Samsung is always baking new software features for its latest flagships, and this year the Galaxy S21 series is not treated any differently. The smartphones were introduced with One UI 3.1 which brought a bunch of new features, like Google Discover, to the home screen and Director’s View. There is another add-on that is especially useful at a time when video calling has become the primary form of communication for many of us: personalized video calling effects.
The function can be found in Settings> Advanced Features> Video Call Effects. Once activated, supported apps get a floating bubble that lets you think of some video effects. You can choose between background blur, color and image, all three of which are obvious.
Overlay for video call effects in supported applications.
While all of this technically works, the results are a little too funny and a video effect amateur hourly time. You can kindly try them to see how well they work before using them during your next professional meeting.
We were able to confirm that these custom video effects are currently only available for four applications: Google Duo, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco Webex. Although all of these programs already support some effects by nature, the feature compares the experience among them. We hope to see compatibility with more applications like Telegram or Google Meet soon.
