We’ve been on the ground in Orlando for the last week at the CTIA 2011 show and this afforded us the opportunity to check out the latest Samsung products. You’ve already seen our coverage of the Galaxy Tab 8.9 but check out the video below for a nice walkthrough of the Samsung TouchWiz UZ for Android Honeycomb.
The Motorola Xoom was the first Android Honeycomb device and it launched with a pure Google experience. Samsung likes to tweak the interface of its Android devices and the TouchWiz UX is no exception. I know some of you hate anything that’s not pure Android but I’m happy to report that the changes don’t hurt the experience and it makes it a little prettier to look at.
First of all, the TouchWiz UX modifies the notification bar in the bottom right so you can now have a toggle to turn off things like WiFi or GPS. Like with its Galaxy S notification bar modifications, I think this is a small and subtle improvement on Google’s platform.
The TouchWiz UX also includes some improvements to the widgets, as Samsung will give you some live-tile ones and these will automatically orient in a neat way when you’re switching between landscape and portrait modes. It’s a little tough to explain properly, so just go ahead and check the video below.
The customized Samsung version of Android Honeycomb also lets you swipe up from the bottom to reveal a quick shortcut menu for some apps. This is customizable and you can also just hit the “Apps” button in the top right to bring up all of your apps.
If the Samsung TouchWiz UX seems a bit laggy in the video below, you should remember that this is a pre-production model and the software is still being ironed out. Let us know what you think about this UX in the comments, friends.