I’ve been using the Samsung Galaxy S8+ for the past couple of weeks now as my daily driver. When I first got my hands on it, I fell in love with the outer appearance. But the more I started using it and tweaking the settings to my liking, the more I fell in love with the software. This is what’s on my Galaxy S8+.

The S8 and S8+ feature AMOLED displays that do not illuminate black pixels. I wanted to take advantage of the display type with this configuration to increase battery life and create a sleek stealthy look overall. You’ll see that my lock screen features a wallpaper with a cluster of stars and when I unlock the phone, there’s a high definition image of the Earth. This might sound and look a little bit unusual but there are no apps on my home screen at all. In fact, there’s only one home screen and it’s completely clean. There’s just one image of the Earth that has a very minimal footprint. Since I’m using the stock TouchWiz launcher, all I need to do to access all of my apps is swipe up anywhere on the home screen. I have never considered myself a fan of TouchWiz or the TouchWiz launcher but I absolutely love the swipe up and down feature on this launcher. So from here, I can rearrange apps to my liking. I can add folders and whatnot. But the real magic of the setup is my use of the edge screen feature.

The edge screen feature lets you swipe in from the edge of the screen either the left or right hand side to swipe through panels of applications and various other information that you can customize. The edge screen is what defines my battery-friendly setup as it holds my most used applications. They are literally just a swipe away. They don’t have any footprint on the home screen. Instead, they have their own department here that’s easy to access. I even have a folder that has the four main function apps that would normally rest on the bottom of the home screens. The apps in the folder include the Dialer, the default Messaging application, Google Chrome and the Play Store.

Now I also have three other panels-- one is for my reminders on a daily basis. I have another panel for Samsung’s smart select features that can actually be pretty useful though I often do forget they are there. Last but not least is People edge, which has five of my contacts. That’s essentially what’s on my Samsung Galaxy S8+.

And if you’re wondering about the camera application, I have enabled the double press of a power button feature to open up the camera app, thus illuminating the need for a shortcut. Google On is always on and listening. So right from the home screen I can say, “Okay Google what’s the weather?” and Google will tell me. But I did add a Google shortcut via app’s edge and I also remapped the Bixby button using Bix remap to Google Now. So whenever the Bixby button is pressed, Google Now will be opened.

The notification panel I left unchanged for the most part. But I did prioritize the flashlight as the first quick settings toggle then comes WiFi, ringtone settings, Bluetooth, and then the auto rotate orientation feature, and airplane mode. The navigation buttons have also been rearranged slightly to resemble the setup found in stock Android, where the back button is to the left of the home button. I think that’s the way it should be, it just makes more sense in my mind. It did take some time to get used to this kind of setup but now I know where my apps are. I have also noticed a noticeable boost to my battery life. I’m averaging close to five, a little bit over almost approaching six hours of screen on time and that’s without any other battery saving features turned on. I still have the Always On display activated for example.