It wasn’t long after the thinner, lighter, better Galaxy Tab 10.1 was announced that we heard Samsung would bring its TouchWiz skin to Android’s tablet OS, Honeycomb. After much debate over whether Honeycomb was truly ‘open,’ and not a closed iOS like environment, here we are. Starting today, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 owners will start to see OTA updates pushed to their devices, offering the first skinned Honeycomb experience. We’ve got it now, and this is more than just a few widgets. Was it worth the wait, or will users avoid this optional update as long as they can?
Skins are Evil/Great
Let’s go over a few things that this update is not. This update is not Android 3.2; however, we did receive assurances that the heavy lifting for TouchWiz has already been done so there should be no delay in rolling out 3.2 and it’s graphics and UI enhancements. This update is not a cure for all the bugs that continue to ail Honeycomb; the occasional sluggishness and random Force Close events persist. This update is not a lag inducing crime against Android users; any enhancement that burdens the CPU or GPU at all will inherently result in some worsening lag, either in the UI or in opening, closing or using apps. But the lag we’ve seen is nothing too jarring, nor is it so far off from what’s normally found on Honeycomb. So, what is this update? Samsung described three key areas they wanted to enhance with what’s known now as TouchWiz UX; Ease of Use, Fun and Entertainment, Open for Business. By far, the most outward of these enhancements is Ease of Use, so we will start there.
Widgets and Apps
TouchWiz introduces three major enhancements, LivePanels, MiniApps and the Quick Panel. The last is the simplest of the lot and the easiest to dispense with; the same set of toggles we’ve seen stuffed into most skinned UI’s on Android is now present within the Notification shade, allowing users to manipulate all the devices radios, volume, screen brightness and vibrate functions with just a press. Hardly revolutionary but a good way to bring up some settings that were previously buried in menus.
The MiniApps may be one of the more compelling additions. Tucked in a hidden OS X style dock are six applications that are unique and redundant at once. The applications are a task manager, calculator, calendar, world clock, music player and finger or stylus driven memo pad. None of these apps are terribly novel but they are each blessed with something not seen in Android yet. When the app is pulled up it appears as an overlay atop the screen, any apps previously on the screen will remain open below the MiniApp. The app will then remain overlaid until closed manually, meaning you can continue working on other apps and even change home screens and the MiniApp will be there, it even takes on a transparency affect when focus is moved from it so you can see what’s behind it.
![The Task Manager MiniApp alone on one homescreen [above], and then overlaid over another homescreen with populated widgets [below].](https://images.anandtech.com/doci/4582/Mini App Task manager and overlaid_575px.jpg)
The best use case for MiniApps is writing in the memo app. On a PC it’s easy to keep a text window open along side or over a browser window opened to a relevant item and switch between them. Previously on smartphones and tablets this sort of work flow was dreadful because of the jarring and often slow transition from one app to the next and back. This enhancement solves this problem for these six apps. If you have little use for any of these apps (certainly the World Clock’s utility is beyond me) then you’ll have little use for MiniApps; we’re inquiring whether this technique will be accessible to devs and eventually grant the ability to add or delete apps from the Dock bar.
Widgets and MiniApps (cont.)
All of the skins we can expect to see on Honeycomb will include widgets that offer added functionality - or rather, that’s what they intend to do. The concern is that the performance penalty for running these applications can be worse than the value they add. The interesting thing is that with sales of Honeycomb tablets less than startling, app developers haven’t exactly filled the app store with high quality tablet optimized apps the likes of which populate millions of iPads. So, there’s an opportunity for manufacturer’s to fill that void with their own stylized apps. So, how did Samsung do with Live Panels?
The most dominant Live Panel is Social Hub, a messaging and social media aggregator, think TweetDeck but without the power functions. Once you’ve added your accounts the widget populates with your friends latest posts, and allows a field for you to post, as well as the ability to reply to or repost friend’s posts. This widget, and all the Samsung widgets, are resizable, so you can fit them to whatever space is most convenient. And the main application also allows you to read and send direct messages from linked social media accounts. And there-in lies the potential rub. This, and each of the other widgets, is running the full application and feeding the widgets with data. We’ll cover the rest of the widgets briefly but I just want to touch on what this means for performance.
This screen shot shows the RAM use with a freshly booted Tab; the only open applications are the ones operating the widgets. Clicking the ‘Clear memory’ button kills 20 applications and frees up ~80MB of RAM . . . and stops updating the widgets. Having more than half your RAM filled at boot is less than ideal. And though Google’s memory management is capable of shuttling inactive apps out of RAM whenever the space is needed, the footprint of these widgets will persist because whenever you go to one of your home screens all of the apps will reopen in the background so they can populate the widgets.
