Samsung Galaxy Tab S First Look

Joanna Stern:

The Tab S shares software DNA with the GS5, too. You get Samsung’s usual Android 4.4 trimmings, including the tablet trick that lets you put two apps side by side. (Samsung will also sell a $99 Bluetooth dock to turn the tablet into a laptop.) However, the amount of preloaded third-party and Samsung apps littering the homescreen is reaching unbearable levels. In fact, Samsung tells me, there are even more preloaded apps on this device because of the added promotional deals with LinkedIn, Marvel, etc.

Interesting to me that Samsung’s tablets continue to favor landscape as the default orientation.

But Samsung’s new SideSync 3.0 app seems worth keeping — at least if you have a Galaxy S5 phone. When both devices are on the same Wi-Fi network, you can remotely navigate the phone via the tablet’s screen, transfer files between devices, access all your phone apps, and even text and talk on the phone.

Watch Stern’s video to see how weird the interface for this feature is. When you invoke it, you get a virtual Galaxy S phone on the tablet screen. The idea is cool, but compared to the Continuity features Apple announced at WWDC last week, it seems clunky and narrowly focused.

★ Thursday, 12 June 2014