Prasad Naik, Dec 01, 2010 1620 hrs IST
A failed attempt at replicating the iPad
Good design and solid build, built-in cameras, ability to make and receive calls and text messages, ideal size for gaming
Expensive, interface looks bloated on the large display, no application on the Market to make use of the screen, current apps look pixelated or don't fill the screen, videos refuse to play properly most of the time, unimpressive battery life
People have been toying with the idea of an Android tablet for some time now but it was Samsung that decided to take a leap and enter this market first. So far there has been no real competition to the iPad but it looks like there is one now. Will Samsung's tablet match Apple's? Does it have what it take to dethrone what has now become the undisputed king of the segment that it created? More importantly, should you buy one? Let's find out.
Design
People who saw the Galaxy Tab for the first time were impressed by it, and we must admit that it is indeed a handsome looking device. The design is simple yet classy and the white and black combo works very well. The front side is a sea of black with the 7-inch display in the middle surrounded by a thick border around it, which is about half an inch thick, so you can hold it without touching the screen.
Above the display is the front camera and ambient light sensor, and below are the four touch sensitive controls. The touch sensitive controls are difficult to find in the dark when their backlight switches off. It would have been nice if they were raised dots to indicate their positions.
On the right side of the device are the volume control buttons and the power button near the top and the microSD card and SIM card slot in the middle. The SIM card can be inserted when the device is running but then the device restarts automatically. On the left side is the microphone for voice and video calls and video recording.
On the top is the headphone jack, but we would have preferred to have it at the bottom. On the bottom are the two stereo speakers near the edges and the proprietary connector port.
On the back side you will find the 3 megapixel camera lens near the top left corner with the single LED flash. Near the bottom is the product information. The battery of the device is sealed inside and non-user replaceable.
The build quality of the Galaxy Tab is terrific and the device feels solid and well put together. It does feel considerably heavy, though it weighs half of what the iPad does. While the iPad appears to be heavy, when you lift the galaxy Tab for the first time, it feels far too heavy for its unassumingly small size.
Even though Samsung has used plastic for the body it seems the battery and the rest of the internals are still quite heavy. After holding it in your hands for a few hours you do feel the strain.
Display
The display on the Galaxy Tab is 7-inches in size and has a resolution of 1024 x 600. In comparison the iPad has a 9.7-inch, 1024 x 768 resolution display. The display uses capacitive touchscreen and supports multi-touch gestures. We were a bit disappointed by the quality of the Galaxy Tab's display. The display lacks vibrance and sharpness and even the black levels and viewing angles were below par. In comparison, even though the iPad stretches almost the same number of pixels over a wider area, the image quality is much superior.
One of the biggest problems with the display is that very little content on the device actually matches the resolution of the screen. Apart from Samsung's own applications, none of the other applications support the Galaxy Tab's display resolution and stretch to fill the screen. This makes everything look fuzzy and unclear. Even the wallpapers on the device seem to be from Samsung's other Android phones and not meant for the Galaxy Tab, and look bad when applied.
On the iPad, all the content, including Apple's apps and the third party applications, are all tailor-made for the screen's resolution and hence look great. That is not the case with the Galaxy Tab though. 1024 x 600 resolution is far from being the standard for tablet resolution on Android, so we doubt there will be much content on the Android Market for this resolution any time soon.
Another problem we noticed with the display on the Galaxy Tab is the poor refresh rate of the display. Moving objects on the screen leave a short streak behind them, which is very noticeable with images more than text. We really wished Samsung had used one of their Super AMOLED displays on the Galaxy Tab. However, there is a shortage of those and their added cost is probably why Samsung avoided them. But then they should have at least used a respectable LCD panel instead. The one on the Galaxy Tab is below average and does not suit a device that costs as much as the Galaxy Tab.
Addendum: It has come to our attention that there are two dead pixels on our review sample. We hope this is a one off issue and not present on all units.
Android 2.2 on a Tablet
The Galaxy Tab runs on Android 2.2 Froyo with Android Market access and built-in Google applications such as Gmail, Maps, etc. Samsung has also created its own applications specifically for the Galaxy Tab that takes advantage of the larger, higher resolution display. Unfortunately, as mentioned before, only Samsung's own applications and the Google apps fit the display perfectly, while all third party applications stretch to fill the display. Some don't even do that and open in a small window in the middle of the display. Even applications such as the Kobo eBook reader that Samsung has pre-installed are clearly not designed to run on the Galaxy Tab's display and look pixelated.
