Samsung not only makes great phones but also some genuinely great apps to go along with them. Over the years, I have ditched quite a few Google apps in favor of Samsung’s alternatives. The reason most people are not aware of some of these apps is pretty simple. They don’t come preinstalled, and Samsung doesn’t talk about them enough either.
That’s a shame, because apps like Samsung Email, Samsung Music, PENUP, and a few others are absolute hidden gems. I use them daily, and my only regret is not finding them sooner.
Samsung Email
A no-nonsense email app
Apart from Thunderbird, there aren’t many Gmail or Outlook alternatives on Android that are free and genuinely pleasant to use. Samsung Email is exactly that. It doesn’t try to overwhelm you with flashy features or clever tricks. Instead, it keeps things simple.
It has everything you’d expect from an email app, including customizable swipe gestures, combined mailboxes, spam management, and EAS integration for work accounts. My favorite thing about it is that it shows zero ads. This is a massive upgrade from the likes of Gmail, which slips in sponsored content in between emails.
It also has a handy feature called Split View. It kicks in automatically when the phone is in landscape mode and turns the app into something closer to a desktop email client. With it, I can see my inbox on the left and the email content on the right.
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Android
- Price model
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Free
Samsung Email is a free email app for Galaxy phones that’s minimal and easy to use.
Samsung Music
For those who love offline music players
Offline music players have been out of fashion for several years now. But if you’re willing to put in the effort of rebuilding an offline music library, you won’t find any music players better than Samsung Music.
It supports all the popular audio formats, including MP3, AAC, and FLAC. You can just drop your music onto your phone and use Samsung Music to enjoy it any time. There’s a sleep timer for late night listening. You can skip silences between tracks using crossfade. Even the tabs you see, like Favorites, Playlists, Tracks, Albums, Artists, and others, are customizable. You hide the ones you don’t need to keep the interface simple.
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Android
- Price model
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Free
Samsung Music is an offline music player that offers useful features like sleep timer, crossfade between tracks, and a handy equalizer.
Samsung Flow
The link between your phone and PC
If you spend most of your day working on a PC, you’ll love Samsung Flow. It lets your Samsung phone communicate with a Windows PC wirelessly. It syncs your phone’s notifications, lets you transfer files, and even mirrors the device to your PC.
I know, Phone Link already does all of this, but I’ve found it to be far less reliable. Every time I’ve tried it, it keeps pushing me back with repeated connection issues.
Samsung Flow is also lightweight. It doesn’t use as much RAM while running in the background and is far more reliable. There’s even a clipboard sync feature that lets me move text between devices. And no, it doesn’t force me to use Samsung Keyboard or Swiftkey, which I really appreciate.
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Android
- Price model
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Free
Samsung Flow shows your phone notifications to your PC, lets you share files between them, and even mirror the entire phone display.
PENUP
Put that S Pen to good use
This one won’t appeal to everyone, but if you’re even slightly interested in art and want to make use of that S Pen, PENUP is the app you need. It’s a drawing app that lets you do everything from casual doodling and practicing line art to working on full illustrations.
Even if you are not much of an artist, you won’t feel intimidated. That’s because PENUP has a simple interface, much like Microsoft Paint. I use it to edit photos, mostly sketching over them, and it works great.
There’s also the community aspect. PENUP doubles as a creative social platform where you can check artworks shared by others or participate in various challenges. It’s a fun app that everyone must try at least once.
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Android
- Price model
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Free
Samsung PENUP is a creative social drawing app for sketching, coloring, and sharing digital artwork on your Galaxy phone.
Galaxy Enhance-X
Fix photos fast
The Samsung Gallery app already offers a powerful image editor that has everything from basic edits to tools like Object Eraser. Galaxy Enhance-X, however, is different. It uses AI to analyze your image and fix any imperfections on its own. All you have to do is open the image in the app and wait for a couple of seconds.
The app automatically removes reflections, improves lighting, sharpens details, and removes blur caused by slight camera shake. Once these edits are applied, you can also tweak things manually.
My favorite Galaxy Enhance-X feature, though, is its ability to analyze short videos (less than 10 seconds) and automatically pull the best stills, boomerangs, and slow-motion clips from it.
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Android
- Price model
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Free
These are just a few examples. There are plenty of other apps, like Samsung Members, Good Guardians, Samsung Studio, and Smart Tutor that are worth trying out. They’re all free, useful, and add real value once you give them a chance.
