Galaxy Tab 10.1 Vs. iPad 2 Review

DeviceGuru writes "DeviceGuru's 10-inch tablet smackdown pits Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 against Apple's iPad 2. At price parity the iPad 2 is probably a better bet for the average user since it's a more stable, near-perfect device with a rich assortment of apps for nearly every possible function you'd like to perform on a tablet, reasons the post. However, with the Samsung tablet's cost of goods rumored to be around $215 versus $260 for the iPad 2 for comparable models, Samsung could drop its 10-inch tablet's price to $425 and pose a serious challenge to Apple's device. But will they...?"

Comments

Executive summary

[CharlyFoxtrot]

If you're the kind that likes to do a lot of handwaving about openness while boring all your friends and have a 'DIY attitude' (read: lots of free time), buy the Galaxy Tab. Everyone else, stay away until they either become significantly cheaper than the iPad or Android has caught up in marketshare and polish (which, conveniently, is always 6 months from now.)

Re:Executive summary

[gutnor]

Executive summary: unlike the rest of the iPad competitor, the Galaxy tab look like a worthy competitor, meaning 95% of everything you would do on one work well on the other. If you are an ios user and happy, buy an iPad. If you are a bit bored after so many iPhone, just buy the Galaxy tab for a change. Vice versa for Android users.

For new users, if you like tinkering, the galaxy tab is for you. Otherwise, get an iPad, to have *today* the reference tablet, or a Galaxy Tab 2 to have an old version of *tomorrow* reference tablet (Galaxy Tab 3). Unless you need flash, in that case, buy a laptop.

Re:Executive summary

[vlm]

Everyone else, stay away until they either become significantly cheaper than the iPad or Android has caught up in marketshare and polish (which, conveniently, is always 6 months from now.

6 months from now, when the androids can finally compete head to head with the ipad2, and all the early adopters have expired after being shot in the back with arrows, I'm sure sales against the ipad3 with retina display or whatever its supposed to have will be ... once again, not so brisk; but I promise once again, in just 6 more months, we'll have an Ipad3-killer android tablet ... ready by the rollout of the ipad4...

Re:Executive summary

[jo_ham]

It's one or the other - if you want to claim they have the polish *and* and marketshare, then you are dreaming.

There are some really awesome Android handsets that are more than a match for the iPhone. These don't make up the majority of the Android market share though - that distinction belongs to the cheaper "built to a budget" phones that can also run Android. I've seen several of these handsets too (and used them) and they are nowhere near the polish of an iPhone (or their much better Android cousins).

So, it is more accurate to say "Android has swelled its marketshare by going after part of the market that Apple has no interest in - cheap, crappy smartphones - while also having some genuine iPhone equivalents". You can't simply say that have "overtaken iPhones in marketshare and polish".

There are some features of Android that I'd love to have on iOS, and funnily enough, they weren't features that the cheap Android phones I've used have had on them either. Other than that, by far the biggest downer on the cheap ones is the quality of the screen and the quality of the touch response.

Of course manufacturers can make something equivalent to the iPad 2 "within a year" - they just can't make it cheaper than Apple, which has been the rub. Everyone automatically assumed that Apple was slapping a giant markup on the iPad and making hay while the sun shined. The number of "just you wait for the Android tablets at half the price with better features! any day now! any day! next month!" posts that we saw on slashdot and other sites during the iPad 1's unchallenged reign was remarkable. The closest we really got was the Xoom, which, funnily enough, cost pretty much the same as the iPad. What they were hoping for was to be able to get some sales going because the Xoom was better than the iPad 1, but Apple went ahead and one-upped them and released the iPad 2 at the same time and for the same price as the first one and the Xoom is dead in the water. It didn;t help that they rushed it to market too quickly because of the impending iPad 2 and shipped it with some of the much lauded "essential missing features" of the iPad not working at all (SD reader, Flash, usb).

Re:Executive summary

[oakgrove]

These don't make up the majority of the Android market share though

Can you cite that? The only lists I can find of top-selling Android phones are almost completely dominated by the "super phones", i.e., Evo 4G, Motorola Droid, Galaxy S. The crap Android phones seem to be far outsold by the good ones. Which kind of blows a hole all through your long-winded theory here.

Re:Executive summary

[oakgrove]

I have no cite

That's what I thought. Here's Amazon's best seller list in post-paid cell phones. Notice the list is dominated by high-end Android handsets. Here's an article from a while back showing the same thing.

Your personal experience means squat and it would be great (and make for a more honest dialog) if you wouldn't pretend like it does.

Re:Executive summary

[jo_ham]

So who's buying them, or is that list skewed by people who buy phones online, and not via a carrier store?

My personal experience of seeing actual phones in the wild is the opposite. I think I've seen one Incredible.

Re:Better Value

[Starteck81]

I think it's wise to focus purely on the specs. WARNING CAR ANALOGY: It's like having powerful car but the seat is milk crate and the steering wheel is made of unpolished metal rods welded into a square. Sure, it's fast but the ergonomics are so awful that who would really want to use it? Most of the cheaper tablets out there suffer from the same problem.

Every Android vs iPad review...

[node 3]

Every Android vs iPad review, summed up:

"The iPad is the best product, hands down, but if you don't mind dealing with a bunch of issues, the Android tablet is a strong contender."

It's like all reviewers need a horse race, and will bend over backwards to try to say nice things about the Android tablets. Do you think they'd do the same if the tables were reversed?

Re:Every Android vs iPad review...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they grade Apple on a curve.

When no one had Macs, marketshare was proof that Macs were inferior. Now that everyone has i-Devices, marketshare is proof that the owners are sheep.

Re:Every Android vs iPad review...

[stephanruby]

What are you implying? That the Samsung Tab 10.1 is all bad?

