Samsung's super-sized Galaxy Tab 10.1 sports a display a full 3.1 inches larger than the previous generation. Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com
Due in stores soon, Samsung’s newest Android-powered tablet is bigger, faster and cheaper than its predecessor, and Wired.com had some time to test one.
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 has been something of a tease since we first heard about it. After announcing the Galaxy Tab 10.1 earlier this year, Samsung decided to go back to the drawing board when the company saw how thin Apple made the iPad 2.
Finally, the newer, cheaper Tab is redesigned and ready to launch in about a month. And lucky attendees of Google’s I/O developer conference in San Francisco were given an early limited-edition version of the tablet. My first impressions: It seems cool enough, and in certain aspects the tablet feels like an Android-powered iPad.
When first picking it up, I immediately noticed how light the tablet was. Measuring 10.1 inches diagonally, Samsung’s tablet is bigger than the 9.7-inch iPad, and it’s actually one-tenth of a pound lighter. It’s also 0.34 inches thick, just like the iPad 2.
The new Galaxy Tab has another thing in common with the iPad 2: Both their cameras suck. Many photos taken with the Galaxy Tab were either washed out, grainy or not at all crisp. In reviewing Apple’s tablet, Wired’s Brian Chen said “Apple took some shortcuts [with the camera], presumably to keep the costs down and to make the device thinner.” Could that be the same case for Samsung?
And have we mentioned how weird it is to take pictures with a tablet? Because it is. Maybe we’re used to one-handed Instagram shots on our phones, but using both hands to point a slab of glass and plastic at something to take its photo just feels inorganic.
Just like all the other recent Android tablet releases, Samsung’s offering is powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 2 dual-core processor. Swiping my way through Honeycomb’s five home screens is a breeze with the mighty chip.
But there are at least three tablets on the market right now running on the Tegra 2: It’s become an Android-tablet industry standard. Still, the Tegra 2 is a powerful processor, and in smoothly running a 3-D game like the bundled Need for Speed HD app, Nvidia’s muscle certainly shows.
I also tested how the Galaxy Tab handles Adobe Flash, the plug-in famously missing from the iPad. Alas, Adobe has only released a beta version of Flash for Android version 3.0 Honeycomb tablets, and it certainly shows. YouTube videos stuttered often enough to be noticeable. Moving into 1080p only made things worse, as playback choppiness was a fairly common occurrence.
Flash is supposed to get better when the Honeycomb version 3.1 update is pushed out widely over the air in the next couple of weeks. We’ll have to wait and see about that.
We’re glad Samsung went with side-facing speakers instead of some of the back-facing ones we’ve seen on other Android tablets. The sound wasn’t anything spectacular — nothing like the excellent front-facing speakers on BlackBerry’s PlayBook tablet — but it wasn’t terrible either. Side-facing speakers seem to be a compromise between keeping the tablet’s face clean and uncluttered, while trying to keep listening quality high by avoiding back-facing placement.
For the most part, we’re OK with that. But honestly, if you’re using a tablet in public and don’t want to be obnoxious while listening to media, you’ll probably be wearing headphones anyway.
Some glaring omissions: no HDMI output, no USB ports and no SD card reader. Aside from the headphone jack, there’s just one other external port (for charging and file transfers). If you care about things like HDMI mirroring or hooking up peripherals to your Android device, you might miss these important ports. And with Honeycomb version 3.1 supporting Android’s new Open Accessory interface, you’ll be missing out on a whole new wave of connectible devices.
All in all, you’ll be sacrificing a lot of external-interfacing options for a slimmer, sleeker Android tablet if you go with the Galaxy Tab 10.1. If you don’t care about hooking it up to a big screen to watch your video, or increasing storage capacity with a larger SD card, this may not bother you. But knowing how open-minded (so to speak) Android enthusiasts tend to be , we think Samsung’s relatively closed-off direction on this tablet may turn a number of people off.
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 hits U.S. shelves in early June, with a $500 price tag for the 16-GB version, and $600 for the 32-GB version (Wi-Fi only).
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