Samsung Galaxy Tab Review: We Take The Top Android Tablet For A Review

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Since the iPad was introduced back in January, the Android faithful has been waiting for the comparable Android equivalent to the popular Apple tablet. The Samsung Galaxy Tab was introduced at the IFA 2010 trade show in Berlin – backed by industry powerhouse Samsung. With a 1GHz processor, Android 2.1 and a 7-inch display, is the Samsung Galaxy Tab an open Android alternative to the iPad? We’ve spent time with the Galaxy Tab running on Sprint’s 3G network, and we’ll tell you what we think.

The first thing you’ll notice about the Galaxy Tab is it’s weight. It’s not overly heavy, but Samsung’s last Android offering – the Galaxy S phone – featured a plastic chassis and a lightweight that many thought made the phone feel cheap (including us, in our review of the Epic 4G). The Galaxy Tab has a plastic chassis, but it feels heavy and solid – almost the opposite of the Galaxy S phone. It feels good.

The seven-inch screen size is probably the most contentious thing about the Galaxy Tab. It’s staking it’s claim in between the five-inch Dell Streak (and the larger Android phones) and the ten-inch iPad. We found the screen size on the Galaxy Tab to be, well, perfect. Those who are used to the iPad will initially find it too small. It’ll seem like somebody cut the ends off of the iPad screen. But, what the Galaxy Tab lacks in pure screen real estate, it makes up in portability. While it won’t fit in your coat pocket (unless you wear a sportcoat – or a raincoat), it’s much lighter and less cumbersome to carry around than the iPad.

Plus, the screen is nicer than the iPad. The Galaxy Tab uses the “Super LCD” display technology manufactured by Sony. The screen is bright and impressive, with great detail. Sony boasts to their customers that the Super LCD is indistinguishable from OLED displays and it almost is. The screen quality is one of the best features of the Galaxy Tab and it stands above the iPad and other tablets.

On performance, the Galaxy Tab is quick and responsive. It’s packing a 1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM. Scrolling on webpages and flipping between homescreens was fast, and smooth.

What didn’t we like about the Galaxy Tab’s hardware? It’s got soft-key buttons on the bottom of the device. Like any Android device, it’s the usual “Menu, Home, Back and Search”. The problem with them is that they really aren’t conductive to using the tablet like a tablet. When reading a book with the Kindle app, or playing Angry Birds, or watching a YouTube clip – or doing anything with the Galaxy Tab orientated portrait-style, it’s oh too easy to accidentally hit one of the soft keys and send the device back a screen, back to the home screen, or bring up the voice search box.

Those buttons and their placement are required by the Open Handset Alliance that manages Android. I don’t know if their needs to be a provision that they can be moved for a tablet – or if they had been old-fashioned hardware keys would have fixed the problem. Granted, this is a minor grief with the tablet.

As far as software, it’s running Android 2.2, with a version of Samsung’s TouchWiz UI on top. TouchWiz is optimized for the tablet form factor here – and it’s much less intrusive than it is on the Galaxy S phones. It’s got everything you could want – widgets, the ability to add/remove homescreens, etc.

But let’s talk about the tablet form factor. Some early reports were that the Android apps didn’t scale well to the 7-inch screen. Quite the contrary, we found. The Galaxy Tab uses reskinned versions of the Google Calendar and Contacts applications. As far as we can tell, it uses the stock version of the Gmail app, which looks fine at 7-inches. And, as iPad owners have discovered, reading e-mail is a joy on a tablet. Other, third-party apps we tried (Air Control, Angry Bird, Facebook, Kindle, Gowalla, Touiteur) all looked fine blown up to 7-inches. None of the “tearing” that you’d expect. Results may vary with your favorite app.

A short note regarding apps, you haven’t lived until you’ve played Angry Bird on the Galaxy Tab or read a Kindle book on the Galaxy Tab. The big screen is great for Angry Birds – and with the Kindle books having their pictures in full color along with the other features of the Kindle bookstore, I’ve decided that God (Jeff Bezos) intended you to read Kindle books on the Galaxy Tab.

