Galaxy S5: The Missing Manual

Chapter 12. Downloading and Using Apps

You’ll learn to:

• Find and download apps

• Use Google Play to download apps

• Download apps from the Web and using a barcode scanner

• Update, manage, and uninstall apps

• Get 13 great apps

WHY DO YOU HAVE the Samsung Galaxy S5 rather than a plain-Jane cellphone? If you’re like most people, it’s for the phone’s apps, which let you do remarkable things like using your phone as a bar code reader or guitar tuner.

The S5 features plenty of great built-in apps, which are covered throughout this book. In fact, you’ve been using apps and may not even know it. When you check your email on the S5, that’s an app. When you shop at Google’s Play store, it’s courtesy of an app. One of the phone’s great features, though, is that it lets you download and use new apps as well—and those new apps do just about everything under the sun (and sometimes things that seem beyond the range of the solar system).

In this chapter, you’ll find out how to get and use those apps, as well as how to uninstall and troubleshoot them. It’ll also show you a few of the more amazing Android apps available online.

The Galaxy S5’s Free and Easy Approach to Apps

THE SAMSUNG GALAXY S5 takes a different approach to the use of apps than some other devices in that there’s absolutely no limitation on what you can download. Android’s developer, Google, doesn’t step in to say what you can and can’t download, ...