Today’s Samsung event in Ny city was a wierd scene — the corporate collected Galaxy Tabs from the journalists in attendance and handed back coat check receipts, promising to present the devices back after the clicking conference ended. One Samsung executive acknowledged the bizarre nature of the development, explaining that, “here’s the primary time we’ve held a news conference for a software update, and it probably won’t be the last.”
The development marked the pre-launch of a major software update for Samsung’s slate — one who is determined to get wide release on August 5th. Members of the click, however, got an aspect-loaded preview of the tablet UI — as were Ny city Galaxy Tab 10.1 owners who showed as much as the Samsung store with tablet in-hand. We’ve been fooling around with the update for a piece and feature a whole hands-on preview for you after the break.
The TouchWiz UX updates are clear from the outset. The Live Panel view is all about widgets — big, colorful widgets. Samsung refers back to the view as “magazine-like,” a transparent statement for a tool seeking to fill within the hole left by rapidly closing paper periodicals. The house screen defaults to special windows featuring the time, weather, and a picture of your choosing. Clicking the time will increase a control panel that allows you to adjust the clock and set an alarm for yourself. The elements panel links to an entire page of knowledge including the week’s weather, a weather map, and the power to modify location. The picture, meanwhile, is associated with the device’s picture gallery, where it’s possible to modify up your default image.
Swiping right will elevate a huge rotating visual newsfeed at the left, offering up headlines laid over news images. Below this are two rows of customizable bookmarks. To the best is a shot of your email inbox. The panel can either default for your Gmail account or another service, once you’ve entered all the relevant info. The e-mail widget offers two lines for every email — a reputation and an issue. Clicking a line will open up that message within the mail app.
Swipe to the left and you will see your Social Hub, which aggregates updates from various social networks right into a single feed. You’ll add feeds from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, in addition to messages from Exchange and the default e-mail app. These feed is additionally viewed a single social network at a time or with each of the entries populating a single stream. You may also add updates, favorite posts, or share information via email during the app. To the left of the social hub is a scrollable calendar featuring today’s events, a Yahoo finance widget, and your manually entered top contacts.
Obviously, all of those default widgets are fully customizable. You add and delete as you notice fit, in order that long as you do not run out of space. Customization occurs by clicking a plus button within the upper right hand of the screen, which brings you to a page featuring Widgets, App Shortcuts, Wallpapers, and More. Clicking a widget will add it to the desktop. Additional widget options include the always handy Advanced Task Killer, Amazon MP3, an analog clock, Google Books, Google Search, Android Market, and YouTube. If you must remove an app from the screen, simply hold down on it and drag it into the trash can icon that looks within the upper righthand corner of the screen.
The hot UI also encompasses a Mini Mode Tray, which might be accessed by tapping a small Up arrow in the course of the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. Hitting this would pop up “ordinary” applications,” including the duty Manager, Calendar, World Clock, Pen Memo (an easy text input application that uses your finger or typing functionality), Calculator, and Music Player. Clicking the fitting side of the ground taskbar will elevate a panel that includes some basic settings, including WiFi, brightness, and access on your calendar reminders, newest email message, and further settings.
The upgrade adds a basic photo editor to the mixture, which helps you to rotate, resize, crop, adjust colors, and add some effects (including Blur, Motion, Filter, and Frames). It’s in no way a comprehensive feature set, however the app is really pretty full for a free tablet photo editor — corresponding to the feature sets available in most browser-based editors. The device’s copy and paste functionality was extended besides, now including images and links, which are shared via social network or email. The virtual keyboard can now be resized and dragged around the screen. Swype functionality might be enabled by clicking the keyboard icon on the bottom of the screen, besides.
The software comes bundled with Samsung Music Hub, the company’s 7digital-powered version of iTunes, which provides you access to millions of downloadable tracks, which seem to be mostly priced at between $0.99 to $1.49 a pop. It is a pretty straightforward application that ought prove familiar to anyone who has spent any time shopping in a web music store — on that competes directly with the pre-loaded Amazon MP3 app.
Media Hub, meanwhile, is a very slick entertainment app that provides users access to downloadable video from NBCUniversal, Paramount, Warner Bros., Fox, CBS, and MTV. The choices include movies and next day TV shows. When opened, the app defaults to a scrollable gallery of recent content — the box shot within the center of the screen offers up an abstract for that selection. You may filter content by movies or TV, otherwise you can simply seek for a title by clicking the magnifying glass inside the top of the screen. Once an account is created for Media Hub, it’s linked to as much as five devices, so your content isn’t tied to 1 machine. It is a pretty solid app that’s all of the more welcome with the appearance of the Galaxy Tab 10.1′s newly announced HDMI adapter.
And while the Galaxy Tab is unquestionably no Cisco Cius tablet , Samsung is stepping up the enterprise functionality at the thing, besides. Upgrades on that front include Cisco VPN and WebEx, device encryption, and Exchange ActiveSynch version 14 support.
In all, there are numerous solid additions here that certainly warrant an upgrade for TouchWiz users when the update rolls out to the general public at the 5th. Needless to say, there’s an immense caveat here — non-TouchWiz users have plenty less to be keen on. While Samsung isn’t requiring users to just accept the surface on their devices, declining it may block you from future OS upgrades — i.e., no Ice Cream Sandwich for you in case you do not buy into the area of TouchWiz. It’s an irritating decision on Samsung’s part, particularly given the truth that Galaxy Tab 10.1 units initially came loaded with the usual Android interface, but it’s practically 0 par for the course 0 at this point.
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