that there are specialty video providers that offer curated videos for their subscribers. For example, TeacherTube is a site dedicated to K-12 education, as seen in the following figure. If we continue down this path further, there are a great number of options for online education. Many of these sites do not consider themselves to be video aggregators, but that’s exactly what happens when they take recorded lectures and provide them to students. The best-known online education service is the University of Phoenix. There are dozens more online universities. Education is just one curated video service. Others exist for videos of Bollywood movies, British sitcoms, Portuguese game shows, and many other art forms. How to view your own videos You can watch any video you’ve shot on your phone. From the Google Play application, scroll over to the Personal Video section. Your phone can show the following video formats: MPEG-4, WMV, AVI/DivX, MKV, and FLV. To play your video, simply tap the name of the file. The app begins showing the video in landscape orientation. The controls that pop up when you tap the screen are similar to the controls of a DVD player. The reality of virtual reality Video games can be immersive, and a good movie can really suck you into its reality. The idea of virtual reality is to take this one step further. The basic idea behind virtual reality is to create a simulated world by having you wear a pair of goggles and presenting images that change the screen based upon movements of your head and body. We can explore the concept by taking it in steps. At the most basic level, you can use your phone with a pair of virtual reality goggles. Samsung is offering virtual reality goggles that are designed to work with your Galaxy S10. What you do is insert your Galaxy S10 into the goggles. Then you use the little remote next to the goggles to navigate to the application. The remote is very convenient because, without it, the only way to communicate with the screen is by turning your head to commands and then holding it there for a few seconds. That little device allows you to navigate the screen while the phone is inserted in the goggles. What happens is that your field of view is entirely taken up by the screen of your Galaxy S10. Imagine the most basic scenario, where the camera on the back of your phone shows you what is in front of you. This kind of experience is more or less comparable to using a pair of eyeglasses. When you walk forward, things come closer. When you look down, you see the floor. When you turn your head to the right or the left, you see things that were not in your range of vision. So far, this is not very interesting. So, let’s take it up a level. Now let’s let your phone and all its processing capacity and intelligence tell you what you’re looking at. You turn your head, and you see a picture. Presto chango, you see a little pop-up next to the picture that tells you that this is a print of Edward Hopper’s The Nighthawks. You look out the window, and a pop-up appears with current weather conditions and a forecast for today. Now you take your virtual reality goggles to the grocery store. As you get your cart, a familiar face comes up and starts talking. For the life of you, you cannot remember who this person is or how you know him. In just a moment, the face recognition system recognizes this person, and a pop-up identifies that this person is your old neighbor Bif Wellington. After chatting, you walk the store aisles looking for deals. You get a pop-up letting you know when this grocery is giving you a good deal on Honeycrisp apples, or if you can get them cheaper at the other store. This capability is called augmented reality. Let’s take it up another notch. Imagine a world where, instead of seeing a slightly modified version of your reality, you are transported to a beach. You can look around and see palm trees and jungles behind you. Why stay earthbound? You are virtually transported to the space around Mars. As you look around, it is as if you are there on Mars. The following figure looks like two images of the same planet. When your phone is inserted in the goggles, you get a 3-D image of the planet. You can also look around and navigate throughout the solar system. Trust me, this is a lot more convenient than space travel. Why stay in the mainstream opinion of what is reality? Now we can all have an “Alice through the Looking Glass” experience. You can grow and shrink and see all kinds of unusual visions which are limited by your imagination. There are some very, very cool demonstrations that leverage the capabilities of your phone. The Samsung offering comes at a great price compared to some of the other options out there. For that matter, you may have received the Samsung virtual reality goggles for free for preordering your phone. There are additional VR applications and content in the Play Store. This is a rapidly changing area of the Play Store where new content is constantly being added. Be sure to check the Play Store regularly. This should make your friends who own iPhone technology suitably jealous. What needs to happen is further application development to really take us to where this technology can go. Some of us unfortunately have the unpleasant experience of what is called virtual-reality sickness. This is similar, but not identical, to seasickness and car sickness. The most common symptoms are nausea and headaches. If this happens to you, some of the medicines that help seasickness may help you avoid this unpleasant sensation. Some say it also helps to be seated when using virtual reality. Plus, symptoms tend to diminish over time as your brain gets used to this experience. If the symptoms are too severe, virtual reality may just not be for you.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-28-2022

