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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surt - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link
Won't be buying a tablet until I can watch movies in native resolution. The artifacting on all of these tablets is absolutely horrible.Mugur - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link
You'll have to wait about one year more, in theory... Isn't iPad 3 supposed to have 2048 x 1536?JasonInofuentes - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
Soon.pim69 - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link
I find it ridiculous to patent something's appearance. We all know that the majority of Computer monitors look the same with black bezels and only the company logo/name on the bezel to make them look different. You could argue all projectors look the same because they all have lenses and a body with buttons. How about toilets? Sinks? Basketball nets? Bags of Milk? They all look the same! Why is it ok for a tech company to get away with patenting something's general appearance?? Next Apple will try to patent the colour White!!dcollins - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link
The Data caps make no sense for 4G.If you average 15Mbps, you could theoretically blow through a 5GB limit in 45 minutes. That's the middle tier and a low estimate for average speed.
WTF is the point of 4G speeds with these asinine data limits? Saving a few seconds in page loading speeds is nice, but streaming HD and large file downloads are the only real applications that <i>need</i> the speed. 5GB gives you what, 4-5 HD Netflix movies?
tmensonides - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
I don't get the rectangular design "patent" thing either. Doesn't HP now have some leftover Palm patent to lord over the iPhone's App presentation/home screen and rectangle shape...I seem to remember my old m505, T/X, and Treo having "app screens" that look exactly like the iPhone and a "rectangle shape"...i don't get it it...the whole apple lawsuit about products "looking" the same is one of two reasons (the other being the loss of in-app kindle purchases) that I bought a TAB 10.1 instead of an iPad. Doesn't one of the Apple complaints even complain about the photo gallery icon used on the Galaxy S's? For goodness sake, when MS tried to push the tablet form factor in circa 2002-2004...there were at least 5 tablets that were simple rectangles...maybe a hair thicker but the same idea...Holy crap, I should go to legal zoom and start patenting rectangles in .5 mm increments....
Mugur - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
http://www.galaxytabs.com/2011/08/german-court-sus...http://www.galaxytabs.com/2011/08/apple-altered-im...
It seems that Apple "retouched" the Galaxy Tab 10.1 photos to hide the 16/10 aspect ratio and also showed the App Drawer instead of the home screen...
Well, so you can still buy 10.1 in Europe, including Germany (in Germany "while supplies last" only).
Mugur - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
A friend come with a black 3G model to help him set it up with a data only SIM taken out of an USB modem. With the help of a friendly female operator, I made it work: lucky him the SIM was on an older unlimited data plan and judging by the H+ icon it was connecting at 21.6 Mbps...I own a Nook and I've played with iPad /2, Asus Transformer, Moto Xoom and 10.1v... But this tablet is really the best I got my hands on. Trust me, it's worth every penny if you can afford it.... It was already on 3.1 and TouchWiz and it feels just fine with it, although I would probably close most of the widgets.
A 720p youtube clip was making every monitor I have at home a piece of junk. I tried 1080p and it was buffering a lot, unfortunately, so I couldn't see if the tablet can hold it... The screen at maximum brightness and with eco mode (a sort of second auto mode, but the menu was not in English so I don't know how to translate it) off was jaw dropping, even compared to an iPad 2...
piiman - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
actually that is the TouchWiz interface not the app drawer. The reason I got rid of it and use a different HOME is that it looked and acted like the iOS. So unlike the iPhone you can use it or not use it.(but it does look like the iPhone when you first buy one) As for the Tablet I say sorry but to patent a rectangle as your IP is crazy. All these silly patents just adds cost to us. Except now Apple wants to use them to kill the competition. All they are is a way for another company to stop competition and make money off someones else s product. (MS makes more off Android then their own phone) Hell most (like 90+%) are throw out during lawsuits. this alone should tell you something isn't right.piiman - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
Just to be clear I was referring to the GS phone picture not the tablet but for some reason my post got stuck at the end and not to the post I was replying so it looks like I am talking about the tablet. So don't start flaming me :-) .