Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus review: A game of sequels

Applications

There are a few apps provided by Samsung for the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus worth mentioning - eBook, Memo, My files, Pen memo and Photo editor.

The eBook reader comes with one book for free - The Marvelous Land of Oz. naturally you can add books stores, buy books from them and they will appear on your virtual shelves.

eBook app

The eBook reader is quite capable - it allows you to highlight or underline text, change the font size and page color, search the book and put bookmarks. There is even text-to-speech feature with settings for speed and pitch.

The Memo is pretty simple notes application with interesting interface - you get your notes as sticky note on a wooden board.

Memo app

My Files is a familiar app - it's the Samsung powerful file manager.

My Files file manager

Pen memo does almost the same as the memos, but in addition to the text it allows you to draw pictures and offers some extra option as colors, background, etc.

Pen Memo

Finally, the Photo Editor offers some basic picture edition tools - selections, rotate, resize, crop, color effects and adjustments, etc.

The Photo Editor

The last app worth mentioning is Peel Smart Remote. It uses the infrared port on your Tab 7.0 Plus to control your TV-set. Outside the USA, it acts just as a regular remote control and is rather useless.

Smart Remote

If you are a US resident though and you are using a TV/cable operator, then you can setup your Tab 7.0 Plus to control not only your TV, but your DVR, DVD/Blu-ray players, streaming players, home theater system, etc. You also get full TV program guide, you can create watch lists and the app will take you to the shows you want to watch right now, no need to switch the programs manually to find them.

The Social Hub

The Social hub combines you email accounts with social networking (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) shows all incoming messages as one list and your social feeds as another. You also get handy shortcuts to reply, mark as favorite and so on.

Thanks to the two-column interface you can easily switch between your accounts, messages and feeds if you don't need all the stuff in one place.

The Social Hub is a true communication nexus

Google Maps and limited navigation

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus comes with a GPS receiver, which got a satellite lock in under two minutes with A-GPS turned off. A-GPS can speed this up quite a bit, but requires Internet access. We gotta say, we didn’t experience any issues with the GPS performance.

With a screen as large (or larger) than most dedicated SatNav units, with excellent sunlight legibility and plenty of storage, any money spent towards satellite navigation should go to buying a good app rather than a separate SatNav unit.

The Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus comes with Google Maps and Navigation. Voice-guided navigation has become a viable solution since the v5.0 update. Vector maps are smaller and way easier on your data plan and with the Navigation itself becoming available in more and more countries 3rd party SatNav apps are facing extinction.

Google Maps with vector maps does a bit of 3D

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!

Using Street View

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.

Android market

With a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU and powerful graphics chip, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus can run every Android app designed for phones and slates.

The Android market is the fastest growing app repository around (also the one with the most free apps and number of downloads), so you can be sure that you won’t be having a shortage of software to install on your Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. True, some apps aren’t designed to work on a WSVGA screen, but most scale well, so the only thing you have to worry about is finding enough time to enjoy all those apps.

The Android market has been nicely optimized for tablets

Recently, Google also redesigned the Android Market interface to make it easier for you to find the quality apps. There are now featured apps, editors’ picks and staff-recommended apps in addition to the usual top free and top paid.

The top new paid and top new free lists are worth checking out too and you shouldn’t forget the trending apps. Naturally, there is a built-in search and categories for the different types of apps so you don’t get lost. Recommendations are also based on your location to make it even easier to spot a quality app in the new Android market.

And if by some reason, the soon-to-become number 1 app repository on the market isn’t enough for you, you might want to check out some of the alternatives. Amazon has set up its own appstore and so has Opera, plus a few more minor app stores here and there. Choice is one of the best parts of the open platform.

Samsung's own store called SamsungApps is also on board. There you can get a lot of free apps for your tablet.

SamsungApps store