Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 and 10.1 Review
by Jarred Walton on March 22, 2014 9:30 PM ESTSamsung Galaxy Pro Software
We’ve discussed TouchWiz UI extensively in the past, so I’m not going to rehash that here. Some people like it, others like me are mostly ambivalent, and still others seem to really dislike it. Besides the enhancement to the UI, Samsung has some other additions. Let’s quickly cover some of these here.
One of the biggest changes for me is the keyboard, and this is one of those items that I’m actually very happy using. I don’t like typing a lot on tablets, but Samsung’s addition of a dedicated row of number keys – basically emulating a regular keyboard – makes it that much less painful to do certain tasks (like entering passwords with numbers, letters, and symbols). The first time it appeared, I was a little confused as the keyboard looked quite a bit different than what I’m used to seeing, but after that initial surprise I found myself liking the keyboard more and more. Some people prefer Swype, or the regular Android keyboard, and that’s fine – if you know enough to prefer a different keyboard, you can always install one. The Samsung keyboard does support swiping as well as audio feedback; the Pro 10.1 also offers haptic feedback (vibration) on keyboard input, but I didn’t find that necessary.
Interestingly, since I just discussed the keyboard aspect, Samsung has their own custom gesture to capture a screenshot – the standard “Volume Up + Power” shortcut doesn’t work. To capture a screen, you swipe the side of your palm left to right or right to left across the screen. The only problem? It doesn’t always work properly, or at least I don’t think it works if the keyboard is active, hence the above photos of the keyboard rather than screen grabs. Personally, I’d prefer something less obtuse or difficult – how about just a long press of the task switcher or back button to take a screen shot? But I digress….
Moving on in the software coverage, probably the biggest addition here is the new Magazine UX. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but man you could waste a lot of time in there. There are tiles for News, Sports, Science and Technology, Arts and Culture, Photos and Design, Business, New and Noteworthy, and Style – and that’s it; you can’t add more than those eight categories, but you can disable some of them. You can also customize what each of those panes shows with all sorts of additional feeds (no, AnandTech isn’t in the Science and Technology section – boo!), and once enabled all you have to do is click on the tile to be presented with a “magazine”. Technically all of this appears to be using a piece of software called Flipboard, and Magazine UX is just the integration into the home screens of Android as far as I can tell – task switcher even labels the app as “Flipboard”. The biggest gripe people are going to have with Magazine UX is that it can’t be disabled – you will always have at least one Magazine UX screen in addition to the home screen (and you can make Magazine UX into your default screen if you prefer); end of discussion.
Another additional piece of software is Hancom Office, which allows you to run the typical office applications. You get a word processor, spreadsheet, presentations program (Hword, Hcell, and Hshow), and yes, they can open MS Office files – or at least the Office 2010 files I tried worked okay. Editing office files on a tablet isn’t something I’ve really tried to do, but even the ability to view them can be very useful. There are other free office apps out there, but Hancom looks fine from what I can see, and it’s normally a $17.77 purchase. You do need to create a Samsung account to access Hancom, apparently, but that was easy enough to do.
There’s at least one truly interesting feature with the latest TouchWiz UI on the Galaxy Pro line of tablets that is perhaps a sign of things to come. While Microsoft is busily moving us more towards a one screen, one app world with their Modern UI (okay, with the ability to do split-screen as well), Samsung has added multi-window mode on the Galaxy Pro tablets. It’s a bit raw right now, and it only supports certain applications, but you can actually have three (on the 8.4 and 10.1) or four windows (on the 12.2) open and resized at once. The window contents basically end up being stretched to fit, however, so you can get some weird warping if you don’t maintain the aspect ratio. When you minimize a window, it becomes a circular button that you can move around, and click on it to restore it to an active window.
An alternative that proves a bit more useful is the split-screen mode. Apparently the 12.2 can support four tiled apps (restricted to the support apps list), while the 8.4 and 10.1 only support split-screen, but you could open a browser in the bottom window and a video in the top, or two browsers, or some other combination. I tested the multi-window and split-screen modes with the web browser, video player, office, gallery, and Hang Outs (not all at once). It all worked as advertised, but there’s a limited amount of resizing available and clearly most apps aren’t really designed for this sort of operation. Maybe in a future version of Android we’ll see additional multi-tasking/multi-windowing features, but Samsung is at least playing around with the idea right now.
