Samsung’s Always-On Display tech is pretty neat. Whenever you lock your phone, it’ll show the time, date and any unread notifications without draining your battery life too much.
More recent updates allow you to can customise the display with themes and photos. You can even add media controls. However, you know what it has been missing until today? GIFs.
Thankfully, Samsung is rectifying this by rolling out GIF support for the Always-On Display for Galaxy S8/S8+ and Note 8 users.
Users can now choose GIFs from their photo libraries. They can’t be too long so you may have to trim your selections. Also, they will only play once when users lock the display, rather than on a loop.
That’s probably to prevent display burn or too much battery drain.
It’s possible to reanimate the GIFs by double-tapping on the screens according to posters on the Samsung subreddit (via Android Police) who first spotted the feature.
In order to install the update, Always-On Display update, Note 8 and Galaxy S8 users can head to the Galaxy App Store.
You can then customise your own in Settings > Lock Screen and Security > Always-On Display.
It’s not clear yet whether the update is available for the new Galaxy S9 range, but it doesn’t appear so at this stage.
Have you taken the new GIF support for a spin? Let us know your thoughts @TrustedReviews on Twitter.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
