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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tipoo - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
No problem.SimKill - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
This is a minor pet peeve but when you( you != Specific author, you == general) write your reviews I think there was one more where you'd written '[Product] - The Anandtech review' instead of '[X] review' like before.I'm coming to Anandtech, it would be fairly obvious to me that the reviews on this site would be AnandTech reviews and wouldn't be rip offs from other websites.
Oh, and good job.
tipoo - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
I love how you used !=. Do I detect a CS student/graduate?SimKill - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
Nah, mech grad here with boatloads of programming. I find != the most unambiguous way to 'I don't mean X when I say Y'.tipoo - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
Ah, I see. From what I've seen people who haven't done any programming use =/= to denote "does not equal", whereas people who have programed like us use !=.TheStu - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
I would say that the reason for saying [Product - The Anandtech Review] instead of just calling it [Product Review] is that Anandtech reviews tend to includ more technical information than others, there is still subjectivity in the writing, but what I take away from Anandtech's reviews is a better objective view of the product.So, although it is self serving, and a bit narcissistic to label it as [Product - The Anandtech Review], it does serve the purpose of making it clear what you are getting.
synaesthetic - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
I find it helpful because I read most of my tech blows in an RSS feed reader, and can't always immediately tell which blog posted the article!SimKill - Sunday, December 26, 2010 - link
This is a fair point. But I generally group my RSS by websites. So if I click on Anandtech I can see AT reviews and so on and so forth.SimKill - Sunday, December 26, 2010 - link
We know what we get from them which is exactly why we come here time and again. I found this to be a little immature for such an awesome set of people.And why not let the review speak for itself instead.
Don't get me wrong, there's a reason why I wait for AT reviews before deciding on anything major but I felt that as a group of highly professional writers I believe that there should be no place for self-serving and narcissism. But then again as the subject title indicates clearly, it's a minor peeve.
I still love AT reviews.
ATOmega - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
I have two major complaints over how manufacturers are approaching android tablets:First, it's very difficult if not impossible to get one not as part of a carrier plan. So currently Apple has zero competition for their iPads without 3G/4G. As much as some people will see this as an outdated market, here in Canada lots of people are avoiding our major carriers because they're a bunch of greedy a$$holes. There's very little point in having their data plans on tablets because you're still stuck rationing out MBs...Kind of takes the fun out of it.
Second, they're way overpriced. If as a result of the price being designed to encourage data plans, or if the manufacturers actually think they're worth that...The SOCs are dirt cheap as advertised by the people who make them and as part of the Android promise. The additional hardware used to make up the systems aren't nearly enough to reach $700 either. At the very least, we should be seeing sub $400 prices for non 3G/4G models.
I want Android tablets on the shelfs of local computer stores (big box or wholesale alike) and available without data plans.
I'd love to see Anandtech take on these details in future reviews. But I'm glad they're looking at Android the way they are already. Good show.