[Tip] Enable Secret Functions and Menus Hidden in Samsung Galaxy Smartphones

If you own a

Samsung Galaxy mobile phone or Note series phablet

, this tutorial can help you activate many

hidden secrets. features and menu options

in your smartphone that could be very useful to you. Some of these hidden secret features and options are as follows:

Activate the built-in voice call recording feature

Enable option to disable camera shutter sound

Enable additional “Call” icon in call log list for direct calls

Activate the new “Block calls/messages” feature

Enable “Exit” option in browser

Enable "Rotate" option to manually rotate images in gallery

Activate the "Floating messages" or "Air message" function

Show hardware version in "About device" page

Set Default “Desktop Site View” in Browser

Show browser user agent version in settings

Force alphabetical order as default view for app list in launcher

Disable phone number formatting in dialer screen

Disable anti-malware feature in Smart Manager program

Disable software update option in settings

Enable Wi-Fi Calling and Camera During Calls

Activate the option to schedule the sending of messages

And many others

Related:

Secret Hidden Codes for Samsung Galaxy Mobile Phones

In fact, Samsung disables many features and menu options on its devices depending on the country and region. Some of these features are built-in features of Google's stock Android operating system and some features are exclusive to Samsung's own firmware installed as a layer on top of stock Android in its devices. For example, in some countries you might already have a native option to record voice calls on your Samsung Galaxy cell phone, but in many countries this option is not available.

Which options and features should be enabled or disabled in a Samsung Galaxy device is determined by a system file present in the firmware files of the device.

We can modify this system file and manually enable any or all of these hidden secret features and options in our device p>

.

This system file is actually part of the program

CCS

(Consumer Software Customization) which is used by Samsung to show/hide specific features and options in its devices based on geographical region and mobile carriers.

If you have a Samsung Galaxy device and you are ready to enable these secret and very useful features on your mobile phone or phablet, this tutorial will definitely help you.

We tried this method in

Samsung Galaxy S4

, S5, S6 mobile phones and Note 3, Note 4, No e 5 phablets successfully.

This method should work on all Samsung Galaxy devices

.

If you want to enjoy hidden secret features and options of Samsung Galaxy smartphones and phablets, follow these steps:

Since we need to modify a system file present in the firmware of the mobile phone, we must first root the mobile phone. Without rooting the device, this method cannot be used.

If you already have a rooted mobile phone, skip to STEP 2.

If you have not rooted your mobile phone yet, the following guide will help you to root your mobile phone:

[FAQ] All About Rooting Android Mobile Phones and Tablets

[Guide] How to Root Android Device?

[Guide] How to Root Android Device? p>

WARNING:

Rooting an Android mobile phone is a risky task and may void the warranty or damage your device. So root your mobile phone only if you are sure and know what you are going to do with your mobile phone.

We will also have to install a root explorer application to browse the firmware folders of our mobile. phone just like we browse files and folders in Windows OS Explorer. Also, to edit the system file, we will need to install a text editing application.

If you have already installed a root explorer and text editor app on your mobile phone, you can skip to step 3. p>

If you haven't installed these apps on your mobile phone, you can install the following app called "

RootBrowser

which is a free app and already comes with a built-in text editor, so you won't need to install a text editor app separately:

Download and install Root Browser app from Google Play Store

We also used this application in our test mobile phones and it worked perfectly.

Now we have installed all the required apps and we need to go through the different folders present in the device firmware and find the system file which needs to be modified to enable/disable these hidden secret features.

Open "Root Browser" or your own root browser application and navigate to the following directory:

In "

csc< /p>

”, you will find a file “

others.xml

“. This is the file we are going to edit to enable the hidden secret features.

If you don't see the "others.xml" file, look for "

feature.xml p>

" file. Some devices have a feature.xml file instead of the other.xml file.

If you don't see either of these two XML files, you will need to create the other.xml file manually.

Related:

[Tip] Change or Delete Built-in Ringtones and Sounds in Android Smartphone

You have now found the

others.xml

file, tap on it and it will open the file in the installed text editing app. The file already contains predefined code to customize the availability of features and options. Most of the time, the availability of a feature or option is decided by a single line of code having a value either

true

Where

false p>

.

