So you’ve got a nice, new Samsung Galaxy Note Edge. Now what? Here are five quick tips to get you started on using your brand new smartphone.

Unlocking your phone with your fingerprint: Tired of unlocking your phone by entering a password? Thanks to a fingerprint sensor built into its home button, you can unlock the Note Edge with a simple swipe. To save your fingerprint, go to the Settings app (denoted by a gear icon) and scroll all the way down to “Finger Scanner.” Here, you can register up to three fingerprints, whether it be other people’s or three of your own fingers.


You’ll get a prompt to slide your thumb over the sensor multiple times. You’ll want to make sure you get the whole area of your finger as you swipe it over the scanner. Once it’s done, you can now unlock your phone easy peasy. To add more fingerprints, just go the same menu as before and tap the plus sign.

How to take a quick screenshot: Do you like taking screenshots with your phone to share with other folks? Doing so with the Note Edge is as easy as one, two, three. Well, actually, one-two as it only requires two button presses. Once you’ve got the web page, text or image on your phone screen that you want to take a photo of, just press and hold the top power button and the lower middle home button at the same time. Make sure you hold for a bit until you see the prompt or it won’t take the screenshot. You’ll know it worked because you’ll see a white, square border briefly show up on your screen. You should be able to then see your screenshot in the phone’s photo album.

How to insert a memory card: If you feel that you need additional memory for your new Note Edge, you can insert a microSD card into the phone.

Before you can do that, though, you’ll need to take off the back cover. Just look for a notch on the upper edge of the phone just below the power button. Pull back on that with your nail to take the cover off and you can now access the memory card slot. This, by the way, is the same step you’ll take if you want to change the SIM card while traveling abroad, for example, or the battery if you like to rock spares. For more detailed instructions with pics, check out our Samsung Galaxy Note Edge Back Cover, Battery, SIM and Memory Card tutorial.

Activating stylus features: Thanks to its ginormous screen, stylus controls have always been a touted feature of for the Note line. In the case of the Edge, you can use the stylus to active “Air commands” that let you do “action memos” that turn written text into phone actions, do a “smart select” box that lets you highlight a part of the screen for later use, outline and crop images on the screen, or even capture screenshots and draw on them. To do so, hover the tip of your stylus above the display then press the stylus’ built-in button. This’ll bring up the Air command menu.

How to customize the edge screen: See that fancy side display on the edge of the smartphone’s screen? You can do all sorts of customization with that screen. These includes changing the apps featured; adding notifications for weather, text and mail; or even changing the background for it. To access the options for the edge screen, swipe up on the upward-pointing arrow on the bottom of the edge screen. Tap on the gear setting that shows up and you’ll bring up a menu for customizing the edge screen.
For more tips, make sure to check out our Note Edge battery and SIM tutorial or the Tablets and Smartphones hub