Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 review: Walking tall

Office Editor a no-go

Unlike the Galaxy flagships, the Galaxy Memo 6.3 gives you only the Polaris Office viewer functionality, rather than the full-fledged editor. The viewer does not show up in your app drawer, but instead only opens when you select the relevant document from the My Files app.

Polaris Office viewer

Nevertheless, you can view most document types, including PowerPoint, Word, Excel as well as PDF. We suspect Samsung will make sure a full-fledged editor is available for download from the Samsung Apps (now called Centro apps) by the time the smartphone goes on sale, but even if not there's plenty of alternatives in the Play Store.

Organizer is as robust as ever

The S Planner takes the place of the regular Calendar app. It has the same basic functionality - it can be viewed by Day, Week, Month or Year, or by a list of all your upcoming tasks or events. The small date cells display only limited info on the events for the day, but thanks to Air View you can point to a day to read the full description.

The S Planner application

Adding a new event is quick and easy, and you can also set an alarm to act as a reminder.

There is also a calculator aboard. It is nicely touch optimized - the buttons are big enough and easy to hit.

The calculator

The Samsung Galaxy Memo 6.3 features a decent alarm clock application which allows a huge number of alarms to be set, each with its own start and repeat time. There's also a World clock, a stopwatch, and a timer. They are easy to work with and can come in handy.

The Clock application

The Clock app also has a Desk clock mode, which shows the time and a calendar. There's a full-screen mode that the lockscreen shortcuts. Keep in mind that this mode can use up your battery pretty quickly if the Galaxy Mega 6.3 is not plugged in.

Desk clock

We're familiar with the S Memo app ever since its debut on the Galaxy Note, and its functionality remains more or less the same. It allows you to create notes either via a virtual keyboard or simply by doodling with your finger.

The S Memo app

Google Maps Navigation gives you the most out of GPS

The Samsung I9200 Galaxy Mega 6.3 comes with a GPS receiver, which got a satellite lock in couple of minutes with A-GPS turned off. A-GPS can speed this up quite a bit, but requires Internet access. We have to say, we didn't experience any issues with the GPS performance.

The Galaxy Mega 6.3 comes with Google Maps and Navigation. Voice-guided navigation has become a viable solution since the v5.0 update. Vector maps are smaller and easier on the data traffic and reroute is an option if you go off course without the need to connect to the Internet. In fact, the only time you need a data connection is when you initially plan the course - Navigation will cache the needed maps.

Quite naturally, the app also supports the Street View mode. If it's available in the area you're interested in, you can enjoy a 360-degree view of the surroundings. When the digital compass is turned on it feels like making a virtual tour of the location.

Google Maps includes Street View as well

If Google Maps Navigation doesn't do it for you, you can grab an alternative app from the Android Market - there are both free and paid ones.

Google Play now backed up by the Samsung Apps store

The Google Play Store is laid across several scrollable tabs - categories, featured, top paid, top free, top grossing, top new paid, top new free and trending. Apps usually have several screenshots (some even offer a demo video) so you can get an idea of what the app looks like before installing it.

You can also check out comments and ratings, as well as the number of downloads and so on, to help you decide whether the app is worth it.

The Android Market will give you access to hundreds of thousands of apps

The Google Play Store is full of all sorts of apps. From music / video players, to file managers and various tools, you'll always see something worth a try.

Samsung is throwing its own app store to the mix. It features largely the same type of interface as Google Play, except here you'll find a more limited number of apps. The good news is Samsung uses this repository to distribute some exclusive titles and some promotional offers, available only to customers.

The Samsung Apps store