All the code is present between the tags

and

in the file. So you need to make sure to add any new code between these two tags. Add the required code either after the opening tag

or before the closing tag

in the file.

You have 2 ways to edit the file and enable hidden secret features:

If the file already contains the required line of code, you can edit it and change its value as shown later in this tutorial.

If the file does not contain required code, you will need to add the new code yourself.

For your convenience, we have provided a ready-to-use text file containing the complete formatted code to enable and activate some important and useful features. You can download this file, put it on your device, copy the entire text of the file and replace the entire text in the other.xml file with the copied code.

Now let's share the codes that need to be added to the other.xml file to enable these hidden secret features and options:

Warning:

Please check local laws regarding call recording in your country.

Record

" instead of "

Add a new call

" in the call screen as shown in the following image:

You can press the "Record" button and it will start recording the voices of the caller as well as the recipient and save the file in the directory "

To call

" on the SD card.

You can also access saved calls by opening the call logs screen and tapping

More-> Recorded calls

as shown in the following image:

To enable this feature, you just need to add the following piece of code in the other.xml file:

Again, be sure to add this line either after the opening tag

or before the closing tag

in the file.

Save the file. If it asks for root permission, grant permission. After the file is saved successfully, restart the device and now if you try to make or receive a call, you will get call recording option.

When you take a photo using the camera of your Samsung Galaxy device, a shutter or clicking sound is played to indicate that the photo has been taken successfully. No option is provided to disable this sound and we have to put the mobile phone in silent mode if we want to disable the camera shutter sound.

But if you enable this hidden secret feature, you get an additional option to

enable/disable shutter sound

in the camera settings as shown in the following image:

Just add the following code to the other.xml file:

Save the file and restart your mobile to take effect.

This is another useful hidden feature. We know that we can drag an existing entry present in the call logs list to the right to directly call that number, but if we enable this feature, it will add a new little "

Call

It will help you to call this phone number directly. Just tap the call icon and it will immediately dial that number.

Just add the following code to the other.xml file:

Save the file and restart your mobile to take effect.

This is another extremely useful hidden secret feature. If you enable this feature, it will add a new menu"

Block calls/messages

" under Settings as shown in the following image:

Once you open this new option, you will have several options to block all phone numbers or certain phone numbers from calling or texting your mobile number.

Just add the following code to the other.xml file:

This is a very useful option which is disabled by default. If you open the app

Navigator

on your mobile phone and close the application using the back button on your mobile phone, the browser application continues to run in the background and consumes system resources, battery power as well as band bandwidth of your internet connection (data usage).

If you enable this hidden feature, it will add a new option "

Quit

" in the menu

More

from the browser as shown in the following image:

You can click on the “Exit” option whenever you want to close the browser app directly without any need to press the back button multiple times. The exit option will end the task of the browser app and it won't run in the background.

Just add the following code to the other.xml file:

Also, if you want the browser to ask you for confirmation if you press the Exit option, you can also add the following code:

Save the file and restart your mobile to take effect.

If you activate "

” in your mobile phone, then you open an image and rotate your mobile phone, the image also rotates according to the position of the mobile phone, i.e. portrait or landscape. Sometimes this feature can get annoying when you try to view an image from a different angle of your mobile phone, but as soon as you rotate the mobile phone, the image automatically rotates.

If you enable this feature, a new option "

Spin

will be added to the toolbar of the Gallery image browsing view and the image will no longer auto-rotate. It will only rotate if you tap the "Rotate" option. The "Rotate" option will remain grayed out in portrait mode but as soon as you change your mobile phone to landscape mode, the "Rotate" option will become available and you can tap on it to rotate the image manually as shown in the following image:

Just add the following code to the other.xml file:

Save the file and restart your mobile to take effect.

“Floating Message” or “Air Message” is a new feature in new Samsung Galaxy devices that displays a new message as a floating window so you don't need to close the existing running application and you can directly view or read the message on the screen.< /p>

With the help of below code you can add this new option"

Floating posts

" in the Settings app, as shown in the following image:

Just add the following code to the other.xml file:

Save the file and restart your mobile to take effect.