Your Samsung Galaxy S10 smartphone allows you to do many of the same things as previous versions of the Galaxy. You can change the font size for texting conversations and take selfies. You can also access Galaxy applications while you’re talking on the S10. Use this Cheat Sheet as a handy reference for some of its popular functions.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-28-2022

Your Samsung Galaxy S22 smartphone allows you to do many of the same things as previous versions of the Galaxy. You can change the font size for texting conversations and take selfies. You can also access Galaxy applications while you’re talking on the S22. Navigating your Samsung Galaxy S22 doesn’t have to be difficult. This Cheat Sheet will help you remember some of the most popular functions.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-25-2022

Your Samsung Galaxy S20 smartphone allows you to do many of the same things as previous versions of the Galaxy. You can change the font size for texting conversations and take selfies. You can also access Galaxy applications while you’re talking on the S20. Navigating your Samsung Galaxy S20 doesn’t have to be difficult.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-30-2021

Your Samsung Galaxy S21 smartphone allows you to do many of the same things as previous versions of the Galaxy. You can change the font size for texting conversations and take selfies. You can also access Galaxy apps while you’re talking on the S21. Navigating your Samsung Galaxy S21 doesn’t have to be difficult.

Article / Updated 09-14-2020

The fact of the matter is that your Samsung Galaxy S20, with its large Super AMOLED screen and beefy graphics processing unit, makes Android-based games more fun. And because you already have one, maybe you should take a break and concentrate on having fun! Games are the most popular kind of download for smartphones of all kinds. In spite of the focus on business productivity, socializing, and making your life simpler, games outpace all other application downloads. To this point, the electronic gaming industry has larger revenues than the movie industry — and has for several years! We could have a lively and intellectually stimulating debate on the merits of games versus applications. Simply, the differences between games and apps are as follows: If a person likes a game, he or she tends to play it for a while, maybe for a few weeks or even months, and then stops using it. A person who likes an app tends to keep on using it. Games tend to use more of the graphical capabilities of your phone. People who use their phones for games tend to like to try a wide range of games. The Play Store Games category The Play Store is shown in the following figure. The top level splits offerings into a few categories: Home, Games, Movies & TV, and a few other categories off to the right. We want games. Games that test our skills; games that are fun; games that are cute; games that immerse us in an alternate universe! To get there, tap on the Games button! This brings up the Games page as shown. This section of the store has nothing but games. This section includes everything from simple puzzles to simulated violence. All games involve various combinations of intellect, skill (either cognitive or motor), and role-playing. Let’s do it. The Games Home screen If you scroll around this screen, you see many suggested games. If you aren’t sure what games you might like to try, don’t worry: There are lots of options. As you can see, the Games Home screen makes lots of suggestions. Each row takes a different perspective on helping you find a new game. A few of these are board games, strategy games, and action games. They also include games that allow you to play offline without Wi-Fi. Another approach is to choose the Categories options. This will bring up the game categories shown here. The Games Categories tab In the Play Store, games are divided into the following genres: Action: Games that involve shooting projectiles that can range from marshmallows to bullets to antiballistic missiles. They also involve fighting games with every level of gore possible. Adventure: Games that take you to virtual worlds where you search for treasure and/or fight evil. Zombies and vampires are traditional evildoers. Arcade: Game room and bar favorites. Board: Versions of familiar (and some not-so-familiar) board games. Card: All the standard card games are here. Casino: Simulations of gambling games; no real money changes hands. Casual: Games that you can easily pick up and put aside (unless you have and addictive personality). Educational: Enjoyable games that also offer users enhanced skills or information. Music: Includes a wide range of games that involve music in one way or another. These games may include trivia, educational games involving learning music, or sing-a-long songs for kids. Puzzle: Includes games like Sudoku, word