There are two more pieces of software that I didn’t have a chance to try out yet, E-Meeting and Remote PC. E-Meeting allows you to share a file (or files?) locally, with everyone on the same WiFi network. They can then join the meeting and see your presentation, spreadsheet, pictures, etc. on their own tablet. It’s basically the inverse of a projector, where instead of everyone seeing one screen you’re all given individual screen to look at. There’s also an integrated White Board for people to use for notes and such. Remote PC is a way to remotely access your Windows or OS X PC via your Samsung Pro tablet, through your Samsung account. You can copy files from your PC to your tablet (and I’d assume the reverse as well), or just remotely control your PC via the tablet. I’m not sure if Samsung is working with a third party (i.e. LogMeIn or Teamviewer), but similar functionality is available on Android devices in general with the right software.
There are plenty of other items I could discuss with the software and features, but let’s just wrap this up for now with one last feature: Smart screen (as I don’t think we’ve covered this previously). Smart screen uses the front-facing camera with face/eye recognition and has three settings available. “Smart stay” will keep the display from going to sleep as long as you are looking at the tablet; “Smart rotation” will rotate the tablet based on the orientation of your face; lastly, “Smart pause” will pause video playback if you look away from the tablet and resume when you start watching again. While some of this may be novel/useful, I have a couple problems with Smart screen.
First, it requires a decent amount of ambient light, so if you’re watching a movie on the tablet in the dark, Smart pause won’t work and I’m not sure if Smart stay works either. In proper lighting, I can confirm that they both appear to work, but Smart pause can still be a bit touchy – it pauses quite quickly if you look away from the screen (and sometimes even if you don’t but just shift position) – almost too quickly I’d say – but it’s slower at resuming. The second problem is that I never could get the Smart rotation to work, no matter how hard I tried – it would only rotate if I picked up the tablet and then the normal gravity-based sensors would do what I needed. So basically, other than potentially Smart stay, the feature is of questionable utility. I’m also not sure how much extra power drain enabling Smart screen would entail – it would have to do something to look for your face, and even if it’s only a 2% reduction in battery life, that could mean another 15+ minutes.
Overall, the software package that Samsung delivers with the Galaxy Pro does offer some useful and interesting features. It would be nice if users could disable Magazine UX entirely, for those that don’t want it, but considering tablets are often use as media consumption devices there’s a lot of curated content available with minimal effort on the part of the user, and that’s pretty cool to see. I probably wasted (used) at least an hour or two just poking around at news stories from around the Web when I was “testing” Magazine UX. And even after more than a week with the Galaxy Pro, there are plenty of things I haven’t really had the time to fully investigate (or write about). If you’re in the camp with those that think Android should be a unified experience across all devices, Samsung will probably frustrate you, but as someone who has used over a dozen Android tablets over the past few years, my feeling is that there really isn’t a need for perfect uniformity – the flexibility Android provides OEMs is one of its advantages over iOS. If you don’t like one particular tablet, there are plenty of others to choose from!
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TestKing123 - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
"Well that was a waste of time since you obviously lack the minimum nerve, decency and intellectual capacity to understand my points."What points? All you've done is make blanket statements of YOUR OPINION with NOTHING to back it up with, NOT EVEN A SINGLE EXAMPLE as I've asked you to do countless times.
Now let's take a look at your LONELY opinion (again YOUR opinion NOT SHARED BY OTHERS) regarding hybrids:
"-you are talking a 13.3 inch, 1.4kg ultra book is a good thing to use as a tablet
Anyone with a half sense sees how idiotic proposition this is.. but not you!"
Who's anyone? Are you that delusional? If you think "anyone with a half sense" would rather use an inferior, limited android/ipad over a full fledged hybrid than WHY IS THE HYBRID MARKET SO SUCCESSFUL??
Yoga 2 Pro
Sony Vaio Flip
Dell XPS 12
Acer Aspire S7
Razer Blade
etc..
I guess the bigger question is, HAVE YOU USED ONE YOURSELF? Rather than continue to talk out of your ass?
The point is, people can use these devices as a tablet WHEN THEY WANT TO and a laptop WHEN THEY WANT TO. Is it that hard to understand or are you that plain stupid? You're opinion of "how a person should use a tablet" yada yada is the minority, and if you think otherwise please post in the Notebook section of Anandtech so we can all see just how narrow minded and deluded you are.
"- if we actually take a usable tablet form windows (8-10" and a 500-700grams) and try to use it for your idiotic propositions of playing pc games, programing (lol) or ANY use that you can benefit from a laptop form factor..so we need to hook up a keyboard and a mouse to a 10" screen, put it on a table and squint onto it."
Why are you hung up on the Surface 2 Pro? You have YET to truly point out this argument with hybrids. Do you even know which market the Surface 2 Pro is aimed at? Like other PC centric tablets and hybrids, it's aimed at people who need the versatility of a tablet and the power/software of a regular PC...usually professionals in their line of field....HENCE why it's given the "Pro" monikor. Understand?
"Office, again only a professional who is living offa doc editing will have a real benefit in MSOffice ..and ypu thik those proffesionals will not therefore use a real laptop?!?!
