I was just surfing and encountered some tips on the usage of the Samsung Galaxy S which will help me/you to get the most of this excellent phone.
- Contact screen: Swipe to left to create a text/SMS message to the contact
- Contact screen: Swipe to right to call the contact immediately
- Contact screen: Move your finger in the alphabet to quickly navigate to a contact starting with the letter, then while pressing move to left to move within that letter, eg. after D you can navigate in everything starting with D by moving to the left
- Press and hold HOME key to get a list of recently used apps, which can be used to switch between applications (not specific to SGS)
- Press menu and Edit in the home screen to delete and/or reorder the home pages. In order to reorder: touch and hold the screen which will allow to drag them
- If your brightness is not set to auto, you can swipe from left to right in the notification bar to set brightness to maximum and the right to left to set brightness to minimum.
- You can have the SGS announce the title/artist of a song from the Music player by pressing and holding the Up Volume button while a song is playing
- You can "lock screen" while watching video by pressing Power Button while a video is playing. This is great at preventing unintended clicks while holding the phone watching a video
- In the browser: Access to the bookmark button and address bar by tapping the Menu button (no need to scroll all the way up)
- Open soft D-Pad by tap-and-hold the "?123" key on the standard Samsung Keyboard or swipe from the Swype button to the SYM button in the Swype Keyboard
- Pressing and holding the Power button (keep pressing it after you get the shutdown/airplane dialog) will perform a reset.
- Holding the Menu key for a second, will bring up the search dialog (emulating the search button available in other Android phones)
- You lock the camera screen to only take a shot, by pressing the Power button for a very short time. This will show a paddock on screen.
- When receiving a call press the volume down button to mute the ringer
- Use the volume +/- in camera mode to zoom in and out
For more technical tips see the also the XDA forum and see also a list of cool apps to use with the SGS.