Samsung Galaxy Tab - The AnandTech Review
by Vivek Gowri on December 23, 2010 9:48 AM ESTSamsung Galaxy Tab - Battery Life
So the battery life test is an interesting one, in that we don’t have a comparable tablet result yet - Anand used a modified version of the battery test in his iPad review and I haven’t yet had a chance to run the Viewsonic through the battery testing yet. I’m running these tests on my iPad, so I’ll update this page as those results come in.
But overall, the battery life is pretty good. The Galaxy Tab’s 14.8 Wh (4000 mAh) battery managed 9.75 hours on our web browsing test over WiFi. That outdoes the Dell Streak by an hour and a half, the Droid X by an hour, and the EVO 4G by two. Unfortunately, here’s the rub: Anand got almost an exact time out of the iPad, but he ran the same test with music playing in the background and email fetching every 15 minutes. I’m still running the web-only battery life test on the iPad, but I can safely say that it should outlast the Galaxy Tab by a decent margin.
Lightcycles. I kid you not.
To get a feel for battery life during video playback, I timed a looping 2GB H.264 encode of the original Tron DVD. The Galaxy Tab made it through four times over before giving up the ghost, good for 6:42 of video playback. This looks pretty poor in comparison to the 13.6 hours Anand got from the iPad in his 720p h.264 battery life test, but that video file was encoded to a lower bitrate, so it isn’t directly comparable. I’ll be rerunning the iPad using the same Tron file that we used this time around, and it’ll be our standardized HD video file for tablet battery testing going forward.
So without focusing too much on direct numbers, there’s only a couple of takeaways. The Galaxy Tab has pretty good battery life, but there’s not really any directly competing 7” devices to compare it with. The Galaxy Tab is more power efficient than the iPad due to the smaller screen, but the iPad has an absolutely massive 25 Wh battery. That’s the mobile equivalent of stacking the deck, so Samsung shouldn’t feel bad for losing out to the iPad on the battery life front.
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thartist - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
seriously? we're gonna bring all that FAIL thing to Anandtech? go elsewhere.JohnCarney - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
Really? How did you do that?http://www.amazon.com/Tron-Blu-ray/dp/B001AQT15I/r...
therealnickdanger - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
The Tron Blu-ray was delayed by Disney due to fears that their target Tron Legacy audience would see it and laugh at the bad old CGI and then not want to see the new one.The HD master of Tron used to create the Blu-ray has been aired on HDNet and other HD channels. So while it isn't technically a Blu-ray rip, it is most definitely HD. If you didn't have the luxury of seeing it broadcast, there are a couple torrents out there if you feel so inclined.
MeanBruce - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
So Cool, I love Tron, thanks for giving us the info! 1982 Jeff Bridges. Are you the User?Aloonatic - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
I was just thinking, as these tablets are often little more than bigger versions of what many of us have in our pockets already......How hard would it be for a company to make a large touch-screen device with a big battery that one could simply slip their smart-phone into and use that way? Probably requiring something in the phones OS to recognise that it is plugged into such a device, allow it to display at a higher resolution and maybe even change it's processor/GPU power/performance profile, as it could be plugged in somewhere, or at least know that it has a larger battery power supply at hand?
Just a thought.
kmmatney - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
Damn good idea. I'd love to be able to pop my phone into a device to give it a larger screen, especially when just browsing on the couch. However the cost to build something like that probably isn't that much more than just making a whole new device.VivekGowri - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
The original Palm Foleo waves hello. I dunno if that type of thing would be any better now with the updated technologies, but the Foleo crashed and burned so badly that I think people are scared to even try.baba264 - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
To be honest, 6 month after the ipad launch, I still have a hard time figuring out what it is exactly that's pulling people to the tablet market.I honestly don't see much use for these tablets except as a very occasional gadget with a terribly high price tag. Or alternatively as a fashion statement, but being on a hardware site I don't think that should really apply to us.
Guspaz - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
There are a few things I can see people using an iPad (or equivalent device) for, but the general gist of it is that you take a smartphone's easy usability and portability, but use a larger screen to address some of the shortcomings or limitations of a smartphone. For example, browsing with touch controls can be pretty intuitive, but a smartphone's screen is small enough that it's a compromised experience. Give it a 10" screen, however, and you can get that same user experience with a device that can actually display a full website like a PC would. Or take the case of portable video playback. It's convenient to be able to watch a movie or TV shows on a smartphone, but a 3.5" screen is kind of tiny. But make it a 10" screen, and it's a completely different experience.Most other use cases are similar. Take something that was intuitive on a smartphone but had the experience compromised by the small screen (or was missing features due to it), and a tablet can solve that. E-mail works nicely on a smartphone, but the small screen means there isn't room to get both the E-mail message and the inbox open at the same time; a tablet enables that.
So you sacrifice some portability (although tablets are still more portable than a netbook or notebook), and get a lot more usability. As for price, tablets have prices on par (or lower than) with smartphones; it's hard to argue that they're expensive or overpriced without saying the same of smartphones.
mrd0 - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
You can use a tablet to do much more than browse the web. Our law firm, and many, many others, are starting to move to the iPad instead of laptops because they are such much more friendly in the court room and on the move. I can actually write a brief and submit it, whereas, that is nearly impossible on a smart phone...certainly painful. I don't need a full computer most of the time, so the iPad, or another 10" tablet, is ideal. It's so useful that some large firms are starting to give every associate a new iPad.Now we just need a great 10" android tablet to get away from all of Apple''s limitations/restrictions.