You may not seem to like this, but the Samsung Tab 10.1 is a strong contender (to the big iPhone lookalike). For some people with expensive existing music collections/movie collections (that predate iTunes or that were not gotten through iTunes), an Android tablet is really the only option they have. To a consumer, it's not a question of freedom, they rarely care about that, it's really a question of being able to play the stuff they already paid for.

Not only that, but the Samsung Tab is lighter and feels better in your hands than the iPad 2, and has the ability to turn off the auto-screen rotation (not just on an application basis, but on the entire device, this is useful when you're using it while laying in bed). And unlike the iPad 2, the Honeycomb version of Android was designed with the size of the larger screen in mind. Haven't you noticed that the screen icons of the iPad 2 are far too spread apart than they really need to be? And don't get me started on multi-tasking which the iOS still hasn't gotten right (despite their claims to the contrary).

And if you happen to own an hdmi-enabled television/flat screen, the next best choice is probably the Xoom, not the iPad2 (which tries to control everything you try to video-out). With a Xoom, you can mirror anything you have on your screen, you can play games on the big screen, you can play your music collection/movie collection through it. You can do anything through it. This is a huge plus for my friends. With the iPad 2, the only way it will allow you to play a movie through to a bigger screen is only if you purchase the movie through iTunes (it won't even allow your netflix streaming to go through to a bigger screen unless you're willing to purchase that same movie a second time).

So like I said, the Samsung Tab is a strong contender, and even the Xoom (in some areas). And unless Apple loosens up the control it holds over everything you do on your iPad, it's leaving huge openings for Android-based tablets to sweep in and take over some of the Market.

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bull-fucking-shit.

I am using a Thinkpad R60 right now with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. Everything works perfectly. All of the hardware works. When I close the lid, it immediately goes into standby. When I open it, it immediately comes out. Wireless, bluetooth, everything flawless. The software I run has yet to crash one single time. Firefox runs perfectly. Chromium-browser runs perfectly, all of the cli apps (ssh, vi, etc.) run perfectly. Networking, i.e., Samba, apache, ssh server, run perfectly. There is nothing even remotely glitchy at all. It's like an appliance. I don't know what shit you are using, maybe you wrote it yourself but the open source software I use is fantastic.

Re:Something I've never understood

[vlm]

Tactical error on my part. A better standard /. analogy would have been:

$9K for a used beater from '05 with 100K miles driven hard by teenage fast-and-the-furious wannabe that often breaks down vs $10K for a new one of whatever jedidiah thinks is a decent car brand.

The point remaining, if I'm gonna toss out a substantial amount of dough for a luxury, I want it to "just work perfectly", not be "kinda close for 10% less".

"Kinda close for 10% less" is how you sell 6-32 screws to engineers who wanted to use 8-24 screws but the boss forced the redesign because its a little cheaper. "Kinda close for 10% less" is not how you sell luxury goods.

"Here's my new Rowlex... Its almost like a Rolex, in that its worn on a wrist and tries to tell time, but not really, because it doesn't work. Oh well, I saved 10%" ... um, maybe, just maybe, that would fly at a 2600 meeting, but probably no where else..

Re:Better Value

[Starteck81]

This is not a personal attack so please don't take it as such. I understand that you want to play with the engine and stuff behind the dash board but that means you are not the target audience for iDevice products. Android is a better choice for you. My comment was aimed at the other 90% of the populations that do not want to tinker with the stuff behind the dashboard. Would you not agree that the iPad is a better choice for those who do not wish to tinker? If not please explain why.

Re:Better Value

[oakgrove]

Could you please explain to me what on my Xoom requires "tinkering"? It works pretty freaking well as far as I can see. I have had plenty of time with iPads and I don't see how they are easier to operate than an Android tablet with Honeycomb.

Re:Open Screen Project

[PCM2]

Used to be until two and a half years ago [wikipedia.org]. In February 2009, Adobe published the SWF specification under a license that does not prohibit third-party SWF players. Flash Player remains proprietary software, but the spec license change has allowed for Gnash [wikipedia.org], Gordon [slashdot.org], and Smokescreen [slashdot.org].

That argument seems to be sort of a smokescreen to me (no pun intended). None of those projects can play all Flash content. The most mature of the three, Gnash claims to support "most" Flash v7 and "some" Flash v8 and 9. Flash is on Version 10. As long as the only way to reliably play Flash content is to install the Adobe product, then Flash remains "closed" as a practical matter. Same is true of Microsoft's XML-based Office file formats; you can read the specs, but how many open source projects can reliably read/write .docx files? I would say none.

Re:Or jailbreak it

[manekineko2]

Heh, open in the sense that any door is open if you have a crowbar.

Re:Better Value

[WrongSizeGlass]

Could you please explain to me what on my Xoom requires "tinkering"?

Nothing requires tinkering. But if you want to tinker then the Xoom is a better choice. If you don't want to tinker then either device is a (potentially) a good choice based on your wants, needs and any other Android or iOS devices you own or use.

Re:Only things that matter:

[oakgrove]

I would wager that at least 95% of tablet users have no interest in developing custom applications.

Really? For realz? Naw...

But seriously. If that 1 percent or so of people that do have that interest didn't, the other 99 percent of users wouldn't exist.

Re:Better Value

[KreAture]

I feel the iStuff (tm?) is suited for people who need to be told they are special and successfull. Btw, would you buy a extra large rubber bumper for your car to avoid it breaking from a slight ding or would you rather it be designed to actually withstand normal use? Would you have bought it if it had been designed with that rubber bumper prefitted and non-removeable instead?

That being said. I do agree on one point, stuff needs to work out of the box.
When it comes to android stuff I have never been dissappointed and never had to tinker to get it working. I have however never been prevented from distributing my app to my customers without apple requiring payment either.