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."

Comments

Re:Well

[garcia]

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.

Missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Well

[blahbooboo]

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 one of these

[PCM2]

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:

1. The onscreen keyboard kind of sucks, like most Android keyboards I've seen. It's slow, and I shouldn't have to toggle in and out of punctuation mode just to type an apostrophe.
2. The touchscreen resolution doesn't seem very good. In Facebook, for example, next to the logo, there are three icons: A person, a cartoon speech bubble, and a globe. Mostly you'll want to click the globe to see your friends' latest updates. Clicking the globe on the Galaxy Tab is a chore and a half. It wants to select the speech bubble, every time.
3. The built-in browser still renders pages strangely. It seems to want to reformat Web pages to fit the screen even when that option is not selected. And there are various other rendering quirks -- Slashboxes don't show up at all, for example, and the options in the top tab of Slashdot are scattered all over the place.
4. The screen aspect ration is widescreen. That's great if you plan to use it to watch Shrek 2 from bed, but for everything else it sort of sucks. In landscape mode, the onscreen keyboard takes up half the screen real estate, making it hard to see what you're doing. In portrait mode, the screen is excessively long and narrow. The iPad uses a more traditional screen ratio that makes it more versatile.
5. I'm just not so sure what's so great about this kind of device. A netbook is much easier to operate, is more versatile, and is almost as light. I can't see myself sitting on the bus with my Galaxy Tab like an asshole, so it's mostly going to stay at my apartment, where it just feels like a slower, harder to navigate version of the devices I already have.

Re:Well

[iluvcapra]

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.

Re:Well

[camperslo]

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?

Re:Dear Companies making tablets,

[iluvcapra]

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

Re:What about the Eee Pad?

[brunes69]

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.

Re:Not a fan boy, but...

[brunes69]

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.

Re:What about the Eee Pad?

[brunes69]

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).