One of the main questions I’ve had about about the new Galaxy NotePro 12.2 was about the Touchwiz interface, how it’s changed and what it looks like now compared to the previous version. In fact, two of my viewers, Pier and Michael, asked me to dig a bit deeper into the NotePro 12.2 interface.
The new Galaxy NotePro 12.2 interface from Samsung is fairly refined, and I think it’s very interesting and definitely shows the way forward for more serious tablet owners who want to get that little bit more from their devices.
Let’s start with the multiwindow feature, which is common to all Note products and even the S4, but is taken to a whole new level on the NotePro 12.2 interface.
By swiping in from the right, you can select each app to place on the screen – and you can put up to 4 tiles. From where I sit, each window is still extremely readable, so it’s quite possible to have 4 running at once. Have a vid in one screen, maybe a browser in another, email open and the file manager.
And I can actually copy and paste from one window into another. This is pretty seamless, and probably more than you’d expect from a standard tablet, although this isn’t your ordinary type of device.
Here’s where it gets a little psycho. You can then use the pen window to draw a few more apps to open if you need to use them temporarily, and you can reduce those to circles if you minimise them for easy access if you think you might need them again. This is where the screen size really shines – lots of space for real productivity.
The other big software difference is in the widget tile style called magazine UI. This is pretty cool, and something that I hope does transfer across to the Note 10.1 in a future update. Swiping in from the left or by hitting the special object down here brings you into this customisable space, with continually updating widget-type areas.
This is kind of like flipboard with a few Samsung specific apps and productivity thrown in to give you continual feeds of interest. It’s actually a well designed overlay and suits the over sized screen of the NotePro in a really effective way. And flipping through the flipboard articles on such a big screen is almost tactile in the way the page flips with your finger’s movement. It’s the largest screen I’ve tried flipboard on and it’s a really good experience.
You can see here that you can auto arrange your tiles by pressing this button to rotate through different layouts, or create your own. With the NotePro 12.2 interface, you can create up to 5 windows with pieces of content dynamically updating all the time, even with access to Samsung apps.
What this Magazine UI has done is pretty impressive. It’s actually taken the widget concept, and perhaps some of the Windows 8 live tiles concept and made it into its own. If this NotePro 12.2 interface is the future of Touchwiz, then I’m all for it.
Overall, I was really impressed with the multitasking and the magazine UI as part of the overall way you’d be using the NotePro 12.2 interface, along with the pen of course. Does any of this impress you? Let me know in the comments area below if you think this is the right direction for Samsung in their tablet area, and will this convince you to look at their new range if you’re now in the market for a tablet?