Average people that need to write something on their TABLETS will be more than served by the likes of Kingsoft office.
You ever even used it or are you the one talking out of your ass!
It can do spreadsheets, power point, pdf files, and more word and excel than anyone will ever need on a touchscreen."
Again, you don't have a DAMN clue about who the Pro market is aimed at, or why it's even a large market to begin with. There is not a SINGLE office facsimile for android/ipad that offers the same level of versatility that a desktop application offers (not Kingsoft office that you ignorantly keep referring to), and PLENTY of people would prefer working out of a lower profile machine on the go rather than a full fledged laptop, hence why they're selling so well. Again, this is YOU NOT UNDERSTANDING the market and just forcing your OWN ignorant opinion. LOL!
"As that's what I am talking about from the start..understanding what a TABLET really is and what people are needing it for.
And that is a causal, comfortable media consumption in something they can easily handle, hold in one hand and carry around in a purse or even a pocket."
Who the hell are YOU to determine for everyone how to "use a tablet" or what tablet to use, just because of what YOU think it should be? The people use 7" tablets are NOT the same people buying Windows 8 Pro tablets and hybrids. They aren't using these machines for simple media consumption to carry around in their purse like you do.
HOW RETARDED ARE YOU to not even understand that you CAN do gaming (PC gaming at that) on a tablet, WITH OR WITHOUT a keyboard/mouse (you can plug in a controller, and many games work well with touch interface)....and a 10" or 13" screen is more than good enough to game on...especially with a QHD display.
"Starting to sink into that tiny clouded mind of yours now??"
That's funny, coming from you. You are the one that's narrow minded and incapable of understanding the different market segments. Your statements have proven this through and through, and everyone sees it.
"And further proof of your prejudiced stupidity is that you you fail to realize
that the games I mentioned are in fact a pc games, and a great pc games at that.
I only and merely answered to your callout because it technically was off.
You lack a basic understanding and reading comprehension.
And you waste other people's time!"
Again not addressing my point after exposing your flawed arguments. All you've done is mentioned mobile versions of games, not even recent, and somehow the fact that you can run the LATEST PC games on much more powerful hardware in a Windows 8 tablet/hybrid than that found in a dinky ipad/android SOC. To MANY people (and this clearly shows on this website), this is a MAJOR selling point for these devices. Your single minded, single voice OPINION means NOTHING.
LOL!
darkich - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
Geez, this is by far the most ironic and sad discussion I ever had in my life.Let md draw out the freaking obvious to you and end this. Do not expect me further answering you, nutcase:
HUNDREDS OF MILLION OF PEOPLE USE TABLETS.
They buy and use them because they want a portable, light, manageable touch interactive devices for easy to use casual media consumption, social networking, intuitive entertainment for their kids, reading, and gaming.
The ridiculous fact screaming into your face is that compared to tablet market, hybrid ultra book market is miniscule!
Hundred million people will buy an iPad this year.
The whole hybrid market COMBINED will barely, if at all, reach 10 percent of that!
Now ask yourself why exactly is that so, you lunatic!
TestKing123 - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
What an absurd line of reasoning. The hybrid market is just now emerging, how the hell can you compare it to millions of EXISTING users in a tablet market that's been ongoing for YEARS?That's basically the equivalent of comparing the early HDTV market to the larger regular TV market segment. Or touch phones to the much larger button phone market in the early days.
Of course, this is a line of understanding you've proven yourself countless times over and over, and yet again here, that you know NOTHING about.
Hybrid sales and market presence is increasing rapidly because current technology allows it to be so. Compare CES this year to last year, there are literally DOZENS of new high profile hybrid models and more being released every month. People are buying them, and the market is growing. Hell, you just need to read this damn site every now and then to understand that, especially their Surface 2 Pro review (not to mention, the huge number of users in the anandtech forums).
So please continue to pretend this market doesn't exist, like some kind of fanboy, and make statements that truly showcases your ignorance.
TestKing123 - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
Let me respond specifically to this as well:"HUNDREDS OF MILLION OF PEOPLE USE TABLETS.
They buy and use them because they want a portable, light, manageable touch interactive devices for easy to use casual media consumption, social networking, intuitive entertainment for their kids, reading, and gaming."
You just gave a list of general reasons people use a small profile tablet for. Now, do you understand what people who buy a PRO tablet or hybrid for? If you don't, then your presence in this discussion was absolutely a waste because you're too ignorant of basic principals and factors for the pro hybrid/tablet market. I outlined those reasons quite clearly above, yet you're not any closer to understanding. LOL.
Again....
