Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 3 multitasking crushes the iPad

 

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3

256GB, w/trade-in

$749 ⁹⁹

$1799 ⁹⁹

Expired

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3

512GB, w/ trade-in

$849 ⁹⁹

$1899 ⁹⁹

Expired

This year Apple disappointed while Samsung impressed

Obviously this is my opinion only, as a power user who loves tablets. And yes, the iPad is a wonderful device, well capable of doing all the heavy lifting most casual users will ever need. It's also pretty good as a school or work "computer" in certain cases, so long as the mobile apps it has to offer can cover your needs.

But when it comes to multitasking, the iPad is not only disappointing, and clearly will be for at least another year, but it has now been significantly surpassed by the experience the Samsung Z Fold 3 will deliver.

The Galaxy Z Fold 3 running on OneUI 3 can have an always-visible app dock and can easily open 3 split-screen apps at the same time - two features I was hoping the iPad will get with iPadOS 15, but it won't. Should I sell my iPad and get the Z Fold 3? Maybe, stay tuned for our Z Fold 3 review, which will solidify whether the Samsung multitasking experience is as good as it looks on the OneUI 3 trailer. Speaking of which:



The part that impressed me starts at 1 minute and 37 seconds. Samsung gives us the ability to enable "advanced features" such as a task bar, and pair that with the 3-app split screen mode and even more apps in windowed mode (should you want more) - it's pretty impressive. And it all looks great, too - smooth corners, intuitive controls and so on.

When is Apple going to catch up?

As we've noted in our iPadOS 15 preview, the upcoming iPad operating system update doesn't feature significantly improved multitasking, it's just a bit easier to use now. You can still only open two apps in split-view, and awkwardly add a third one in a tall pop up, which will obstruct one of the other two apps. You can't use horizontal split-view either, nor do you get a pinned app dock, always having to swipe up for it.

So unfortunately, it looks like we'll have to wait until iPadOS 16 in late 2022 for Apple to actually deliver a better multitasking experience for its "PC replacement" and highly powerful tablets, if the Cupertino company even does. Until then, all of the iPad Pro's M1 power remains less than utilized to its full potential. Those of us who love and believe in the iPad as a potential PC replacement will have to either make peace with Apple's slow and underwhelming approach and keep waiting with hope, or eventually give up on the iPad move on to something better.