Today, Samsung held an event for media in New York to unveil its long awaited customization of Google's Android 3.1 tablet OS, better known as Honeycomb. There have been a few minor tweaks to graphics here and there on other Honeycomb tablets, but the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the first Honeycomb tablet to get a complete customized overhaul. Some of the familiar Honeycomb features still behave and look more or less the same as before, like the multitasking bar, Home button, and Apps menu and tab. The big story here is what Samsung added.
Check out our news story for a concise overview of the new features Samsung brings to Honeycomb with TouchWiz, and hit the slideshow below for screen shots from the new user interface.
From a new set of widgets that can be resized to a new tray of "mini apps" that are accessible from any screen, TouchWiz definitely gives the Galaxy Tab 10.1 a different feel. Even the settings and notifications tabs, located in the lower right corner of the screen, have been modified to remove steps when navigating the settings menu. One unfortunate byproduct: the screens and widgets seem to move with a bit of drag that wasn't present before the update.
The questions will inevitably be: Are the new features actually necessary? Are they redundancies or only modest improvements that will (quite possibly) come at the cost of timely updates to the device? Samsung's
The free TouchWiz update will be available over-the-air to current Galaxy Tab 10.1 owners starting August 5—just head to the "Software Update" section of the "About Tablet" menu in your tablet's settings.
Note: The original version of the article stated that the TouchWiz update will wipe your existing data off of your tablet. While this was true for the tethered version of the update journalists received at the Samsung event, it is not the case for the OTA update consumers will receive.