Samsung Galaxy Tab - The AnandTech Review
by Vivek Gowri on December 23, 2010 9:48 AM ESTSamsung Galaxy Tab - The Software
To anyone who’s played with a Galaxy S phone recently, or really anything running Android 2.2, the Galaxy Tab’s software should be pretty familiar. And if you hate TouchWiz, you should stop reading right now, because the Galaxy Tab comes preloaded with Samsung’s TouchWiz 3.0. It’s not bad, but after a few months with the G2, it’s hard to go back to a skinned version of Android. The skin works about as well as one could expect; it doesn’t change a whole lot to the core functionality of Android beyond adding a very handy task manager, but adds a nice glossy UI layer over Froyo. I noticed some stuttering in some of the menus and animations, though it didn’t significantly detract from the UX. I don’t know if that’s a fault of TouchWiz or the higher resolution display, but I wasn’t expecting it given the 1GHz Hummingbird inside.
There’s two keyboards - Samsung preloaded Swype in addition to their own keyboard. I’m not much of a Swype guy, though I did try it out on the Tab (it’s an interesting concept, but I’ll stick to typing for now); both keyboards work pretty well. There’s not too much to note here beyond saying again that the 7” form factor made the keyboard perfect to use in portrait mode, whereas in landscape mode it was a bit too wide for comfortable typing.
The familiarity of the OS raises an interesting question - other than the larger screen, what is different here versus a regular Android smartphone? Unfortunately, on the OS side of things, the answer appears to be “not much”. Now, there really wasn’t much that Samsung could do about that - Froyo simply isn’t a tablet-centric OS. That’s what Gingerbread and Honeycomb are for. So until that update, the Galaxy Tab is going to feel like an overgrown Galaxy S.
Not that it’s a bad thing - the iPad’s version of iOS makes it feel like a supersized iPhone, and that hasn’t hurt it one bit as of yet. What made the iPad different were the hundreds of applications designed specifically to exploit the comparatively huge XGA screen. That’s the level that Android tablets are going to have to get to, and in my opinion, they’re not there yet. Not by a long shot. There’s not much in the way of tablet specific apps in the Android Market - I found the New York Times Android Tablet app, a Mediafly beta for Tablets, and Verizon’s VZ Navigator for the Galaxy Tab (which came preinstalled on our review unit). Other than that, not much. Now, NYT’s app is nice, but it’s got nothing on their iPad app, and it’s the only marquee application that has a specific tablet version. Normal smartphone apps scale pretty well, but it’s just not the same.
Samsung bundled the Galaxy Tab with some of their own custom applications that were designed to make use of the tablet form factor. Their email client works well enough, splitting into a dual-pane view in landscape mode and doing its job in general. The calendar app is attractive and well designed, with a two pane view in both landscape and portrait modes to show the calendar as well as any upcoming events. The contacts, gallery, and media apps are all pretty satisfactory, and thankfully Samsung saw fit to preinstall an alarm clock app. (Apple, take note. Apparently people like to wake up on time.)
But as you use it, you can tell that Android just isn’t ready to be used on tablets. It’s not “there” yet, not as far as first-party apps, third-party app support, or overall system polish. Even at launch, bugs and missing functionality notwithstanding, Apple made sure it had all three - they put a lot of thought into optimizing the core applications for tablet use, and until Google does the same and gets third party devs on board, Android just won’t be a very good tablet platform.
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lordmetroid - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
You use your phone for convienence and hyper mobility. The netbook as a more mobile full internet platform, your laptop as a mobile workstation and the stationary PC as the powerful workstation, server or what have you that does not need to be mobile.So what does the slate provide?
OldPueblo - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
What you just described smartphones as works perfectly for tablets, with their small screens smartphones can actually take longer to quickly look up something or do some on the spot research. Netbooks and laptops are interchangeable in most cases, why you'd have both at the same time doesn't make a lot of sense. You either want to be very portable or you want a mobile desktop while "on the go." But neither can do what I used as an example in 60 seconds. And a smartphone can take longer than a tablet as well since you have to manipulate a smaller screen which adds time. A tablet is in a sense the sweet spot of "instant on, portability, and convenience." Unless you have the ipad, then you're carrying another bag. :)plainsman11 - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
hi vivek,i'm not sure if i have seen many of your articles on anandtech thus far.
from the review i would say overall, good effort!
i can see areas of improvement. i know you're going to continue to learn and get better.. and as you have experienced thus far, anandtech readers can be pretty critical given that they're used to a high standard of reviewing initiated by anand himself.
i think it would be very crucial that you have a chat with anand, seek his feedback and understand how you could have done this review better or from different perspectives/angles.
i think by anand giving you the opportunity to do this key product review (an ipad competitor) it shows he might be trying to develop stronger role redundancies (not sure if its also because of xmas season haha)
i think anand needs to develop more reviewers and mentor, influence them eventually to be able to write reviews with the anandtech standard and style.
then he will not need kill himself by having to personally write every single review to ensure this level of quality.
cheers and happy holidays!
alfe
anandtech reader since 1998
VivekGowri - Saturday, December 25, 2010 - link
Hi Alfe,Thanks for your comments, I really appreciate them. This is the 30th post I've made on AT, and I think the 17th or 18th review, so I've been around, mostly in notebooks/netbooks but moving into tablets. I'm hoping to continually improve with each review I write, and Anand is definitely helping me out with these.
