Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 review: The Professional

Phonebook

The Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 comes in Wi-Fi-only and LTE flavors. The latter is capable of voice telephony and will come with a pre-installed Phone app. The Wi-Fi model that we got for reviewing only has the Contacts app, which serves the other methods of communicating - IM and email.

The phonebook

As usual, the Contacts app syncs automatically with Google and your social networks, while you can choose which contacts to display. You can do everything a phone book should be capable of - edit a contact, import/export, join contacts, send or print name cards, get friends via social services, etc.

Messaging and text input

The two email clients we are used to see on Samsung devices are onboard - the Gmail app provided by Google and the Email client courtesy of Samsung. Both have a split-screen interface, support multiple accounts, bulk actions and folder view.

Gmail • Samsung Email

The default Samsung Email app supports POP3, IMAP and Microsoft Exchange. It also offers a very useful Magazine widget, which will probably see lots of use if you are into email.

Email settings • Magazine Email widget

There aren't any chat clients pre-installed on the Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4, but you can always download Google's Hangouts or Samsung's ChatOn from the app repositories.

The Samsung QWERTY keyboard occupies about half of the screen in landscape and about a third of screen in portrait view. There are two additional keyboard layouts to try out. You can opt for the small floating keyboard and a split keyboard.

The QWERTY keyboard

Choosing the split keyboard allows you to quickly thumb-type while holding the tablet with both hands. It also leaves much more room for text, especially in the email client where the compose interface is in a popup that fits right between the two halves of the keyboard.

Split and floating keyboards

Several other options are available to make text input easier, including various options for predictive text and auto correction. Swipe input is also supported or if you disable it, you can swipe left and right across the keyboard to move the cursor. The large keyboard does have arrow keys though.

Powerful file manager

The My Files organizes your files into categories - Images, Videos, Music, Documents, Downloaded apps, Recent files and even Dropbox files. Those categories are always visible on the top of the screen, while the bottom part is split between folders and their content (with a complete tree view, similar to Windows Explorer).

My Files file manager

The My Files app can move, copy, lock and rename files in bulk, even send multiple files to another phone. My files will browse the memory card and the large internal storage (it can't access the system drive). More advanced functions include handling ZIP files and connecting to FTP servers.