This small tweak can add the hardware version information of the device to

Settings -> About device page

as shown in the following image:

Just add the following code to the other.xml file:

Save the file and restart your mobile to take the effects.

By default, the Browser app opens a website in Mobile mode if the website supports it and if you want to view that website in normal Desktop mode, you need to select the “Desktop view” option in the browser.

Using this code, you can force the browser to always open websites in desktop view:

Save the file and restart your mobile to take effect.

If you want to display the user agent version of the browser in the

Settings -> Advanced Page

, add the following code to the XML file:

Save the file and restart your mobile to take effect.

By default, Samsung devices display apps in Launcher in custom order. You can drag and drop any app to any desired location. An additional option "

A-Z

" is displayed in the upper right corner of the launcher to organize the list of applications in alphabetical order.

If you want, you can force alphabetical order as the default view for the app list in the launcher. After that, the "AZ" option will also be removed from the launch screen, and all apps will still be displayed in alphabetical order in the list.

Just add the following code to the other.xml file:

Save the file and restart your mobile to take effect.

When you dial a number in Dialer, the mobile phone automatically starts formatting the number as different sets of 3 digits or other predefined formatting depending on the country. If you want to disable this auto-formatting and want to force the dialer to display the full phone number without spaces or dashes (-) between digits, this trick will help you.

Just add the following code to other.xml file:

Save the file and restart your mobile to take effect.

New Samsung Galaxy devices come with a "

Smart Manager

” which works as a system and memory cleaning program. It helps you free up disk space and memory. The program also comes with built-in anti-malware protection which is disabled by default.

If you don't want to use Smart Manager's anti-malware feature, you can disable it completely using this trick:

Just add the following code to the other.xml file:

Save the file and restart your mobile to take effect.

Sometimes when you root a mobile phone, your mobile phone may stop receiving OTA (Over-The-Air) updates from the carrier, so you cannot update the phone firmware using the built-in "Software Update" option present under "

Settings -> About Device->Software Update

“. Basically, this software update option becomes useless on a rooted device.

If you wish, you can remove the “Software Update” option from the Settings->About Device page by adding the following code to the XML file:

Save the file and restart your mobile to take effect.

Restricting “Software Update” option can become very useful if you have customized your mobile phone firmware a lot and nobody accidentally updates your phone firmware without your permission.

These features are network dependent. Using the following codes, you can activate Wi-Fi calling and camera functions during calls:

Save the file and restart your mobile to take effect.

If you are using older firmware on your Samsung Galaxy device and it does not contain an option to schedule the sending of text messages (SMS), you can enable this feature by adding the following code:

Save the file and restart your mobile to take effect.

p>

For your convenience, we provide a text file containing all the useful codes mentioned above. You can download this file and copy it to your Samsung Galaxy device. Now open the text file in your device, select all and copy the whole text, then you can replace the existing code in the file

system\csc\others.xml

from your device with the copied text. Save the file and restart your device to take effect.

Download a ready-to-use text file with useful CSC codes

It is a ZIP file, so first extract it using a file archiving utility such as

7-Zip

and you will get the text file"

Codes.txt

".

I found many other CSC function codes in the firmware of various Samsung Galaxy devices, but many of them did not work on the test devices. Also, I didn't have enough time to test many of these codes. If you have time, you can try to test these codes in your device. I put here some of these CSC codes that seem logical to me:

You can add these codes one by one, save the file and restart your cell phone to test the effects.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Restarting your mobile phone in “Recovery Mode” will reset the XML file to default. So keep a backup of the XML file to easily restore your custom code. Also, if you ever want to restore the default options in the XML file, you can restart your mobile in recovery mode and this will reset the XML to factory settings. If you don't know how to boot Android mobile phone in recovery mode, please check the following tutorial:

Reveal 3 Secret Modes Hidden in Google Android Mobile Phones

That's all for now guys. If you know another working and useful CSC code, you can share it in your comment. I found almost 1000 codes in the firmware, but very few of them worked on most devices.

Also check:

iPhone Tips and Tricks and Hidden Secret Service Codes p>

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