search, and Trivial Pursuit. Racing: Cars, go-karts, snowboards, jet skis, biplanes, jets, or spacecraft competing with one another. Role Playing: In a virtual world, become a different version of who you are in real life, be it for better or worse. Simulation: Rather than live in the virtual world of some game designer, create and manage your own virtual world. Sports: Electronic interpretations of real-world activities that incorporate some of the skill or strategy elements of the original game; vary based upon the level of detail. Strategy: Emphasize decision-making skills, like chess; a variety of games with varying levels of complexity and agreement with reality. Trivia: A variety of games that reward you if you know things like the name of the family dog from the TV show My Three Sons. Its name was Tramp, but you knew that already. Word: Games that are universally popular, such as Scrabble. Many games appear in more than one category. Each game has a Description page. It’s similar to the Description page for apps, but it emphasizes different attributes. Here is an example of a typical Description page. When you’re in a category that looks promising, look for these road signs to help you check out and narrow your choices among similar titles: Ratings/Comments: Gamers love to exalt good games and bash bad ones. The comments for the game shown are complimentary, and the overall ranking next to the game name at the top suggests that many others are favorable. About This Game: This tells you the basic idea behind the game. What’s New: This section tells what capabilities have been added since the previous release. This is relevant if you have an earlier version of this game. Reviews: Here is where existing users get to vent their spleen if they do not like the game or brag about how smart they are for buying it ahead of you. The comments are anonymous, include the date the comment was left, and tell you the kind of device the commenter used. There can be applications that lag on some older devices. However, you have the Galaxy S20, which has the best of everything (for now). More Games by Developer: If you have a positive experience with a given game, you may want to check that developer’s other games. The More By section makes it easier for you to find these other titles. Users Also Viewed/Users Also Installed: This shows you the other apps that other people who downloaded this app have viewed or downloaded. These are some apps that you may want to check out. Price: As a tie-breaker among similar titles, a slightly higher price is a final indication of a superior game. And because you’re only talking a few pennies, price isn’t usually a big deal. How to leave feedback on games For applications in general, and games in particular, the Play Store is a free market. When you come in to the Play Store, your best path to finding a good purchase is to read the reviews of those who have gone before you. Although more than a million users have commented on Angry Birds, most games do not have that kind of following. One could argue that your opinion would not move the overall rating for a frequently reviewed game like Angry Birds. The same cannot be said for other games. One of the new paid games is Dungeoneers from Monsterious Games. The game description is shown here. A Description page, before you download it to your phone, will show either the Install button or the price of the game; the feedback areas will be grayed out. The Description page after you download the game to your phone will offer the options to Open or Uninstall, and the feedback areas will be active. In this case, Dungeoneers has been reviewed by 134 gamers, most of whom are pretty darn enthusiastic. Your opinion matters more for this game than for the heavily reviewed games. After you’ve downloaded and played a game, you can help make the system work by providing your own review. This discussion reviews the process, starting from the first screen of the Play Store: Tap the Menu icon. This brings up a pop-up menu like the one shown. Tap My Apps & Games. This brings up the applications and games that you’ve downloaded, as shown. The Play Store does not distinguish between games and apps in this menu. They’re all in the same list. Tap the game for which you’d like to leave feedback. Tapping the title of the game normally brings up the game description. After you’ve downloaded a game, however, a Rate This App section appears that lets you leave feedback. Tap the stars on the screen. This brings up a pop-up screen, as shown on the left of the figure. Tap the number of stars you believe this game deserves. The stars are between one and five. You’re asked to answer some other questions that are shown, including making any comments on the last pop-up. When you’re done, tap Submit. Your comments are sent to the Play Store for everyone to see. For the sake of the system, make sure your comments are accurate!

