Galaxy Tab S 10.5 - what to delete/disable/add

[ldw]

My wife is now the proud owner of a bronze Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 tablet and as her in-house-tech-support I am now adjusting things in the tablet to make it meet her expectations. Her old tablet was the IPad 2 updated to IOS 7... It was running out of room and crashing fairly often. The Galaxy Tab S is updated to Lollipop 5.0.2.

So with that as background: What suggestions would you delete or disable in the software that comes with the Tab S. And what would you add?

Rooting the Tab S is not in the picture - she will not allow me to do anything that dramatic. But I am interested in suggestions you may have and your experience with Samsung's software.

What have I done? I've minimized the TouchWiz screens that sweep in from the left. There's only one now and its not doing much. She's using Google's Gmail app for her Gmail and her IMAP accounts and I am trying to disable the built in email whereever it turns up. She uses Chrome as her browser. Her favorite app is probably Pintrest. Her main screen is IPad-like with a scattering of icons all over.

Thanks,
LDW

PS: My impression of the Galaxy Tab S 10.5 is that the hardware is excellent. My impression of the software that Samsung adds to it, Touchwiz and it's various subsidiaries, are .... well... to put it gently... inferior to the quality of the hardware.

 

[ldw]

No suggestions? Ok, I'll experiment while my wife's away. I know, dangerous!

I have seen others talking about installing other launchers on their phones/tablets and recalled that Google Now is a launcher as well. So I downloaded it from the Play Store and installed it on the Galaxy Tab S 10.5.

Returning to the home screen (center button) I was asked if i wanted to use Googly now and answered yes, always. And was then greeted with what I would call a normal 'nexus-ish' home screen. Icon's along the bottom including the apps icon in the middle and a set of grouped icons for google and drive among others. Sweeping in from the left now produced the familiar Google now cards rather than TouchWiz.

I'll need to repopulate the tablet with icons for my wife but that seems like a small cost for such a great gain. Sweeping in from the right opens the collection of apps that may be windowed side by side. Sweeping down from the top shows the normal samsung settings and notifications with lollipop additions.

I'm pleased with this so far and will post any problems I encounter here in the future.

ldw

 

[thilanliyan]

Not sure if I was doing something wrong but using any other launcher didn't seem to help with the tiny bit of lag I was experiencing with my Tab S 8.4.

I did delete all the windows in the screen to the left, although you can't permanently delete it.

 

[fletchb]

My wife is now the proud owner of a bronze Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 tablet and as her in-house-tech-support I am now adjusting things in the tablet to make it meet her expectations. Her old tablet was the IPad 2 updated to IOS 7... It was running out of room and crashing fairly often. The Galaxy Tab S is updated to Lollipop 5.0.2.

So with that as background: What suggestions would you delete or disable in the software that comes with the Tab S. And what would you add?

Rooting the Tab S is not in the picture - she will not allow me to do anything that dramatic. But I am interested in suggestions you may have and your experience with Samsung's software.

What have I done? I've minimized the TouchWiz screens that sweep in from the left. There's only one now and its not doing much. She's using Google's Gmail app for her Gmail and her IMAP accounts and I am trying to disable the built in email whereever it turns up. She uses Chrome as her browser. Her favorite app is probably Pintrest. Her main screen is IPad-like with a scattering of icons all over.

Thanks,
LDW

PS: My impression of the Galaxy Tab S 10.5 is that the hardware is excellent. My impression of the software that Samsung adds to it, Touchwiz and it's various subsidiaries, are .... well... to put it gently... inferior to the quality of the hardware.

People who had lag issues said rooting is what fixed it for them. I have had only lag problems with Chrome but one of the upgrades fixed it.

How do you like lollipop? I have yet to get an upgrade notification for it as of yet.

 

[ldw]

I like lollipop a lot. I have it on my Nexus 5 phone (5.1) and Nexus 7 (2013) (5.0.2) tablet too. I can't tell you exactly what it is about lollipop that makes the difference, but there's a kind of quality 'feel' to it that I find appealing.

On the Tab S 10.5 the upgrade from 4.4.2 to lollipop gives it that elusive quality 'feel' too. But its the replacement of Touchwiz with Google Now that really completes it.

I haven't really seen any lag on the Tab S 10.5. It wasn't lag I was fixing when I replaced Touchwiz with Google Now. Honestly, Touchwiz is an offense to a sense of beauty of design.... as least in this humble engineer's opinion. So replacing TW with Google Now's Material Design is a huge improvement. I don't know if this was possible under KitKat 4.4.2 but it certainly works nicely under Lollipop 5.0.2. My thanks to Samsung for allowing this.

There is one downside to lollipop that I should mention though. Occasionally, there is a noticeable lag that occurs when exiting Chrome and returning to the home screen on my Nexus 7. I've counted off a few seconds at times while the tablet gets itself sorted out. I haven't seen this on the Tab S and can't recall seeing it on the phone with its lollipop 5.1. I should emphasize that this is not normal operation on the N7 ... but it does happen occasionally. I posted a question on this in the google help forums and the solution was to use the bootloader to wipe the cache partition. That seemed to fix it for several months.

ldw

 

[shabby]

So with that as background: What suggestions would you delete or disable in the software that comes with the Tab S. And what would you add?

Don't believe you can delete much, you can disable apps but that's about it.

People who had lag issues said rooting is what fixed it for them.

Rooting only gives you admin permissions, it doesn't solve/fix anything.

 

[fletchb]

I like lollipop a lot. I have it on my Nexus 5 phone (5.1) and Nexus 7 (2013) (5.0.2) tablet too. I can't tell you exactly what it is about lollipop that makes the difference, but there's a kind of quality 'feel' to it that I find appealing.

On the Tab S 10.5 the upgrade from 4.4.2 to lollipop gives it that elusive quality 'feel' too. But its the replacement of Touchwiz with Google Now that really completes it.

I haven't really seen any lag on the Tab S 10.5. It wasn't lag I was fixing when I replaced Touchwiz with Google Now. Honestly, Touchwiz is an offense to a sense of beauty of design.... as least in this humble engineer's opinion. So replacing TW with Google Now's Material Design is a huge improvement. I don't know if this was possible under KitKat 4.4.2 but it certainly works nicely under Lollipop 5.0.2. My thanks to Samsung for allowing this.

There is one downside to lollipop that I should mention though. Occasionally, there is a noticeable lag that occurs when exiting Chrome and returning to the home screen on my Nexus 7. I've counted off a few seconds at times while the tablet gets itself sorted out. I haven't seen this on the Tab S and can't recall seeing it on the phone with its lollipop 5.1. I should emphasize that this is not normal operation on the N7 ... but it does happen occasionally. I posted a question on this in the google help forums and the solution was to use the bootloader to wipe the cache partition. That seemed to fix it for several months.

ldw

Thanks!

 

[fletchb]

Don't believe you can delete much, you can disable apps but that's about it.



Rooting only gives you admin permissions, it doesn't solve/fix anything.

After you root, you can disable or remove any bloatware you wish which does solves things

 

[jacktesterson]

Lollipop on the Tab S is much improved over Kitkat.

Much smoother, transitions are smooth, scrolling is better, etc. The annoying lags of Kitkay are just not here nearly as much.

The 8.4 doesn't have it yet but hopefully soon.

I find it funny my Nexus 9 has 5.0.1 and my Tab S 10.5 has 5.0.2