Press the gear icon at the
top left of your home screen, choose User Settings, and use the sliding scale to set your geographic search zone.
It's a subtly modified version of stock Android, with the most noticeable difference being the BlinkFeed social media interface that's activated by swiping to the
far left of the home screen.
Galaxy Tab 8.9 has no buttons marring its bezel — all navigation and menu access buttons are located on the touch screen: Back, Home and the Samsung TouchWiz Task Manager touch icons in the
lower left of the home screens, app and a customization view (a «+» sign) on the upper right.
It's a pretty simple interface, and the only unwanted bloatware I encountered was a full - screen Amazon widget to
the left of the home screen.
There'a a new addition to the software on the tablets which is a «for you» page which sits to
the left of the home screen.
The most noticeable is Shelf, which slides in from
the left of the home screen, where you can find shortcuts to frequently used apps, space for Android widgets, the weather, and a space to write memos.
To
the left of the home screen is what Google refers to simply as your «feed,» which offers info cards on subjects you've recently searched for or topics Google already knows you're interested in.
Shelf is still accessible by swiping to
the left of the home screen, and holds a lot of information, including the weather info and your recent contacts or used apps.
The personalized Google app feed that lives to
the left of your home screen (it's my first stop for news every morning).
If you swipe to
the left of the home screen you'll find a news section with five different categories: Local, World, Business, Entertainment, and Sports.
Furthermore, OnePlus» proprietary Shelf still occupies the customary location on the screen to
the left of your home screen, offering bite - sized chunks of data without cluttering the home screen with widgets.
The Shelf - a screen which lives to
the left of the home screen, giving you a quick snapshot of any important events and widgets - has been tidied up a bit to make it cleaner and more refined.
BlinkFeed sits on
the left of the home screen, bringing social media updates, news content, and sometimes advertisements, to your phone.
Turn off the Google App news page: The Google App lives to
the left of your home screen, serving up news based on things that you like.
To do that, swipe over to
the left of your home screen to launch Bixby.
AppFlash is a new feature on the Moto Z2 Play that replaces Google Now to
the left of the home screen.
Swiping from
the left of your home screen will reveal Bixby Home, but the process takes significant time and is a bit janky.
It's even got double - tap to sleep and the Google Now screen to
the left of the home screen.
Swipe up on the launcher and it opens the app drawer with your most commonly used apps at the top and to
the left of home screen, automatically set up, is Google Now.
A turn of the bezel to
the left of the home screen pulls up different screens for each notification but it's when you turn to the right that you see the full dedication to fitness in Tizen.
There are small enhancements, such as the Google Now widget on the top
left of the home screen, the revamped app drawer that you can access by simply swiping up from the quick access bar, and new gesture controls that let you open the notifications tray by swiping down in the fingerprint sensor in back.
OnePlus has a knack for leaving Android mostly untouched in OxygenOS, but one unique aspect of its custom software is the Shelf to
the left of the home screens in the OnePlus Launcher.
The Shelf in the OnePlus Launcher gives a similar experience, allowing you to sort your widgets into a vertically scrolling list to
the left of your home screens (where Google Now would be on the Pixel Launcher).
To the far
left of the home screens you'll find a new Shelf feature (see video for example) that will display your frequent apps, contacts and is even customizable to show mini widgets which don't necessarily fit properly all of the time but will work in a pinch.
There'a a new addition to the software on the tablets which is a «for you» page which sits to
the left of the home screen.
Image: Nick Bush / Tom's GuideSwiping to
the left of the home screen brings up a Today screen that lets you quickly check the weather, news headlines, your next appointment and more.
The My Magazine feature, Samsung's Flipboard - like news reader that debuted on the Note 3, is accessible directly to
the left of the home screen, but the main display is a very familiar assortment of folders, app shortcuts, and a weather widget.
By way of comparison, the Gear S2 offers notifications to
the left of the home screen with each app having its own «screen» and while this approach has its own problems, scrolling left and right is a lot easier than navigating a long list of notifications.
When enabled, the Shelf feature pulls up your frequent apps and contacts when you swipe all the way to
the left of the home screen.
Shelf is located to
the left of the home screen, and gives you a quick overview of the date, time, and weather information for your current location, along with a list of your frequent contacts and recently - used apps.
To
the left of the home screen is a hub similar to Bixby that displays your recent photos, text messages, upcoming events, and more.
For instance, BlinkFeed still shows up when you swipe to
the left of your home screen to display aggregated news based on your social and browsing activity.
By default, the Google pane is located to
the left of the home screen, but with Google Now making way for the feed, the information you see isn't as relevant anymore.
There's even a way to get the Google feed to show up on
the left of the home screen, just like on the Google Now Launcher.
And BlinkFeed, positioned to
the left of the home screen, is still here in all its glory, though visually, it has also been altered a tad.
One of Oxygen OS's signature features is the shelf to
the left of the home screen.
While checking out a demo Galaxy S8 at Best Buy, I noticed that you can turn off the Bixby pane to
the left of your home screen — but there's no way to completely disable Bixby on the device.
This means the Flipboard - like BlinkFeed lives to
the left of the home screen, extra home screens are found to the right, and the full app drawer scrolls vertically, rather than horizontally.
Bluboo does have a rather interesting page to
the left of the home screen though.
To
the left of the home screen is also Google Now, as you'd expect.
Along with Nougat - specific changes — split - screen multitasking, improved Doze mode, and notification replies — the update brings a Portrait Mode, ability to shoot in RAW, tweaks to the ZenUI launcher (Google Assistant is now baked in), and a Google Now feed to
the left of the home screen.