notification access - Samsung Galaxy S20 Guides

Galaxy S20 allows you to customize notification icon style in the status bar to avoid overcrowded icons.

You can choose to show all notification icons, last 3 icons, or the total number of notification icons in Galaxy S20 status bar.

This Galaxy S20 guide explains the details of Galaxy S20 status bar, the icon arrangements, and how to customize notification icon style in Galaxy S20 status bar to hide notification icons, show 3 recent icons, show all notification icons, or only show the number of notifications in the status bar.

Please note, the status bar and notification icons work identically on Galaxy S20, S20+, and S20 Ultra, although there are significant differences among these 3 phones.

What is Galaxy S20 status bar?

Like all other Android phones (even iPhones), the top part of the Galaxy S20 screen is reserved for the system to show status icons and notification icons.

As shown in the screenshot below., a typical Galaxy S20 status bar has two parts separated by the punching hole of the front-facing camera:

Notification icons (and time, which cannot be disabled) aligned to the left edge on the left side of the front camera.
Status icons aligned to the right edge on the right side of the front camera.

Since Galaxy S8, Samsung allows you to limit the total number of notification icons on the status bar. Galaxy S20 allows more options to customize notification style on the status bar.

Actually, all Galaxy phones with the Android 10 update has a similar feature.

What is the dot in the Galaxy S20 status bar?

You may notice the dot icon, as shown in the screenshot above (marked in the green circle), on the rightmost of the status bar.

The dot icon in the Galaxy S20 status bar means “and more”. In other words, the dot icon tells you there are more than 3 notifications icons.

By default, Galaxy S20 status bar only displays up to 3 notification icons. If there are more than 3, the most recent 3 notification icons will be shown and the dot icon starts to appear.

Of course, you can change this default behaviour to customize notification icon style on Galaxy S20 status bar (read on).

Anyway, do not be panic when you see the dot icon on the status bar.

How to customize notification icon style in Galaxy S20 status bar?

If … Read the rest

How does the Galaxy S20 LED View Cover (LED Wallet Cover) work?

LED View cover, which is a successor of LED Flip cover, was first introduced with the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge. Samsung changed the design and materials over the years.

But the fundamentals are still the same.

All Samsung LED covers, including the old LED Flip cover, LED View cover (LED Wallet cover in some regions), and the LED back cover, work through NFC technology.

There is no battery in the LED cover. The LED cover get power through NFC, NOT through wireless charging. But it does affect wireless charging (for safety reasons). When you charge Galaxy S20 battery with a wireless charging pad, the wireless charging will be paused automatically when LED icons are shown. And it resumes once the LED disappears.

The communication between the phone and the cover does NOT rely on the NFC settings. It is hardcoded in the firmware. Even you turn off NFC on your phone, the LED cover still works normally.

So, this is totally different from how S Pen on Galaxy Note devices works. S Pen does NOT use NFC.

The old S Pen (until Galaxy Note 8) does not have a battery. You do not need to charge it. These old S Pens get power from the screen (through electro-magnetic grid under the screen) when you use it.

The new S Pen in Note 9 has a supercapacitor and the S Pen in Note 10 has a real battery. Both of them will be charged when you put them in the S Pen slot. The “wireless charging” is using … Read the rest