Last year when Samsung launched the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, one of the most noticeable feature additions was the Always On Display.
The Galaxy S8, announced back in late February and launched in Kenya early last month, retains the feature and even grants users the ability to customize it to their liking with a selection of clock styles, the ability to change backgrounds as well as pin images and text and control music.
The Always On Display is a built-in feature found in some devices that makes use of a device’s idle/sleep time to display some useful information like remaining battery, upcoming alarms, the date and time, unread notifications etc without the device’s battery taking a hit. For Samsung devices, since they use the company’s renown AMOLED displays, battery drain is not an issue as only the required parts of the inactive screen are lit.
In order to make updating it hassle-free, Samsung has gone ahead and unbundled the Always On Display and availed it as a standalone application on the Google Play Store.
As such, going forward, users of either the Galaxy S8 or its larger sibling, the Galaxy S8+, will be receiving any new updates through the Play Store instead of waiting for the next batch of software updates from the company.
The Always On Display app is not compatible with any other devices, including last year’s Galaxy S7. Just the Galaxy S8. Users of the Galaxy S7 will have to wait for Samsung to release the next software update if they are to get the new Always On Display clock styles found on the Galaxy S8.
Another application of interest found on the Galaxy S8, the mobile internet browser and the Samsung Health application, are open to users of not just Samsung Galaxy smartphones but other eligible Android devices as well.