Article / Updated 09-14-2020

When you turn on your Samsung Galaxy S20 the first time, it will ask you a series of 10 questions and preferences to configure it. The good folks at Samsung are well-intentioned, but not every customer who owns a Samsung Galaxy S20 knows, from day one, whether he or she wants a Samsung account, what’s a good name for the phone, or what the purpose of a cloud service, such as Dropbox, is and how it would be used. You can relax. I’ll help you answer these questions. On the other hand, if your phone is already set up, you probably took a guess or skipped some questions. Maybe now you’re rethinking some of your choices. No problem. You can go back and change any answer you gave and get your phone to behave the way you want. The following are the kinds of questions you may be asked. These questions may come in this order, but they may not. They typically include the following: Language/Accessibility: This option lets you select your language. The default is English for phones sold within the United States. Also, the phone has some special capabilities for individuals with disabilities. If you have a disability and think you might benefit, take a look at these options. They have really tried to make this phone as usable as possible for as many folks as possible. Wi-Fi: Your phone automatically starts scanning for a Wi-Fi connection. You can always use the cellular connection when you are in cellular coverage, but if there is a Wi-Fi connection available, your phone will try to use this first. It is probably cheaper and may be faster than the cellular. At the same time, you may not want your phone to connect to the Wi-Fi access point with the best signal. It could be that the strongest signal is a fee-based service, whereas the next best signal is free. In any case, this page scans the available options and presents them to you. Date and Time: This is easy. The default setting is to use the time and date that comes from the cellular network and the date and time format is the U.S. style. Just tap on the next button and move on. This date and time from the cellular network is the most accurate information you’ll get, and you don’t need to do anything other than be within cellular coverage now and again. If you prefer non-U.S. formatting, such as a 24-hour clock or day/month/year formatting, you can change your phone any way you want. Sign up for a Samsung Account: Go ahead and sign up for an account. The Samsung account offers you some nice things to help you get your phone back should you lose it. All you need is an account name, such as an email account, and a password. When you buy a Galaxy S20 smartphone, you are now a customer of multiple companies! These include Samsung for the phone hardware, Google for the phone operating system (Android), and the wireless carrier that provides the cellular service. Plus, if you bought the phone through a phone retailer, such as Best Buy, it is in the mix as well. All of them want to make you happy, which is a good thing for the most part. The only downside is that they want to know who you are so that they can provide you with more services. Don’t worry. You control how much they offer you. Google Account Sign-up: Google account means an email account where the address ends in @gmail.com. If you already have an account on Gmail, enter your user ID and password on your phone. If you don’t have a Gmail account, the good news is that you can use your existing email account. I highly recommend that you create a Google account. Location Options: Your phone knowing your location and providing it to an application can be sensitive issue. If you’re really worried about privacy and security, tap the green check marks on the screen and then tap the button that says Next. Selecting these options prevents applications from knowing where you are. (This choice also prevents you from getting directions and a large number of cool capabilities that are built into applications.) The only folks who’ll know your location will be the 911 dispatchers if you dial them. If you’re worried about your security but want to take advantage of some of the cool capabilities built into your phone, tap the right arrow key to move forward. Remember, you can choose on a case-by-case basis whether to share your location. Phone Ownership: This screen asks you to enter your first and last name. Go ahead and put in your real name. Cloud Services: The chances are that you will be offered the option to sign up for a cloud service where you can back up your phone and get access to a gazillion MB of free storage. This can be a tricky decision. You could sign up for every cloud service that comes along. Then you need to remember where you stored that critical file. You could sign up for one, and you may miss a nice capability that is available on another. You could have one cloud service for work and another for personal. Here is what I recommend: Sign up for whatever is the cloud service your phone offers during this initial setup process if you do not already have one. You will see what it is later. If you are happy with a cloud service you already have, such as Dropbox or OneDrive, chances are, they will have all the services you need for you and your phone. You can link your Galaxy S20 to this service by downloading the necessary app. Learn about Key Features: Go ahead and take this tour of all the new things you can do. Or tap the Next button. This screen is for setting up the coolest and the most sophisticated capabilities of the phone. Device Name: When this screen comes up, you’ll see a text box that has the model name. You can keep this name for your phone, or you can choose to personalize it a bit. For example, you can change it to “Bill’s Galaxy S20” or “Indy at 425-555-1234.” The purpose of this name is for connecting to a local data network, as when you’re pairing to a Bluetooth device. If this last sentence made no sense to you, don’t worry about it. Tap Finish. In a moment, you see the Home screen, as shown.

