When Redditor u/napjerks asked, "What do most people not know their phones can do?", people shared some genuinely mind-blowing features of smartphones that many of us (including myself) probably still do not know about.
Here's what they had to say:
1. "Tap and hold the space bar to move your text cursor tool back and forth with precision. Every time I do it in front of someone, they've been like, 'wait, do that again', and they act like I just made their lives way better."
2. "Many phones have built-in document scanning features that allow users to scan and save documents as PDFs using the device's camera."
3. "Metal detection. About five years ago, a co-worker and I knew a hallway in our building had a pipe clean-out that we needed to access, that was buried under the concrete floor. We didn't know where exactly. He downloaded a metal detector app, it flagged a spot, we dug, and it was right there."
4. "You can use the Translate app with your camera to translate printed text in real-time."
— u/ptear
5. "If you take a picture of a flower, you can hold it down and click 'Info' and it will search up what it is."
6. "On an iPhone, if you hold the flashlight button, it gives you a dimmer."
7. "On an Android, you can do a split-screen between two apps at once."
8. "You can add shortcuts on your iPhone that are triggered by double or triple tapping the back of your phone."
(Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap)
9. "Hold down a part of a photo you want to isolate and it will remove the background."
10. "Repeatedly clicking the side button like eight times sometimes dials 911. Didn’t know that until I did it."
11. "To check if your TV remote is working, point it at your phone camera — the phone will pick up the flash and it'll be visible on screen."
12. "Apple iPhone: Take a picture of text, then go to the photo you just took in the photos app, and tap and hold the text in the photo, and you can copy and all that."
"Same for Samsung."
— u/starsnddiamonds
13. "Hold down the 0 (zero) on the iPhone and you can make degrees. For example, 360°."
14. "Your Samsung S series can wirelessly charge other devices."
"As can recent Pixels."
15. "If you tell Siri to cast 'Lumos', then the light on the iPhone will turn on."
"'Nox' will turn it off as well!"
— u/iz24
Do you have any such smartphone tips, tricks, and hacks to share? Let us know in the comments!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.