The people who use 7" tablets are NOT the same people buying Windows 8 Pro tablets and hybrids. They aren't using these machines for simple media consumption to carry around in their purse like you do. The point is, people can use these devices as a tablet WHEN THEY WANT TO and a laptop WHEN THEY WANT TO. Is it that hard to understand??
darkich - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
Average tablet use case(in the overwhelming majority of the cases)..picking one up while sitting back on the couch after work, or laying down in bed before sleep, or after waking up.Checking the Internet, posting, commenting, watching YouTube, playing candy crush or Clash of Clans (heres a fun piece of info for you..that single game earned more than billion $ last year(!!)..and of course, you can't play it on windows at all, like hundreds of thousands of other casual touchscreen games)..and that is pretty much all people are using tablets for.
Overwhelming majority of people that buy tablets DO NOT NEED, do not care, or even know about things like special features of ms office, and they wouldn't ever trying to bother with playing a pc game, let alone trying to play it in such convoluted way.
And you call me narrow minded..damn.
The mere example alone that tablet gaming is a business of billions of dollars while gaming on laptops is an exotic activity (huge majority of gaming happens on consoles and desktop) ..that fact alone perfectly reflects just how beyond clueless you are in actual understanding of the market and products.
TestKing123 - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
"And you call me narrow minded..damn."LOL...look at your own statement:
"Overwhelming majority of people that buy tablets DO NOT NEED, do not care, or even know about things like special features of ms office, and they wouldn't ever trying to bother with playing a pc game, let alone trying to play it in such convoluted way."
What about the overwhelming majority of people that buy PRO tablets, knowing SPECIFICALLY it is installed with a desktop OS and equipped with PC hardware, costing nearly 2x - 3x as much as a regular tablet?
Not only are you narrow minded, but you are so bluntly stupid to understand different market segments. People who buy $299 tablets to sit back on their couch after work to play Candy Crush are not the people going to spend $1000 or more for a hybrid.
For the people that DO, you're making yourself a moron by commenting how they should or should not use their device. That's the point of a such a device isn't it....to use as a tablet WHEN THEY WANT and a laptop WHEN THEY WANT, otherwise they wouldn't have bought it wouldn't they?
And guess what, more and more people shelling out the extra cash to purchase hybrids because they function exceptionally well....it literally lets people HAVE their cake AND eat it too. The power of a full PC in the form factor of a tablet/ultrabook/tent/etc...
Why on earth would you force a $199/$299 casual audience into that segment? Because you're too ignorant to understand the different market segments and factors of each, and every time you make a post stating the same thing over and over again you show everyone how foolish you are.
LOL.
Now, back to these points that you keep running away from:
- Have you used a hybrid yourself?
- Explain why the hybrid market is so successful with dozens of new models being introduced every month.
- Explain the different market segments and the target for each
- Give SPECIFICS (instead your ignorant "simple as that" exclamations) of why Windows 8 Pro hybrids are "POOR", in your own words.
- Explain the rising popularity of hybrids right here @ anandtech.com and in general (personally, I think the trend is all ultrabooks will be hybrids as processes mature and prices continue to drop).
darkich - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
Of course I DO UNDERSTAND that one can technically do more on a hybrid with windows than on a typical tablet.That was never the question..what I responded to was your claim that windows hybrids are making those tablets useless and obsolete.
And reality is completely defying that statement.
People who need windows hybrids will buy windows hybrids, people who need tablets will keep buying Android tablets and iPads.
First group are tiny minority and second group is huge majority.
R. Hunt - Monday, March 24, 2014 - link
13.3 inch vs 9.7 inch1.4 kg vs 0.5 kg
19:9 landscape vs 4:3 portrait
Seems to me you're comparing two vastly different things. There's plenty of use cases where the iPad Air form factor is simply superior (and the market keeps reflecting that, by the way).
darkich - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - link
Not just the form factor but the OS also.There is simply no comparison in the number of touch oriented apps between iOS and Windows
darkich - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
Average tablet use case(in the overwhelming majority of the cases)..picking one up while sitting back on the couch after work, or laying down in bed before sleep, or after waking up.Checking the Internet, posting, commenting, watching YouTube, playing candy crush or Clash of Clans (heres a fun piece of info for you..that single game earned more than billion $ last year(!!)..and of course, you can't play it on windows at all, like hundreds of thousands of other casual touchscreen games)..and that is pretty much all people are using tablets for.
Overwhelming majority of people that buy tablets DO NOT NEED, do not care, or even know about things like special features of ms office, and they wouldn't ever trying to bother with playing a pc game, let alone trying to play it in such convoluted way.
And you call me narrow minded..damn.
The mere example alone that tablet gaming is a business of billions of dollars while gaming on laptops is an exotic activity (huge majority of gaming happens on consoles and desktop) ..that fact alone perfectly reflects just how beyond clueless you are in actual understanding of the market and products.