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The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 ships with a few choice third-party apps already installed and there are two app stores - the Android Market and the Samsung Apps store - to play with. The Samsung app store is superfluous since there are no remarkable sales on apps or any apps listed that aren't already available from the Android Market.
That said, it does provide another way to browse popular apps. The store doesn't have the social networking feature of the Lenovo app store, which includes suggestions from other users - who you can follow.
The included apps are impressive enough. There's the AllShare app for sharing media wirelessly with a desktop computer or smartphone. Samsung also includes the Polaris Office document suite for viewing and editing Word, Excel and PowerPoint files on the tablet. One important note here: the Polaris app is designed for the Microsoft Office 2007 suite, not the 2010 version. The suite includes a PDF viewer, too.
There's the useful Media Hub app for buying and renting videos, a Reader Hub for magazines, books and newspapers (where each point to a different provider such as Zinio), and a Social Hub app that aggregates your social networking feeds into one screen.
The Social Hub app isn't nearly as powerful as HootSuite or Sprout Social, in that there are no tools for increasing follower counts or seeing reports on who is clicking links you post, but you can read Twitter direct messages and Facebook messages.
Samsung includes a Photo editor app for painting on the photos you load or snap with the Galaxy Tab 8.9. There's also the usual assortment of email, calendar, music player and mapping apps included with Android 3.1. Samsung includes the Zynga Words multiplayer scrabble-clone app, as well.
None of these apps match the business-friendly tools included with the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet, and both Acer and Toshiba provide just as many third-party tools, including Documents-to-Go instead of Polaris Office.
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