Article / Updated 09-14-2020

Your phone is set up to work with up to 10 email accounts. If you have more than ten accounts, I’m thinking that you might have too much going on in your life. No phone, not even the Galaxy S20, can help you there! After you tell your Galaxy S20 all your email accounts, the Email screen will let you see the inbox of each account or combine all your email in a single inbox. You can choose which option works best for you. How to add your first email account To get started, have your email addresses and passwords ready. When you have them, go to your phone’s Home screen. Look for the Mail icon; it is an envelope in silhouette. This is probably on your Home screen as one of the four primary shortcuts just above the Device Function keys or in your application list. Tap the Mail icon from the Home screen. This brings up a screen like the one shown. Choose one of the options to get started. In every case, it starts with entering your email address. Your email address should include the full shebang, including the @ sign and everything that follows it. Make sure to enter your password correctly, being careful with capitalization if your email server is case-sensitive (most are). If in doubt, select the option that lets you see your password. Tap the box to enter your password. Don’t be surprised if your S20 brings you to a special screen specifically for your email provider for you to enter your password. The following figure shows the sign-in screen for a generic email account. This figure shows the screen for a Microsoft Exchange account. One of these will work. Carefully enter your password in the appropriate field and tap Next. You’re asked for permissions. Just go with the default settings for now. This brings up the screen shown. Select your desired Sync Settings and then tap Next. You can select how often you want your phone and the email service to synchronize. A lot of thought and consideration has been put into the default settings. If you just want to get started, tap Next. If you want to fine-tune things later, it is not hard to go back and adjust these settings. These settings are intended to be gentle on your data usage. If you want images in email to download immediately, store older email messages on your phone, check to see whether you have new email all the time, you can change these settings on this page for this email account. If you know what you want that is different from the default settings, make the changes and then tap Next. Enter a name for the new email account. The next screen gives you the option to call your email account something other than its address. You can call it what you like, but I recommend choosing something shorter, like Joe’s MSN or My Hotmail. Tap Done. Using the following figure as an example, you can see that my account is now registered on my phone. It worked! How to add email accounts After you have entered your first email account, there are a few different steps to add additional accounts. Tap the Options icon at the top-left part of the screen. The three horizontal lines bring up the slide-in screen shown. This allows you to see other email folders. It also lets you access the setting icon. Tap the Settings icon. Tapping Settings brings up the screen shown. Tap Add Account next to the green plus sign. This brings you back to the email setup screen. At this point you can add up to nine more accounts, and remember, you will be asked which email account you want to be your primary account. It is entirely up to you. You can send and receive email from all your accounts by selecting it, but only one can be the primary account used if you send an email from another application, such as the Contacts app. How to set up a corporate email account In addition to personal email accounts, you can add your work email account to your phone — if it’s based upon a Microsoft Exchange server, that is, and if it’s okay with your company’s IT department. Before you get started, you need some information from the IT department of your company: The domain name of the office email server. Your work email password. The name of your exchange server. If the folks in IT are okay with you using your phone to access its email service, your IT department will have no trouble supplying you with this information. Before you set up your work email on your phone, make sure that you have permission. If you do this without the green light from your company, and you end up violating your company’s rules, you could be in hot water. Increasing your productivity won’t be much help if you’re standing out in the parking lot holding all the contents of your office in a cardboard box. Assuming that your company wants you to be more productive with no extra cost to the company, the process for adding your work email starts at your email Home screen shown. Enter your email address and password. The Corporate screen is shown. Tap Manual Setup. This brings up the screen shown. The chances are that you haven’t got the foggiest notion what any of this means or what you are to do now. Verify that your IT department is good with you having email on your own device and have them give you the necessary settings. Seriously. It is increasingly common that a firm will give you access on your phone. At the same time, they do not generally circulate documents with how to make this happen. This would be a big security problem if anyone could get access. Save yourself the time and get help from IT.