I'm not too worried about the comments on this review, a lot of them are stemming from the fact that the article got pushed live about 10 minutes before it should have been - I hadn't finished editing the table and things like that. This is the first of many tablet reviews to come, so I hope you keep reading and enjoying our articles and I hope that in future my articles can meet your expectations.
Regards,
Vivek
MadAd - Sunday, December 26, 2010 - link
People seem to be struggling to find a good fit for the 7" factor, personally I cant wait to replace my 1Ghz Via C3 embedded pc setup in my car with something similar to a tab.Whatever brand I buy, 7" is the ideal size for automotive fitments.
Piplzchoice - Sunday, December 26, 2010 - link
At this point iPad seem to fend off the most successful challenger, Samsung Galaxy Tab, when it comes to their respective customer satisfaction levels. Your readers may be interested in our ongoing analysis of Samsung Galaxy Tablet customer' reviews. We also compared their ratings to those of iPad http://blog.amplifiedanalytics.com/2010/11/851/.We specialize in automated aggregation and analysis of customer reviews posted online, mining their opinions and quantifying qualitative information found there.
zero2espect - Monday, December 27, 2010 - link
just finished reading the review and honestly don't know what to make of it. I've been using the galaxy tab for about a month now and I don't think the article does it justice. what would help would be to put tablets into context to begin with.I use my notebook at work and when out of office. gaming rig at home for gaming, ripping, editing etc. htpc for cinema. e-ink reader for my books (you will never convince me about backlit reading screens). smartphone for calling and keeping ontop of things.
then the tab entered my life. now I would write happily trade down my phone to a small flip our candy phone and rely on the tab for the on-the-road emails and info snacking. the form factor is sooooooooo much better for almost everything internet or work related. pdfs can be read in one hit. you can make out all the words on the ppt or website without zooming on every page. it just works better.
using as my link to exchange, I can quite happily go a day without needing to go back to my desk, and am not the worse off for it. the split screen email client really is nice, and using it you never have that feeling that sometimes you (i) get when relying on the smartphone: "i hope I haven't missed an important email in all of that information on that tiny screen..."
there are a couple of things that I think also need to be addressed:
# the preloaded browser is flash enabled. that's right folks, the internet sss it's supposed to be.
# because it "is a phone" means it can sms and do calls - it had already saved my bacon on an important conference call when I was out of the office - and no I didn't hold it to my head like a taco, the bt pairing to my headset worked fine, first time
# the self dimming (auto brightness) works really well, going from boosting in daylight to dimming indoors and aboard planes
# with my usage profile i'm getting about 5days of usage between charges - but the lack of a simple "charge visa usb or mini/micro usb is a real pain
# if samsung had of been able to include a usb port or mini/micro adapter to usb they would have brought a real category killer to market
# I've just moved from android to ios on my smartphone. and after the move I must admit that (apart from the lack of swype) I think ios does a much better phone than android - but for me, android on the 7" device is much "better" than on the smartphone size - it seems more interactive and alive with more real estate. I was disappointed with 10" ios but find 7" android amazing.
overall I'm very impressed, and continue to find a use for it. could I live without it? yes. but am I better off for having it? definitely.
nycmetroconsumer - Monday, December 27, 2010 - link
you must be a non usa user the galaxy tabs are crippled by their importers. i have a Tmobile, non contract, it has a Sim card but i can not make calls, all the USA carriers did this. It should be illegal for them to cripple open source, Also i have been reading that Verizon version of the Tab, you cannot Bluetooth link a keyboard or a mouse type device. You can only use Bluetooth to connect a headphone, all other blue tooth functions are crippled. Verizon is notorious for doing this to all the good phones. i left them, after 15 years due to this crap.The T mobile version you cannot use a regular Bluetooth ear piece, it has to be a certain spec something like a2dp. i think it is a stereo , i am not sure if it has talk/speaker capability\
The European white backed version will not work with t mobile since the freq' s are different.
zero2espect - Tuesday, December 28, 2010 - link
yes. non usa. sorry to hear about u.s. crippling. :-(VivekGowri - Tuesday, December 28, 2010 - link
Interesting. I was an iPhone user for two years before switching to Android, and I've had an iPad in one form or another almost since the day of launch when I bought a 32GB (ended up returning it, but picked up a 16GB a month later).My experience is exactly opposite to yours - I prefer iOS at 10" and Android at smartphone-size, and true to form, those are the form factors the OS were designed for respectively....Especially since they've got the respective ecosystems built around them. That's the problem with the Galaxy Tab - unless you're reading or watching a movie, there's really nothing different than a normal Android smartphone. So why bother carrying it?