Slashdot Mirror
A Deep-Dive Look At Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1
MojoKid writes "Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 was announced way back in February this year just prior to Apple's iPad 2 launch. Shortly after, a Samsung VP noted the company was re-evaluating their Galaxy Tab line in the wake of Apple's strong iPad 2 showing in early March. Since then, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has begun shipping and early reports show the Android 3.1 driven device to be slightly thinner than the iPad 2, lighter and with NVIDIA's 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor under the hood, every bit as capable. With recent Honeycomb entrants in the 10-inch Android tablet market, like the Asus Transformer, Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, the iPad 2 finally has solid competition in terms of both hardware and OS performance."
Does it really mean that? This is Apple after all. People are going to buy the iPad2 over the other devices for any number of reasons--mainly the OS and the applications available for it.
Personally I would much prefer an iOS device if I were to get a tablet simply because I already own an iPhone and I prefer the UI. While I don't enjoy using my Mac Mini (1st gen which really needs to be retired) simply because I prefer the application support available for Windows, nothing beats the iPhone IMO.
Now, if the Tab had come $100 cheaper and offered me something MORE than what the iPad2 does, I would be all over it. But for the same price it's just not worth it to lose the ease of use, interoperability, and application support.
YMMV.
If the samsung came with something like Meego or one of the touchscreen linux distros I'd be more interested. I'm underwhelmed by Android. The more I see it the less I like it. It's okay for phones but on larger devices it's not so good.
It's funny that these formerly PC performance sites decided to jump into the fray and began applying the gamer rig logic to tablets with pointless specs that don't explain anything of value to the average consumer.
The correct question should be "does it have awesome native apps and games, support, and enough differentiation from the leading tablet to stand on its own?"
So far, Android-based tablets don't. It's kind of a clusterfuck on that front. When carrier subsidy model is taken out of the equation you're left with bunch of spec-driven touch panels with goofy names.
Now, if the Tab had come $100 cheaper and offered me something MORE than what the iPad2 does, I would be all over it. But for the same price it's just not worth it to lose the ease of use, interoperability, and application support.
Exactly. It's not enough to match the ipad, it has to be CHEAPER than the ipad to be worthwhile for normal people.
Not meant as flamebait, but I believe Android would never have gotten as popular as now if the iphone hadn't been limited to one carrier and priced higher than the android phones in the USA.
I have a Galaxy Tab 10.1 and I've also used a Xoom. Both are pretty comparable in terms of performance, which means not flawless (video occasionally appears to stutter a little bit) but acceptable. I like the thinness and light weight of the Galaxy Tab. My main beefs with it are:
Breakfast served all day!
Why do ppl always claim IPad has more apps for it ? Knowing the filtering with respect to installing software on the ipad as well as the almost mandatory use of objective C and the limitations in the available API sets to access hardware ... why whould it carry or have the capability to carry more software than an andoid device ?
Because more people write iOS apps than Android apps? Because the iTunes App Store has more apps in it than the Android Market? This is a strange question. Sure, people could theoretically write more apps for Android than iOS... but they don't.
Breakfast served all day!
The $429 16GB Galaxy Tab you're looking at is not the 10.1, but the small-screen kind. The price of a 16GB Galaxy Tab 10.1 with no 3/4G is $499, identical to the iPad 2.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
None of the movies I've ripped with Handbrake work on my iPad? Shit I guess the HDMI adapter I just bought doesn't work either! Why didn't you tell me I couldn't do those things before I bought it?
Wait, you're full of shit and I can do all that with my iPad. Does the iPad also take 20 minutes to copy a 17MB file?
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Why can't they be much cheaper? These vendors got the OS for free. Most won't do huge ad campaigns. The CPUs cost far less than x86 Intel chips. It's not like the displays are made of anything extraordinary. With competition and SOCs, these could likely be in the price range of netbooks. Of course the margins would be fairly thin, but when they're Windows-netbook-like commodities without the price of Windows, that's how anything that isn't the hottest stuff should be priced.
Hopefully seeing that the losers don't make any money will motivate companies to put out better products. Maybe someone will actually be smart enough to leverage the power of the user community, and release the full source so others can help polish/innovate to the next level.
The lack of support for old Android products is shameful. Even if there is too little RAM to use the latest version of Android, all vendors should still have provided updates for things like security issues. Some units are being treated like they're disposable. They should be priced to match.
And with some vendors putting out models that are a bit quirky or are otherwise duds, the previous generation models being cleared out ought to be dumped at really low ($100 - $200) prices.
If Google is making ad money off of the OS, perhaps some hardware vendors should consider asking Google to pay them to use it? Maybe Microsoft shouldn't be the only one to pay to see its OS and search product installed?
Dear technogeek,
We want products that work first. Unfortunately this means locking down. We also outnumber you by a wide margin.
Sorry
-everyone else
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Okay I pulled those numbers out of my ass. On the App Store we got 174 "mortgage interest" , and on the Android Market we have 234. OTOH, on the Android Market about 50 or so of these apps are just branded "$reatlor Mortgage Calculator" apps like this one and another 50 that are just RSS feed readers of some guy's blog on the financial crisis. All of the Apple store apps were legit, destinguishable calculators from a variety of vendors.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I think it means that Apple competitors have now acknowledged that they can't rush out a buggy, incomplete tablet and hope it does well against the iPad. It has to be fairly complete when released instead at some future date. Consumers have short attention spans and first impressions matter.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Dear whistlingtony
We, the Companies Making Tables, primarily care about selling 100,000 units at a time to Verizon and Best Buy. We do whatever they need in order to make those tablets disappear off their shelves, causing them to order more tablets. Also if Verizon says that a Blockbuster app and VZ navigator will help them sell tablets, we always take their word for it and make sure the gear does exactly as they say, because they're our customer (a much bigger customer than you I might add), and much better at turning 100,000 tablets into retail sales than we are.