Blowing up an interface designed to be used on smaller displays has its problems. Even though Android scales for the display all the interface elements such as buttons and pop-up menus look gigantic and out of place on the Galaxy Tab's display. In comparison on the iPad, the interface is tailor-made for that the resolution and hence everything looks perfect and icons and menus are almost the same size as that on the iPhone and hence look more natural.
Also, on the iPad, since the interface elements are the same size as the iPhone's display, the extra space because of the bigger display is utilized to display more information. On the Galaxy Tab, everything stretches to fit the bigger display, so you aren't really seeing a lot more on the screen; just the same stuff that's been blown up to twice the size.
This is where we come across a major difference between the iPad and any Android tablet out there. The former feels like a proper tablet, whereas the latter just feels like a large Android phone. Unlike Apple, who made an OS that has been designed with the device in mind and made sure that the developers do the same, Google has failed to do that. As a result the market is now being flooded with plenty of Android tablets but none of them come close to giving the same experience that the iPad does.
For its part, Samsung has worked hard to ensure that their own apps look good on the Galaxy Tab and they do, but that's of little consolation if the operating system itself and all the third party applications don't work well with the device. As of now, Google has chosen to ignore the tablet market and instead concentrate its efforts on the smartphone, and that's not good news for devices like the Galaxy Tab. Unless a conscious effort is made by Google to improve the Android tablet scene and set some guidelines, developers will not be interested in making applications for them. The Android tablets will forever lag behind the iPad in a very crucial area - software - even though they may try to balance it out with better hardware.
Web Browsing
When we used the browser in Android 2.2 for the first time, we had nothing but praise for it. It was the fastest browser we had used on any phone and coupled with Adobe Flash 10.1 support, it was definitely the best in the business. Unfortunately, we cannot say the same about the one on the Galaxy Tab.
Our only and biggest gripe with the browser is that it's very slow. We aren't talking about the page loading speed but the actual speed of the browser's interface. It's very sluggish and the device seems to struggle when we were using it. Try and open multiple tabs and usability goes for a complete toss, as the browser then stutters and freezes quite often.
We installed Opera Mobile on the Galaxy Tab and thankfully the experience here was much better. Generally we would recommend users to stick to the built-in browser on Android 2.2, but on the Galaxy Tab, Opera Mobile is the way to go. Unfortunately, Flash only works with the built-in browser, so you will lose that functionality if you switch to some other browser.
Multimedia
The Galaxy Tab has two cameras on it whereas the current iPad comes with none. The front camera has a resolution of 1.3 megapixels and is meant for video calls, while the rear can take 3.2 megapixel images and has autofocus and flash. The rear camera is an interesting addition but to be honest in the one week that we have been using the Galaxy Tab we never found ourselves using the camera, apart from when we were testing it. More than anything, the prospect of using a tablet to shoot pictures was absurd so we preferred to take out our phones and do the shooting instead of shooting with the tablet and getting strange looks from everyone.
The quality of the camera was average, which was fine as we don't see the camera being used much. It can also shoot HD videos which were much better in quality compared to the still images but it feels even weirder to hold this thing up for anything longer than two seconds that it takes to click pictures so again we don't see many videos being shot with the Galaxy Tab. The camera application was similar to other Samsung phones but with reduced features. For example, there was no macro mode.
Captured with the rear camera
100% Crop of the above image
As for the front camera we noticed a serious problem with it. The camera is on the top, which means when you are in a video call and you look at your screen, the person on the other side will feel you are looking away from them. If you look at the camera, you cannot see the screen. The front camera on the iPhone 4 and other mobile phones is very close to the display, so when you look at the screen the person on the other side feels as if you are actually looking at them (that is, at the camera). But the same does not happen here because of the large screen on the Galaxy Tab.
Samsung should have placed the camera somewhere on the side so it would be closer to the center of the display. It will be interesting to see how Apple will solve this problem on the next generation iPad, which is likely to add FaceTime to its list of features.
Now coming to the video playback, which is the Holy Grail of tablets. It is one of the reasons why smartphone users would go for a tablet, so that they can enjoy their videos on a bigger display without having to bother with a laptop. On the Galaxy Tab, video playback is a bit of a hit and miss affair.
Samsung claims that the Galaxy Tab supports 1080p video playback in multiple formats, but as we found out getting those videos to play on the device wasn't so easy. First of all, the built-in memory is FAT32 formatted, so forget about transferring files greater than 4GB to the device. If you are thinking about using a large capacity NTFS-formatted card then forget that as well, as Android does not support NTFS file system.
If you do transfer a file that is less than 4GB in size then you may run into several issues. The device may not play the file for various reasons. At times it showed us the thumbnail of the video but when we tried to play it, the device gave us an "unsupported file format" error. On certain occasions we could not hear the audio of a video and at times we could hear the audio but there was no video.