Article / Updated 09-14-2020

These days, many people have multiple personal email address for many reasons. Your phone’s Email app can manage up to 10 email accounts. With a Galaxy S20 phone, you’ll want to create Google account if you don’t already have one. If you don’t have a Google account, you’ll miss out on so many exciting capabilities that it’s almost worth settling for a lesser phone. If you have an email account that ends in @gmail.com, by default you have a Google account. If you do not have an account that ends in @gmail.com, you can either create a Google account with your existing email or create a separate email account on Google’s Gmail just for your phone. Setting up a new Gmail account if you don’t have one already is easy, but it isn’t too hard to use an existing email for a Google account. The Email app on your phone routinely “polls” all the email systems for which you identify an email account and password. It then presents you with copies of your email. Your phone mainly interacts with your inbox on your email account. It isn’t really set up to work like the full-featured email application on your computer, though. For example, many email packages integrate with a sophisticated word processor, have sophisticated filing systems for your saved messages, and offer lots of fonts. As long as you don’t mind working without these capabilities, you might never need to get on your computer to access your email again, and you could store email in folders on your phone. Setup is easy, and having access to all your email makes you so productive that I advise you to consider adding all your email accounts to your phone. In general, connecting to a personal email account simply involves entering the name of your email account(s) and its password(s) in your phone. Have these handy when you’re ready to set up your phone. As mentioned, you can have up to 10 email accounts on your phone; however, you do need to pick one account as your favorite. You can send an email using any of the accounts, but your phone wants to know the email account that you want it to use as a default. Next, you may want to have access to your work account. This is relatively common these days, but some companies see this as a security problem. You should consult with your IT department for some extra information. Technologically, it’s not hard to make this kind of thing happen as long as your business email is reasonably modern. The advantages of setting up a Google account Several important functions on your phone require a Google account: The ability to buy applications from the Google Play Store. (This is big!) The ability to use the Google Drive for storage. (This is pretty important and almost huge!) Free access to the photo site Google Photos (although other sites have many of the same features). Automatic backup of your contacts and calendar. To make a long story short, it’s worth the trouble to get a Google account, even if you already have a personal email account. How to set up an existing gmail account If you already have a Gmail account, setting it up on your phone is easy as can be. Follow these steps from the Apps menu: Find the Gmail icon in the Apps list. Here is a confusing part. The icon on the left in the figure is the Gmail app. The icon on the right is for the general email app. The general email app is for your combined email accounts. The general email account is the app that you will use to access any and all of your email accounts. Tap the Gmail icon. Because your phone does not know if you have a Gmail account yet, it offers you the option of entering your Gmail account or whether you want to create a new account. This page is shown here. Enter your Gmail account email address and tap Next. Be sure to include the @gmail.com suffix. Enter your existing Gmail password and tap Next. Go ahead and type your password. When you’re ready, tap Next on the keyboard. You may get a pop-up reconfirming that you agree with the terms of use and all that legal stuff. Tap OK. You’ll see lots of flashing lights and whirling circles while your phone and your Gmail account get to know each other. If everything is correct, your phone and your account get acquainted and become best friends. After a few minutes, they are ready to serve your needs. There are even a few screens that tell you all the wonderful things that your Gmail account will do for you. Believe every word! If you have a problem, you probably mistyped something. Try retyping your information. From this point on, any email you get in your Gmail account will also appear on your phone! How to set up a new Gmail account If you need to set up a new Gmail account, you have a few more steps to follow. Before you get into the steps, think up a good user ID and password. Gmail has been around for a while. That means all the good, simple email addresses are taken. Unless you plan to start using this email account as your main email, which you could do if you wanted, you’re probably best off if you pick some unusual combination of letters and numbers that you can remember for now to get through this process. When you have all of this ready, follow Steps 1 and 2 in the previous section, but tap the Create Account link when you get to the screen shown previously. From there, follow these steps: Enter your first and last names on the screen. Google asks for your name in the screen shown. This is how Google personalizes any communications it has with you. You may be tempted to use a fake name or some other clever two-word combination in place of a name. Don’t do it. You will still be getting email to Rita Book or Warren Peace long after the humor has worn off. Enter the username you want to use with Gmail. On the screen shown, enter the username you want. Hopefully you get this name approved on the first shot. If your first choice isn’t available, try again. There is no easy way to check before you go through these steps. Eventually, you hit on an unused ID, or you will use one of the suggestions in blue font. When you’re successful, it will congratulate you. Pick a good password of at least eight characters. Be sure to pick one that is unique and that you can remember. Enter the other information and an alternate email address and tap Continue. If you forget your password, Google wants to verify that you’re really you and not someone pretending to be you. Google does this check by sending a confirmation email to another account or sending a text to your phone. You can do this now or tap Skip to do it later. After you tap Done, light flashes, and you see the screen working away. This process usually takes less than two minutes. While you wait, you’ll see all kinds of messages that it’s getting ready to sync things. Don’t worry. I explain these messages in good time.