We do know these folks called "Apple," and they make tablets and are really good at turning them into money on a retail basis, but they basically agree with us on several of the lockdown issues for support and market positioning reasons. They hate carriers and channel resellers, though, so they never do what they tell them to do with their tablets, elitists!
Thank you for your concerns, we'll refer them to our marketing department.
Signed, Companies Making Tables
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Perhaps his point is you don't have to use special software like Handbrake or buy special cables to use HDMI. All this stuff works out of the box on any Android tablet, including playing any format under the sun. I like Moboplayer for this.
The original Galaxy Tab runs Gingerbread. The Xoom, Transformer, and Galaxy 10.1 run Honeycomb. It is night and day different.
Not to mention these tablets all have high performance Tegra 2 chips while the original Tab was running only a Hummingbird.
You are basically saying you tried Windows 98 and hated it therefore Windows 7 has to be just as bad.
I have an Asus Transformer and LOVE IT. It's an amazing machine, and I don't have the handcuffs on that my iPad-owning friends have.
Why can't they be much cheaper?
While some here on /. will refuse to admit, it actually is costly to make a tablet and get a decent margin on them. Most here would like a tablet to cost $150 and be able to run Crysis II while mixing 5.1 audio at the same time; there are limits to what tablets can do for a price. Some components like 10" screens are not plentiful as they have not been mass produced by many suppliers and are still limited to a few companies.
The CPUs cost far less than x86 Intel chips. It's not like the displays are made of anything extraordinary. With competition and SOCs, these could likely be in the price range of netbooks. Of course the margins would be fairly thin, but when they're Windows-netbook-like commodities without the price of Windows, that's how anything that isn't the hottest stuff should be priced.
Just because the CPUs may cost less does not mean the whole device is going to cost less. The touchscreen probably makes up for the difference in prices. Also form factor has a cost. Generally the smaller form factor costs more to manufacture. A manufacture could probably make a cheaper 1" thick tablet but no one is going to buy it next to thinner one.
And with some vendors putting out models that are a bit quirky or are otherwise duds, the previous generation models being cleared out ought to be dumped at really low ($100 - $200) prices.
One advantage that Apple has over their competitors is the vertical integration. They can sell the iPad at lower prices and still get a decent margin since they sell enough of them at retail to keep those margins.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Er.. so? I can stream from my Asus TF-101 to any DLNA device under the sun, not simply an Apple TV. I can stream DIRECT TO MY TV, which is a Samsung flatscreen that has DLNA support.
But really this has nothing at all to do with the parent since you can't compare plugging in an HDMI cable to streaming to some external device? It is not even remotely the same thing. (Also, the iPad does not even have an HDMI port, you have to BUY an ugly and cumbersome external dongle).
I guess all the PCs out there just don't work?
They don't for a lot of people. You know, the ones that bought a random Windows laptop a few years ago to do email / browsing / Farmbook and now have them so infested with shovelware / spyware / viruses that it's "broken". These are the people slurping up iPads - they need an appliance, not a general purpose computing device.
"We" are different and comprise a very small fraction of the consumer market. The market that powers the US economy for better or worse. THIS is Apple's claim to fame and fortune - the realization that everybody else was 'doing it wrong' in terms of the consumer computing experience. Now, Apple could have made it easier on "us" by having an expert mode in iOS and allowing sideloading. But they didn't (so the jailbreak community did). Sucks to be us but Steve don't care....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'm a university student working in cellular sales part time and I can tell you that the trend I see is actually the opposite. People come into the store due to Apple marketing, wanting an iPhone. They are sometimes shocked that a touch screen demo phone they are playing with isn't actually an iPhone, but is a Windows Mobile 7 or Android device. Many people have no idea what a phone OS is or that there are touch screen phones that are not iPhones.
That being said, however, even the most basic users quickly see the advantage of Android over iOS. When people try Swype for the first time, it blows their mind. When people see live wall papers for the first time, it blows their mind. When people see home screen widgets for the first time, it blows their mind. When I show people my own Android device which is running a custom launcher called ADW EX, and how quickly and easily I can change my theme to look (and behave) like an iPhone, or like a Nexus S, or any other presets I've configured, it blows their mind.
For customers who don't care about any of that, and just want something easy, Windows Mobile 7 seems to offer a very strong alternative to iOS. It is extremely simple to use, well laid out, and the devices I've used have been blazing fast.
At this point in the game, both Apple and Microsoft are extremely concerned about Android. Google had a master stroke in creating and developing Android and providing it for free. They have gained unprecedented hardware support and once Google voice spreads to the rest of North America, and the world, it will only shake things up even more. I'm certain Google's hardware coup played a part in the Microsoft / Nokia merger, and the potential of Google voice must have played a role in the Microsoft purchase of Skype.
Betting against Apple is usually a suckers bet because they sell an image, not a product. That being said, my prediction for the mobile world five years from today is a landscape where Apple is marginalized to cult followers and the rest of the market is split fairly evenly between Google and Microsoft. I think Microsoft will fight for mobile as if their survival depended on it, and Windows Mobile 7 is probably the most iPhonesque non-Apple OS I've seen thus far. Will be fun to watch.
It's okay for phones but on larger devices it's not so good.
As a matter of interest have you used Honeycomb? I tried it for the first time yesterday in an electronics store. It is so incredibly far removed from the Android on my phone that about the only thing I recognized on it was the Market App. It provided a very different experience entirely. So much as to say I wouldn't ever want Honeycomb running on a device the size of a phone.