The Galaxy View is Samsung’s biggest tablet, and the company is positioning it as a sort of all-purpose, general-use device for an entire household rather than a conventional mobile device. To that end they’ve released another exclusive app for the 18.4-inch tablet, Family Square. According to the description in the Play Store, it’s meant to be a digital bulletin board, allowing multiple users to post photos to the app which are then displayed on the screen.
The setup is… unique. Instead of simply pulling photos from Facebook or Google+ accounts, Family Square needs to connect to individual phones, presumably over the local Wi-Fi network. Paired phones are added to a group with sharing permissions. Users then send photos directly to the Galaxy View so they can be displayed. It also looks like compatible devices are restricted to recent Samsung phones and tablets – I’m showing zero devices as compatible.
An Android Police team member with a Galaxy Note 5 says that the app is available to him, so I’m going to hazard a guess that only the 2015 flagship phones (Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+, Note 5) are allowed to download the app for the time being. Apparently Samsung only wants “Samsung households” to use the Galaxy View. (The APK file won’t install on my Nexus 6.) Last week the Galaxy View also received a custom version of a CNN News app.