As far as 720p files were concerned some looked extremely crisp while other files with the same resolution looked inexplicably fuzzy, as if it was a low resolution video. Even certain standard definition AVI files refused to work. At times when they do work videos look pretty decent on the 7-inch display but still it's not as enjoyable as on the iPad's 9.7-inch display, not just because of the larger display size but also because of the better quality display. VLC Player for iPad is also far more reliable for playing videos in different formats. The stereo loudspeakers on the Galaxy Tab aren't very loud and to be honest we have heard single loudspeakers produce louder sounds than that and they sound slightly muffled as well. It also does not help that when playing videos both the speakers end up on one side of the display.
The Galaxy Tab has the same image gallery that comes as standard on Android phones post Android 2.1. In our opinion the gallery is a bit too flash and instead of letting you concentrate on the images that you have it is more intent on showing all the cool things it can do with superfluous animations. The iPad's gallery too has interesting animations but the only difference between the iPad's image gallery and Android's is that Apple knows where to draw the line between fancy design just for the sake of it and fancy design that's actually useful .
Of course there is a music player on board as well and this time it is by Samsung and not Android's default music player. It is quite good but to be honest no one buys a tablet for listening to music. However, it's nice to listen to a few tunes when you are, say, browsing the web and don't want to use your music player or cell phone.
Reading Books
The Kindle may have brought reading eBooks to the masses but the iPad took it a step further, thanks to its color display that added far too many options and possibilities than what were possible on the monochrome display of the Kindle. Of course now every new tablet has to have some sort of eBook reading application on board and the Galaxy Tab has not one but two of them. One of them is by Samsung themselves and has one book in it by default. However, we could not find any way to transfer any additional books to it. When we transferred PDF files to the Tab they did not show up in the eBook reader app but can be viewed through the built-in File Manager (or a third party app such as Adobe Reader).
The built-in eBook reader app on the Galaxy Tab is a shameless rip-off of the iPad's iBooks app, with the same wooden shelves for displaying books and the same page turning animations, same positions for almost all the controls and almost the same options in preferences. Not that the iPad influence is not seen elsewhere on the Tab in Samsung's other applications, but what they have done with eBook reader is just daylight robbery. A company as big as Samsung could have come up with a team of designers who can make some thing just as good or better but different looking. But it seems they hired a bunch of copy cats whose designing skills extend to using the commands Control + C and Control + V.
The other eBook app on the Galaxy Tab is by Kobo and as we mentioned before is not designed for the Tab's display and hence looks pixelated. You can buy books from Kobo's store just the way you can in iBooks. We did not try the application ourselves but from what we have seen on the Galaxy S this app too takes heavy inspiration from Apple's iBook app.
Gaming
Gaming on the Galaxy Tab was pretty nice. The 7-inch form factor is actually just the right size for gaming and although on a bigger displays the games would look nice it may not be easy to hold that big device while playing. Most of the games we played on the Galaxy Tab were just the current lot of games for Android such as Angry Birds, Abduction and Air Control and although they were stretching to fill the display they still looked pretty good. The bigger display also meant it was easy to operate them then it is on the smaller display of the smartphones. We cannot wait for all games to be optimized for this display size and resolution.
Calling & Messaging
It's easy to forget that the Galaxy Tab is a phone as well. In fact if you ask it, it is but a large Android phone. The Tab accepts standard SIM card, which is nice as we could use our SIM cards without having to operate on them as we would have to for the iPad. The Galaxy Tab is a quad-band GSM handset with HSPA support. Then there is the usual Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS as well.
Unlike the iPad where the SIM card is only used for data transfers over GSM network, you can also make and receive calls on the Galaxy Tab. It does not have a built-in earpiece, so you would have to use a pair of headphones in conjugation with the mic built-into the device or a wired or wireless headset. Since we were using our personal SIM cards with the device it was slightly annoying when a call came in and we had none of the above handy with us, in which case we had to put the device on loudspeaker mode.
You can also send and receive SMS and MMS messages on the Galaxy Tab. The applications for these features are just like on Samsung's Android smartphones. Then there is email support as well and the Galaxy Tab has a pretty capable email client on-board that makes better use of the Tab's display than the built-in GMail app but lacks the latter's push mail support.
For text input, the Galaxy Tab comes with two built-in keyboards. First is Samsung's own keyboard and the second is the Swype keyboard. The first is pretty decent and gets the job done and was our preferred choice. The latter used to be our preferred choice on the Galaxy S because of the smaller display which made swiping the thumb around on the screen easy but it's not very convenient to swipe your index finger around on such a large display. It may seem cool initially but eventually you would settle for the standard display. Swype also has an annoying tendency to give incorrect suggestions and making you manually select from a list of options. When it works its great but when it doesn't it can be extremely frustrating.
