Many of the articles I see about Samsung’s Bixby digital assistant software are about ways to disable or remap the dedicated Bixby key on recent Samsung smartphones. But Samsung seems dedicated to Bixby, and the company has just launched a new 8 inch tablet in its home country of South Korea that’s the first to feature Bixby Home and Reminder software.
Bixby Home is basically a hub with a card-based user interface that shows details from a bunch of different apps all in one place, and Bixby Reminder is a sort of amped-up alarm system that lets you get a notification including website links, photos, videos, or other items… with the alert coming at a certain time or when you’re at a certain location.
The new tablet also has a Home Mode, which shows calendar, weather, and time details while charging, or lets you use the tablet as a digital photo frame.
Other software includes a Kids Mode, a Smart View option for screen sharing with a smart TV, and a Game Launcher that blocks notifications while you’re playing.
In other words, while the new Galaxy Tab A is basically an Android tablet, it’s got enough Samsung-specific software on it to give you the option of kind of ignoring Android and using the Samsung-specific apps and user interface… if that’s something you want to do. Samsung’s clearly hoping you do.
The tablet has an 8 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel display, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage a microSD card slot, and a 5,000 mAh battery. It comes in WiFi-only and 4G LTE Cat 4 versions, an the new Galaxy Tab A launches in South Korea this month.
There’s no word on if or when this model will be available in other markets.
via SamMobile