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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VivekGowri - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
Dude, I have enough problems typing normally, without having to worry about drawing lines between the keys. I will admit, I got the hang of it quicker than I thought I would, but as a G2 user, I must say that nothing can beat a good HTC hardware keyboard (unless Dell can manage it with the Venue Pro).vision33r - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
I have an Android phone and my wife uses the iPhone. But we both use the iPad. For many years, I've compared my Android phone to the iPhone.Google keeps improving the performance of Android but have done very little to make the OS more user friendly.
Apple has improved the performance of iOS and their UI. The implementation is much more mainstream with a minimalist approach vs the Android's muddy and convoluted way of stuffing the OS with tedius configs.
The iPad stands for all those Apple design cues, easy, accessible, and everything works philosophy.
The Galaxytab represents all the problems with Android. Lack of standardization, poorly executed and flawed ideas. The lack of standardization has hurt the ecosystem greatly. The Dev community can't find leadership or direction in this "Open" Android market. They don't know which direction Google wants Android to go.
Bottomline, Apple has won the Tablet market. The industry mainly film, print, media, have all signed on to embrace the iPad "format."
OldPueblo - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
They own it except for those that don't want to be forced into Apple's ecosystem and those that want a tablet that actually fits in a pocket and doesn't belong mostly on a coffe table. The iPad hardly wins the tablet war on many fronts. "Stupid easy" doesn't make something better, it just means there are more stupid people parting with their money.medi01 - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
Mentioning "lack of standardization" in "Apple vs Anything" as a pro-Apple argument is one of the most idiotic statements I've ever seen.Paladin1650 - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
Those same arguments would apply to Macs vs. PCs, yet PC dominates. What actually happens is that Apple's user-friendly approach dominates the EARLY stages of a new market. Users don't know how to use a new device, so of course they gravitate to those that are most polished and easiest to use (Apple). Once everyone becomes familiar with how the device works, and once UI conventions become more or less standardized, then the general consumer population can see the more open PC/Android approach for what it is: Superior.OldPueblo - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
I mean you knock it for it's interface, but what should a tablet interface be like? I mean how much simpler can you get? You can set it up the way you want with icons to tap to open things. What's not "made for a tablet?" Just because it's the same/similar to arguably the best smartphones on the planet, why is that bad on tablet? Why does it HAVE to be different?medi01 - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
I guess if they don't invent such "problems" with Galaxy Tab it would have been much harder to come "iPad is still better" conclusion.VivekGowri - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
Direct quote from another comment I posted:If you read my software section, I said exactly that - having a scaled up OS never held the iPad back, so it's not something I can hold against the Galaxy Tab. What I can hold against the Galaxy Tab is that there are basically no apps, first party or otherwise, that take advantage of the larger screen size, other than the three or four apps that Samsung put in afterwards (Mail, Calendar, Contacts, etc). Apple basically changed every core app on the iPad to use that screen real estate, and they had more than a few high profile 3rd party apps out for the iPad - ABC player, NYT, BBC, etc etc. I don't doubt that Google will get there, probably with Honeycomb, but until then, it's a legitimate problem.
If the OS is the same and the apps are the same, why would I get a Galaxy Tab instead of a Galaxy S or any other Android device? I'm a day-in, day-out Android user (T-Mo G2), and I love the platform, but it really isn't ready for tablets right now.
Hrel - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
Didn't you guys already review this? I'm pretty sure I already read about this on anandtech...kadaj - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
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