14 DAY TRIAL // A deal between Samsung and Microsoft had the South Korean phone manufacturer pre-install a number of apps, like Skype, OneNote, and Office, on its Galaxy S8 and S8+, but it turns out that the company adopted a different strategy in terms of bloatware for the Note 8.
The 6.3-inch phablet will come equipped with Hancom Office S in the United States, as Samsung is apparently giving up on Microsoft’s Office suite and going for bloatware from a less famous company.
Hancom is a South Korean software developer whose Office S productivity suite claims to provide all the essential tools a Note 8 owner would need to work with documents, including with those created with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It can also open and edit PDF files.
Also coming with support for DeX
Just as expected, the Office S productivity suite also works on the Galaxy S8 series (and most likely on other Android models too), and the Korean firm believes that deal with Samsung would help it become famous across the world given the sales of smartphones in the Galaxy S lineup.
The Hancom Office S has also been optimized for DeX, which allows owners of Samsung’s latest flagships to connect their devices to bigger screens and work on them with a mouse and keyboard just like on a regular PC.
At this point, it’s not known whether users would be allowed to uninstall Office S applications or not.
As far as Microsoft is concerned, not a single word has been said on why the company was left out of the deal and whether it was no longer interested in such a partnership.
In the meantime, however, the software giant keeps working with Samsung in a series of areas, and in addition to selling the Galaxy S8 into its own stores, the firm also picked Samsung smart TVs as the official partner for the new Xbox One X console.