If you walk into a big box store and look at Samsung tablets, you may be surprised to see that they almost feel more like picking up a Microsoft Surface than an iPad. Samsung has quietly made enough changes to Android that the latest Galaxy Tab slates don’t look all that different from the Windows laptops across the aisle.
Each Tablet Has a Taskbar at the Bottom
You might expect these desktop settings to be tucked away, waiting for the curious to discover them once the default experience feels too basic. That’s not the case at all.
When you’re looking at the tablet in the store, you’ll likely see a taskbar across the bottom of the screen, very similar to what you’d see on a Windows laptop or a Chromebook.
This taskbar doesn’t appear on the home screen, but it shows up whenever you launch an app. The default behavior is for apps to open fullscreen, but you can switch between them quickly by tapping on their icon on a launcher. This makes multitasking feel less like a phone and more like a PC.
Apps Can Appear in Floating Windows Like a PC
In the store, you may see windows floating around. This is how things looked when I recently took my son to Best Buy to pick out a Samsung Galaxy A9+ (get the 8GB model; the extra RAM is worth it). Whether Best Buy did this deliberately or it was previous customers playing around, I don’t know, but it left an impact.
To get floating windows on your Samsung tablet, simply hold down on an icon in the taskbar and drag it up to the center of the screen.
If you’re off-center, this will trigger split-screen multitasking instead. Dragging an icon to the top or bottom will split the screen horizontally, whereas dragging an icon to the left or right will divide the screen vertically. Hovering in the middle gets you the pop-up window.
A pop-up window has minimize, maximize, and close buttons, just like on any desktop OS. You can also pin a window above other windows and toggle the transparency. These are virtually the same window management features you see when using Samsung DeX to turn your phone into a PC.
Each Tablet Has an Optional Keyboard Case
Keyboard cases for tablets were once a novel thing. This was a key selling point of the original Microsoft Surface tablet. Now, you can assume a tablet will launch with an optional keyboard case, whether it’s the BOOX Tab Ultra C Pro or the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+.
That doesn’t change the fact that adding a keyboard does make a tablet feel less like a tablet and more like a laptop. The issue at that point becomes software, but Android in general, and Samsung in particular, has come a long way. Pressing Alt + Tab will switch between recent apps. The usual formatting shortcuts work while typing. You can take screenshots. For the most part, the keyboard works on Android the way you’re used to keyboards working.
A Bluetooth Mouse Works Like on a Laptop
Samsung’s standard keyboard cases don’t have touchpads, though there is a version for larger models that does. Higher-end Galaxy tablets also work with an S Pen, not unlike the one I use each day with my Galaxy Z Fold, offering an even greater degree of precision.
Still, there’s no substituting a mouse. Fortunately, using a Bluetooth mouse with an Android device feels just like connecting one to a PC. The mouse reconnects instantly, the cursor is responsive, and the standard mouse buttons do what you expect.
The experience isn’t perfect. Some of the quirks of using Android desktops also apply to using a mouse with Android tablets. Some apps aren’t optimized for a mouse, meaning some apps treat your cursor like a PC would, while others pretend the cursor is a finger. Nonetheless, it’s more usable than you might think.
Samsung Makes Surprisingly Good Apps
Samsung tablets benefit from Samsung’s suite of first-party apps. Samsung Internet is a better web browser than you might think, one that scales up to resemble a desktop browser both on tablets and on DeX. Samsung My Files resembles a desktop file manager and, frankly, packs all of the features I need. I actually find it easier to move files around on a Samsung device than I did back when I used a Linux desktop.
Samsung Gallery is a good way to manage photos saved directly to your device. It may not come for Photoshop any time soon, but it’s a solid way to touch up photos.
Samsung Notes is great for use with a stylus, so it kind of competes with OneNote. It’s also good for typing out quick notes, sort of how you’d use Google Keep. Yet Samsung Notes can export any of those notes as Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, or PDFs, making it somewhat of a basic office suite. It also is the default way to view PDFs, making it a replacement for Adobe Acrobat Reader.
All of this is to say that Samsung tablets have an advantage over tablets from Lenovo or Google in that Samsung offers software out of the box that frankly handles much of what people need a PC to do without them having to search through the Play Store. And you can still install all the same Google apps you might find on a Pixel Tablet, so you aren’t missing out.
Android Can Replace a Chromebook for Most People
Most people don’t need all the complexity that comes from using a Windows PC. There’s too much that can break. There are so many ads from Microsoft to deal with, and installing software is a landmine to people who aren’t familiar with the culture of browsing the web for EXEs, separating the good ones from the bad.
For quite a while now, Chromebooks have been an easy recommendation for people who primarily need to check email, browse the web, and maybe do a little online shopping. Tablets can be an even better fit. There’s something about tablets that even toddlers quickly figure out how to navigate. It’s an interface that’s simply easier for more people to understand.
Android tablets have reached a point where if a Chromebook meets your needs, then an Android tablet can likely also do everything you need done. It’s similar enough, and you’re gaining a more enjoyable way to watch videos, read books, and play games in the process. And if you’re going to get an Android tablet, Samsung’s are the most capable ones you can buy.
