Is Samsung Food’s ‘big update for tablet users’ any good?

Did you know Samsung has an app called Samsung Food that helps you discover and prepare new recipes? It’s available for Samsung phones, tablets, and even some refrigerators. Recently, it received a new tablet-friendly UI design, but is it as good as we hoped?

Samsung recently released a big update for the Samsung Food app. The changelog mentions improvements for tablet users, so we were eager to see what enhancements it brought. Surprisingly, Samsung managed to introduce a proper tablet-oriented layout to just one part of the app.

This new dual-column design for the recipe page layout allows users to view ingredients and instructions simultaneously, reducing the need to scroll. However, the rest of the app’s screens haven’t received a similar redesign. We tested it on the Galaxy Tab S11 and Galaxy Z Fold 7 in both portrait and landscape orientations, but didn't notice any major UI redesigns.

You can see the recipe page on a foldable phone in the screenshot below.

Based on Google's design guidelines for foldables and tablets, Samsung could have moved the tabs in the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen to the navigation rail on the left side of the screen. This change could have made the UI much better for large-screen devices.

Another change the company could have introduced is a dual-pane design for recipe search results. It could have placed the filter and sort options beside the search bar rather than below it. In the current version, the search bar appears too big on tablet screens. Moreover, it could have displayed search results on the left pane and the details page on the right pane.

Right now, Samsung's effort seems half cooked. As the world's major foldable phone and tablet brand, the South Korean firm needs to do a much better job in designing its own apps for big-screen devices. Other stock apps, such as Find, Galaxy Store, Good Lock, and Wearable need more design improvements as well.