Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G LTE Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 15, 2011 1:23 AM ESTBattery Life
I ran through our standard general use battery life test for tablets on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G LTE. The test involves looping MP3s while browsing a predefined list of web pages (without Flash). At the same time a high volume email account is checked periodically. The display is set to never turn off/dim, auto brightness is disabled and screen brightness is calibrated to 200 nits.
With LTE disabled, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 lasts about as long as the Motorola Xoom on EVDO. Our test isn't incredibly network intensive so moving to LTE doesn't change things all that much. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 lost about an hour with LTE enabled. With a huge battery, getting 7.55 hours of use on LTE isn't bad at all. In fact I'd say I'm pretty impressed by battery life of Samsung's first LTE tablet.
The Best LTE Hotspot?
It would be a downright shame if the LTE Galaxy Tab 10.1 didn't support the creation of a WiFi hotspot. Thankfully it does. Like almost all modern Android devices you can share the cellular modem in the Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G among multiple clients over WiFi. You can also share the connection with a single client via Bluetooth or USB.
I ran our standard hotspot battery life test on the Galaxy Tab 10.1. I used a single computer connected over WiFi to the LTE Tab to run four instances of our web browsing battery life test (two with flash and two without). Our test also plays back a 128Kbps stream from smoothbeats.com. During all of this the test tablet was asleep with its display turned off.
I also ran another hotspot battery life test on the tablet to look at the worst case scenario. For this test I downloaded files from a server to a WiFi tethered PC at the maximum speed of the LTE connection, averaging around 2MB/s. I continued to download until the tablet's battery died.
The results are just awesome. In our standard test the Galaxy Tab 10.1 lasted over 13 hours as a LTE hotspot. In our worst case scenario, we still got over 7 hours of continuous use out of the Galaxy Tab 10.1. If you were considering an LTE MiFi and a tablet, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G may be a good option. My only complaint here is the LTE connection is only shared over 2.4GHz WiFi. Although the Tab's hardware supports 5GHz, you can't choose to use the higher frequency 802.11n for the WiFi hotspot. This is a problem in areas where there are a lot of users occupying the 2.4GHz spectrum. At least there's USB tethering support.
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jigglywiggly - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link
such a useless device with the shit plansATOmega - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link
At $699 on contract, there is absolutely zero reason to buy one of these things. Not to mention, data plan prices are prohibitively expensive.This device should be tops $350 and available without a contract at any store that wishes to carry it.
Android tablets will *never* take off so long as this kind of nonsense is happening.
Lord 666 - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link
Anand,Hold that unit in both hands, twist, and watch the screen flicker. The Xoom and iPads have great torsion resistance. The Samsung 10.1 series could be snapped in half.
medi01 - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link
Did you try hitting it with a hammer?EnerJi - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link
GTFOH!! A total, and blatant rip-off, which I suppose they feel they can get away with as the only game in town. This device will be selling for (at least) $100 less by Thanksgiving, by which time the Xoom, PlayBook, and possibly others will also be shipping with LTE. Most folks should probably wait for more options and for competition to drive down prices later this year.heulenwolf - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link
I agree with earlier comments that the price of the device and plans severely limit the product offering. VZW is no dummy so I wonder whether they are, in fact, aiming for lower volume. If they keep the customer count down on their 4G LTE network while they're still rolling it out, they can delay the capital upgrade investments for the additional backhaul bandwidth that would be required and, at the same time, make their existing 4G offering a premium service because its not so busy. Were there suddenly a few hundred thousand 4G LTE devices on-line simultaneously in the Charlotte area, I wonder whether they'd all be getting the incredible bandwidth shown in Anand's results. If, instead, they keep both the device and service plan costs high, they can simultaneously limit the data load on their new network so it appears hyperfast and make a high profit. Until they have viable competition, lower volume may be the better business case.eanazag - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link
I don't think it looks enough alike to justify the patent infringement. I can see some similarities on the front side, but on the back end - no. The button and camera placement is different also. I think if Samsung had went with a different color other than black (and now white) on the front bezel of the screen or some extra distinguishing mark it would have not had an issue at all. I don't agree with the sales blocking, but I can see how if someone is looking to block the device that they would have a better chance than some other devices. I don't see how the OS side could provide a "look and feel" issue. It is mostly a cheap trick unless there is something that most reasonable people are missing. I would guess Apple is just trying to buy time till the next hardware release and knock off the best competing hardware available. I have an iPad 2 and would consider this device as the best alternative in the Android environment. I like Samsung as a manufacturer.The killer feature here is 4G. After using the iPad 2 and BB Playbook I would say that 4G speeds make this type of device much more useful. 3G where I am sucks. It is adequate for some web, but the next gen uses will require 4G such as remote desktop. Remote desktop is still pretty weak because of 3G, but can be done.
I use my device for work and play.
jrs77 - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link
A MiFi I can use with basically any of my mobile devices and overall it's cheaper aswell. I'm way more flexible with MiFi and I can even have friends use it, as good MiFi allows for more then one connection simultanously.So yeah... MiFi all the way.
milan03 - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link
Just did a few tests on Thunderbolt in NYC just for testing sake. I'm sure Samsung Galaxy Tab would hit even higher here in NYC especially on the uplink: [IMG]http://i55.tinypic.com/209lrmu.png[/IMG]shenjing - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link
Come go and see, will not regret it Oh lookhttp://www。ifancyshop。com