In the United States, the Galaxy Tab cannot make voice phone calls, (in Europe, it comes with the ability to pair a Bluetooth headset to the tablet and make calls). The Verizon version of the Galaxy Tab will allow the Skype app, but you’ll only be able to make calls over WiFi, not the 3G connection. As far as Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T goes, the Skype app is (not so) mysteriously removed from the Android Market.

Despite none of the carriers listing text messaging as a feature of the Galaxy Tab – you can actually send and receive text messages from the device. Even though you can’t make voice calls, the Sprint loaner model we received did have a phone number attached to it. The Android messaging app is included and plainly located in the applications menu – and you’re able to send and receive text messages. I even received one of those spam “Are you in debt to the IRS?” SMS messages during Thanksgiving on my Galaxy Tab, ironically.

What about Flash? The iPad doesn’t play Flash. Android 2.2 has support for Flash 10.1 and the Galaxy Tab is an Android tablet (as mentioned). How does Flash work on the device? About as well as it does on an Atom-powered netbook. Most Flash video players will run okay on the tablet (YouTube). If the site uses some special HD encoding thing (Hulu, GameTrailers.com, others), then the tablet slows down to a crawl. For the most part though, Flash banner ads didn’t slow down the tablet.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently tweeted that the camera on the Galaxy Tab “isn’t great :-(” and we agree with the President. We found the 3-megapixel camera on the Galaxy Tab to be lacking, both in resolution and the quality and depth of the colors. See for yourself below on our sample images. The Galaxy Tab does feature a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for video chat. Understandably, the quality was lower on that camera, but adequate for video chat.

Using the camera on the 7-inch tablet was a bit cumbersome, too. There is something odd about holding up a massive tablet to take pictures. It isn’t intuitive and the tablet feels awfully heavy. I’d expect the Galaxy Tab’s camera to be a notch below most phone cameras.

Pricing for the Galaxy Tab can be confusing, with five of the major mobile carriers in the US offering the tablet – plus even more international carriers and the WiFi-only model coming next year. Let’s briefly run down the pricing and plans from each major US carrier:

• Sprint – $400 on-contract, $600 off-contract, plans starting at $30/month.
• Verizon – $600 off-contract, plans starting at $20/month.
• AT&T – $650 off-contract, plans starting at $15/month.
• T-Mobile – $400 on-contract, $600 off-contract, plans starting at $25/month.
• US Cellular – $400 on-contract, $600 off-contract, plans starting at $15/month.

The advantage to buying the device off contract is that you’re free to stop the plan as you want, as opposed to buying it on contract and getting locked into two years. Verizon is including free tethering with the Galaxy Tab. US Cellular includes free tethering on the highest data plan ($55/month – 5GB) and Sprint (who again, provided us with this Galaxy Tab) offers tethering for an additional $30/month.

Sprint and AT&T both offer a $50 voucher for “Media Hub”, a pre-installed Samsung application that lets you rent or purchase current TV shows and movies from all the major content providers. Keep that in mind if you’re shopping amongst carriers and plan (or don’t) to use Media Hub.

Generally, we found the Samsung Galaxy Tab is be a competent tablet, and a very capable Android alternative to the Apple iPad. The seven-inch form factor is much more portable than the iPad, but still renders the tablet usable and comfortable to use. What it lacks, is the Apple “finish” that so many people find appealing and the iTunes App Store library. If you initially believe the Galaxy Tab is too small after three minutes of playing with it at Best Buy, I’d urge you to stick with it as form factor and slightly smaller screen does grow on you. The Samsung Galaxy Tab has succeed where the Dell Streak and Archos tablets failed – it’s a fully functional Android tablet, with a great build quality and all the fixing of the Android Market. We’d give the Samsung Galaxy Tab a full recommendation.

(Sprint provided the Samsung Galaxy Tab for us to use during the review period.)