Article / Updated 09-14-2020

The first step here is to make sure that you have Samsung Pay on your Galaxy S20. As cool as this app is, there are many options to this technology, and your carrier may have preferred to not have it preloaded. No problem. Download the application from the Play Store. The Samsung Pay logo is seen here. It is easy to confuse Samsung Pay and Google Pay. These are two different applications. Google Pay is nice, but it does not have the Magnetic Secure Transmission capability that allows you to use mobile payments at many more retailers. The app page description is shown here. When you tap Install, you get the image on the right. The Samsung Pay app works a little different than most other apps. The first time you open Samsung Pay, you will be given information on how to use it and be asked to put in your credit card information (in a very convenient way, by the way) and asked all kinds of permissions and agreements. Once you have given all this information, Samsung Pay waits patiently at the bottom of your home pages, ready to meet your payment needs with nothing more than a quick swipe from the bottom of the screen. Most people would simply not use this app if they had to go digging through their screens to find the app. This way, you do not have to search to find the app and wait for it to come up. This figure shows the Home screen with the Samsung Pay launch button sitting at the bottom ready to appear with a quick flick. The launch button is also there on the Lock screen, so you don’t even need to unlock your phone because you’ll be using the exact same security steps before you can use your credit card. How to set up Samsung Pay When you open the Samsung Pay app, you’re greeted with a series of pages before you get to the Home screen seen in the following figure. These pages include marketing introductions (which you don’t need because you read this article), permissions and agreements (which you should give if you want to move forward), and some pages that verify that Samsung Pay can work on your phone. The app wants to make sure that your phone has the right parts (your Galaxy S20 does, but that is not the case for every Android phone) and that you are in one of the 27 countries where Samsung Pay is accepted. You’re set if you’re in the United States, Canada, China, or Kazakhstan (very nice!). You’re out of luck if you’re in, say, Yemen. Being in these countries is important for this app because each country has its own set of laws for payments, and Samsung may not have all the arrangements in place if you are not in one of these countries. New countries will be added as quickly as possible. Read the agreements. In all likelihood, they are the same kind of agreements that exist in the fine print in your existing credit card and every time you sign your name to a credit card charge slip that affirms you won’t pull any shenanigans. That said, I am your humble author, not your legal advisor, and you should feel comfortable with these agreements. The next part of the initial setup process is to step through how you want to set up security. You have two security options when you are making a transaction: using your fingerprint or entering a PIN. There are a few scenarios where using a Samsung Pay PIN rather than a fingerprint might make sense. In most cases, using your fingerprint is exceptionally convenient. If you haven’t set these up yet, the Samsung Pay application will walk you through the steps to do so. It’s quick and easy. The next step is to enter your credit card information. When you tap the link that says Cards on the home page or the menu, you’re taken to a screen that shows you the images of the credit cards you’ve added. Initially, the screen will be empty. This figure shows what it looks like after you have entered your first card. To add a new card, tap the blue circle in the lower-right corner with a silhouette of a credit card and a plus sign. You get a pop-up with some choices. Pick the Add Credit/Debit Card option to start this process. The left image in the following figure is when the screen first comes up and the right image is when you have the desired credit card in the viewfinder. The app then interprets the information on the front of your credit card and populates as many screens as possible with your credit card information. It will ask you to fill out the form seen in the following figure if it can’t figure out the information on your card or the information is on the reverse side of the card. Not every company that offers credit cards is signed up with Samsung Pay. You can check the Samsung website or tap the link to check before you proceed. Otherwise, just go ahead and see whether things go through. Tap Next, and Samsung Pay will seek to confirm things with your credit card company. This does not cost you anything. It just wants to make sure that when you do make a charge, everything will flow smoothly. One of the things the company will want to verify is that you are authorized to use that credit card. This means that either you need to be the primary cardholder or you need to coordinate with that person. Keep in mind that scanning your fingerprint and tapping your phone on a credit card reader has the same legal implications as actually signing a credit slip. When the credit card company verifies that everything is on the up and up, you get an acknowledgement like the one shown. How to use Samsung Pay First, pick something to buy at a store. Have a clerk ring it up and tell him you will pay with a credit card. Swipe the screen upward. You see the screen seen shown here. Enter your fingerprint by pressing the icon and you see a screen similar to this one. You should either hold your phone against where the credit card reader would read the magnetic stripe or where there is the contactless payment system logo if it is available. The semicircle above your signature will start counting down, and your phone will vibrate to let you know that it is transmitting. You will hear a beep if it all goes through. If it fails for some reason, you can try again simply by reentering your security option. This process works with the vast majority of credit card readers. This does not work well, however, with credit card readers where you insert your card into the machine and pull it out quickly. This type of reader is mostly used on gasoline pumps. Sorry.