Even if your Samsung phone’s camera is one of your most-used features, there’s a good chance that you’re only scratching the surface of what it can actually do. Beyond snapping photos, scanning QR codes, and capturing documents, it can help you with a lot of things.
With the right app, you can use your Samsung phone’s camera to measure stuff, identify things, navigate a new city, and even check if your TV remote is working. These aren’t features you’ll use daily, but you’ll be glad to know they are there when you need them.
Check if the remote is actually sending a signal
Troubleshoot your remote in seconds
When your TV or AC remote stops working out of nowhere, your first instinct is to blame the dead batteries. That’s fair, but sometimes even replacing them might not fix the problem. And when that happens, the easiest way to check if the issue lies with the remote or the appliance is by using your phone’s camera.
The infrared light remotes use is not visible to the naked eye, but your phone’s camera can see it just fine. You just need to open the Camera app, point it at the front of the remote’s LED, and press any button. If the remote is sending a signal, you should see the LED light up.
Measure objects and surface area
Your phone as a digital measuring tape
Measuring lengths, heights, or surface area is something you don’t need to do every day. But when you do, there’s no need to go grab a measuring tape. Your Samsung phone can do that job, and with surprising ease. All you need is Samsung’s Quick Measure app.
The Quick Measure app can calculate the distance between the camera and an object, measure the length or height of objects (or even a person), and work out the surface area. It’s all too easy to do, and you can even capture the image with measurements overlaid for reference.
The best part is accuracy. Most of the time, the margin of error is usually less than a couple of centimeters.
Turn your phone into a magnifier
Read the fine print without squinting
Even if your eyesight is fine, you’ll still sometimes come across text that’s too tiny to read comfortably. It could be the fine print on a medicine box, instructions on electronics, or ingredients on food packaging that force you to squint.
In such cases, you can dive into your Samsung phone’s accessibility menu, go to Vision enhancements, and select Magnifier. Once you’ve set up a shortcut for the magnifier, you can access it any time.
Simply point your phone’s camera at the text and use the slider to zoom in. You can use the flashlight toggle for better visibility or apply color filters for better contrast.
Get walking directions with Google Maps Live View
Never second-guess a turn
Google Maps is something you typically only use when driving, but it can be surprisingly useful when you’re on foot too. It has a Live View feature that uses augmented reality to overlay walking directions on top of your camera feed.
This is great when you’re exploring a city for the first time. Instead of constantly looking at the boring blue dot and missing what’s around you, Live View gives you visual cues in the real world.
To use this, simply start navigation to your destination in Google Maps, switch to walking mode and choose Live View. Then hold your phone up, and you’ll see arrows and distance markers on the screen.
Translate in real time and identify anything
Put a name to what you’re seeing
Language barriers can be frustrating. Anyone who’s ever traveled to a country that speaks a different language or dealt with a user manual in a foreign language probably already knows the pain.
Google Lens can help you with that. You just need to point the phone at the text and decipher the sign or a restaurant menu quickly. The app immediately replaces the original text with the translated version.
From time to time, you’re also likely to come across something interesting and have no idea what it is. It could be a plant, a landmark, a cool gadget, or a species you’ve never seen before. When that happens, you can use your Samsung phone’s camera and Google Lens to identify it.
If you don’t want to install Google Lens, you can also use Samsung’s Bixby Vision for this. It comes preinstalled, and you can find it inside the More tab in the Camera app. And if you want detailed explanations, context, or recommendations, you can also use AI-powered voice assistants like Gemini and ChatGPT.
Honestly, I don’t blame you for not knowing all of these features. That’s because some of them do require a specific app. But now that you know, you should definitely take the time to explore them.