As for typing on the device. I personally found it bit difficult to stretch my thumbs in portrait mode to type. People with bigger hands may be more comfortable though. Landscape mode is pretty much useless. The Galaxy Tab is not large enough to keep on your lap and type on like a laptop and the keys become too thin in landscape mode because of the lack of height on the widescreen display. The iPad has a much bigger 4:3 display and the keys on the iPad in landscape mode are almost as big as a full fledged laptop keyboard making typing extremely comfortable. You can also use a Bluetooth keyboard with the Galaxy Tab and Samsung also has a dock with an attached keyboard just like the one Apple has for the iPad.
General Usability
The Galaxy Tab has a 1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM. It also uses a GPU for accelerating the images and videos you see on the screen. Yet the device never feels particularly fast or smooth at any time. The iPad in comparison seems like it's running on a far more powerful hardware than what its specs would suggest. Apart from the browser, it's not particularly sluggish anywhere else but still when you are paying big money for these devices you expect a lot more than "not sluggish". We guess this is to be expected on a device where the software is not optimized for the hardware. Then again, that has been a problem with every Android device.
We also noticed that the backside of the device tends to heat up on the right side, which makes holding it bit uncomfortable after using it for a while.
The 10-inch vs. 7-inch debate
We must say we are on the former side of this debate. 10-inch is the right size for a tablet. A tablet is a device that should be offer you the experience of a laptop but without the bulk and mechanical keyboard. It should be a big enough upgrade from the smartphone to justify its existence while being portable enough for you to pick it up over the laptop when you don't want to do very heavy duty on the go and the iPad is just that. The 7-inch tablets on the other hand feel more like glorified smartphones.
They are not big enough to give you a proper web browsing or movie watching or eBook reading experience nor portable enough to carry in your pocket. This puts them into a no man's land where they can do nothing well and almost everything wrong. We really don't think this category of devices needs to exist just for the heck of it as it offers no real advantage over 10-inch tablets, of which there exists only one right now.
Battery Life
One of the most impressive things about the iPad is its battery life. Apple claims a battery life of ten hours and the device actually lasts that long, at times even longer. Unfortunately, that's not the case with the Galaxy Tab. The device only lasted for four hours while playing back an HD video and for six hours while web browsing over Wi-Fi. One can say that the lower figures are because the Galaxy Tab is comparatively smaller than the iPad and hence has a smaller battery but then the iPad also has a bigger display to power. The battery life tests on the Galaxy Tab were done without an active GSM connection.
Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy Tab is priced at Rs. 38,000. For those who jumped straight to the verdict let me tell you that the Galaxy Tab is absolutely not worth that price at all. It really has nothing going for it now. The software is flawed; Android and all the thousands of applications available for it are clearly not ready for the tablet platform yet.
Samsung has tried to do their part but more often than not they have just ended up copying the iPad's software and they have not even done a great job at it. The hardware is flawed as well. The form factor itself is flawed, where 7-inch is just not the right size for a tablet. If you disagree you just haven't grasped the concept of a tablet and are one of the many people who go around asking what can you do with one of these things. The display quality too is below par on the Galaxy Tab and for such a powerful device on paper it seems oddly sedated in real world usage and in some cases such as the web browser, frustratingly slow.
The multimedia experience is nothing to shout about either. Although the format support is impressive, the actual playback is far less so, mostly because the files just refuses to play for whatever reason. There are two cameras on board but as we found out the front is a bit oddly placed and the rear, well, are you really going to go around clicking pictures with this thing? Gaming could be the saving grace of this device but only if some good games come along which make better use of this device.
In the end the Galaxy Tab comes across as a shabby attempt copying the iPad, which still remains the ultimate tablet to have. It does everything better than the Galaxy Tab and costs the same. When Apple announced the iPad we all though that the price was pretty great. It's only now we are fully realizing how amazing the pricing of the iPad was when the competition despite, the clearly inferior hardware, are struggling to meet the price benchmark that Apple has set with the iPad.
The 7-inch display size seems more to keep the price of the device down rather than to actually make the device smaller. Heavens knows how expensive the Galaxy Tab would have been had it had a 10-inch display and I'm sure even Samsung doesn't want to find that out. The addition of the cameras and other bells and whistles seem like an effort to make you believe that you are getting worth your money but the truth is that other manufacturers are struggling to match Apple's pricing for the iPad.
So no, the Galaxy Tab is not worth buying. One shouldn't go around spending money on poor replicas when the far superior original is available for the same price.
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