Newsletter
Samsung launched its 2021 S series flagships, the Galaxy S21 lineup at the Unpacked event on January 14. With these phones, a bunch of new features also came along. One such feature is that Galaxy S21 lets you set custom backgrounds on video calling apps.
Well, as the Galaxy S21 is getting older, new features that the entire lineup packs are popping up on the internet. A few days ago, we reported that there is an object eraser tool, which helps users to remove unwanted objects from their images.
Moreover, the Galaxy S21 series also comes with Google Duo’s auto framing feature. Now, according to Android Police, the latest Samsung flagships allow users to insert custom background effects into video calling apps.
These video calling apps include Google Duo, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco WebEx. While work-from-home has become the new norm due to the pandemic, letting your co-workers see your room on a video call can be awkward.
Samsung has a solution for this if you pick up any of the latest Galaxy S21 devices. Good thing is that this Galaxy S21 custom backgrounds for video calling app feature supports almost all the popular video calling apps. But Google Meet seems to be left out from the list of apps.
Galaxy S21 also allows you to add background blur, or change the background color on video calling apps
You can use the new Galaxy S21 custom backgrounds for the video calling app feature by heading over to Settings > Advanced features > Video call effects.
However, that’s not it. Galaxy S21 also allows its users to do a few more tweaks to the video calls. Notably, you can add background blur and change the background color on supported video calling apps.
FYI, some of the video calling apps already support this feature natively, but it is good that Galaxy S21 devices support this feature on all (well, almost) video calling apps.
Besides, it should also be noted that at the moment, these features seem limited to the latest One UI 3.1, which comes pre-loaded on Galaxy S21 units.
It would be interesting to see if other Samsung devices when updated with One UI 3.1, would support this feature or not. Although the feature seems nice and nifty, it is not that great or safe to say a bit janky.
The edge detection does not work that great, and you will not like the experience at which you can video call using the effects. Better try out with your friends first before using this feature on work-related calls.