Ok, so what of the rest of the Live Panels? The weather app is fed by AccuWeather.com, and provides visuals not quite so bold as HTC’s Sense, but not unattractive or useless. A basic clock provides quick access to the alarm function, and a gallery widget cycles through previously selected pictures. A calendar widget provides your day’s schedule and an e-mail widget provides access to inboxes you’ve configured in the Honeycomb e-mail app, but not the Gmail app. Utility, isn’t bad amongst all of these, and the novelty of being able to resize each can enhance that utility in some instances. But there is a performance penalty, particularly when a widget laden home screen reloads, either after switching from an app or from a different home screen. The slow down isn’t egregious and it’s not much different from what we had seen on other Android tablets, but given that Samsung’s slate was the closest to the iPad’s smoothness the sudden juddery behavior was surprising. But there’s good news, you can turn the widgets off.
Find my Mac- er, Mobile
Samsung is also launching a device recovery service, courtesy of their Samsung Dive website. Users create an account with the service, and then register their device through the settings menu. Once registered users can locate, track, lock and remotely wipe and ring their device. This service is premiering on the 10.1 but will be available on future Samsung handsets and tablets. 
Content is King
It’s no longer good enough to provide hardware and software, users want to consume content so manufacturers have to provide. Samsung will be stepping into the breach and introducing their own content services, Music Hub and Media Hub. Their Music Hub service is familiar to us from their handset TouchWiz implementation and is powered by 7digital. The service and corresponding software won’t likely disturb Apple’s nor Amazon’s place in digital music sales but provides a good selection of popular music and tolerable user interface.
The new piece is Media Hub, a digital storefront for video content. The software is smooth and finding content is a relatively painless process. Content partners include the broadcast networks along with many cable networks and a decent selection of recent movies. Samsung stated that HD and SD content would be available through the service, though either the HD component was not yet live, or there seems to be no way to know whether the item you’ve selected is in HD or SD. The content we previewed looks good on the 10.1’s vivid screen, though all of it was SD, so blockiness was prevalent.
Hailing the Enterprise
Starting with RIM’s PlayBook and followed by HP’s Touchpad, much has been made about tailoring these devices to the enterprise market. Lenovo will be entering this arena with it’s ThinkPad Tablet in the coming weeks; and they have been trumpeting the enterprise features of their offering, mainly device deployment and manageability offered through back-end services, as well as hardware based encryption. As it turns out, Samsung has beaten them to the punch with a product already a few months old. Samsung announced their Open For Business initiative today, a collection of software and hardware services available for the 10.1 that should make the device more appealing to corporations looking to deploy Android tablets into their workforce.
As expected, device manageability is the key feature that will appeal to IT tech, including the ability to remotely wipe and control all possible features of the device using either the Sybase Afaria or Microsoft ActiveSync protocols. Hardware based AES256 encryption is present on the device and, in what Samsung is calling a first, SSL VPN support is being offered. More front facing additions include “blown out” support for Microsoft Exchange’s Contact, Calendar and E-mail services, along with optimized versions of Cisco WebEx and PolyCom Video Conferencing for video collaboration. It’s unclear how many of these features are dependent on this update or whether these were just features that hadn’t actually been announced, but if you’re in charge of IT purchasing and everyone’s banging on your door to get a tablet, this could push the 10.1 over the edge.
Conclusion
Despite their rabid devotion to them, manufacturer's haven't made a lot of friends by offering skinned Android phones. There are only a handful of top tier phones that offer a pure Android experience; and now these layered experiences are arriving on tablets. But where the redundancy and sluggishness inspired by most phone skins are layered atop an otherwise satisfying and lauded user interface, Honeycomb is not nearly so refined as Gingerbread so it's hard to mar the experience just by adding widgets and some new applications.
TouchWiz UX on the 10.1 is a relatively benign experience, it is neither offensive nor supremely satisfying. If properly built out, the MiniApps and resizable widgets framework could add a lot of utility to Samsung's tablet line-up. The enterprise features will help improve Honeycomb's penetration into the burgeoning corporate tablet market. And the media content offered by Samsung's Media Hub is a nice addition, particularly if they begin providing the content across platforms; imagine Media Hub built-in to your latest Samsung TV or BluRay player.
Where TouchWiz UX really gets me going, is in the potential evident from these additions, that developers have yet to realize. Social Hub is good, but wouldn't a resizable widget for TweetDeck be incredible? Tablets are here to stay, whether their utility is fully realized yet or not. And for better or worse, the two biggest tablet OS competitors will be iOS and Android; let's hope that developers start to push through inspiring applications that ensure that Apple doesn't let iOS rest on its laurels, but continue to advance how we compute on the go.
![The Task Manager MiniApp alone on one homescreen [above], and then overlaid over another homescreen with populated widgets [below].](https://images.anandtech.com/doci/4582/Mini App Task manager and overlaid.jpg)
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