Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a remarkable media-chomping device with a crisp screen in a slim form factor. It's great for sending email and consuming YouTube, movies, books and music.
The Samsung
Galaxy Tab 10.1 is an excellent alternative to Apple's iPad 2, the ultra-thin
tablet it is designed to challenge in the burgeoning market for lightweight
slate computers.
I received the
limited edition Tab 10.1 at Google I/O May 10. This 32GB flash memory,
WiFi-only tablet has a 10.1-inch display rendering a 1280 by 800 resolution and
a 1GHz dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor.
The 7,000-mAh
battery is great for longevity. I can report a full day's worth of heavy
multimedia, emailing and gaming before charging.
As you can see
here,
the Google I/O edition is encased in plastic on the back, revealing an army of
Android robots and their silhouettes. Cool, geeky. The
commercial
version will have a black, textured back for better grip. How else the commercial
version differs from the limited edition I can't say.
There is a
3-megapixel rear-facing camera capable of recording 720p video, and a
2-megapixel front-facing camera for video chat. Video plays back in crisp 1080p
high-definition. The current evidence
shows
Samsung will sell the Tab 10.1 for $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB, beginning June
8.
From a hardware perspective, the Tab 10.1 bests the
Motorola
Xoom, which I certainly
enjoyed
using back in March.
The Tab 10.1
is a touch less than 1.3 pounds to the Xoom's 1.6 pounds, weighing less than
even a touch less than the svelte iPad 2's 1.3 pounds. Whereas the Xoom is
fully a half-inch thick, the Tab 10.1 is as thin as the iPad 2 at 0.34 inches.
You might not
think that's a big difference from the Xoom, but wait until it's in your hand
and lap. You want to be able to carry a tablet with a 10.1-inch screen
comfortably in one hand. In my hand, at least, the Tab 10.1 certainly fits the
bill.
The software
is Android 3.0 "Honeycomb," so yes it's very much like the Xoom in
many aspects. Samsung is touting a TouchWiz user interface, but to be honest, I
didn't see much difference between from the Tab 10.1 and Motorola's Xoom UI.
Update: TouchWiz is for the commercial version only.
That is, both
offer the awesome application tray, which sits along the left of the screen to
let users multitask and flit from one application to the next, as well as the
widgets Honeycomb has become known for.
This includes
the deck-of-card style YouTube widget on one of the five home screens of the
Tab 10.1, which lets users flip through YouTube videos with a single flick of a
forefinger. Super easy, efficient and fun. Notifications stream in from the
lower right for Gmail, Google Talk and other applications.
Applications such as Angry Birds downloaded from the Android Market in seconds. The Tab 10.1
leverages Google's cloud, so once I associated my Google account with this device,
magical cloud things happened. My Google Music beta count synced up and put my
music on the Tab 10.1.
I sit here at
my desk and the tablet now alerts me as I get a new Gmail, just as my Motorola
Droid X does. I can access Google Maps, where 3D buildings raise up great on
the Tab 10.1, and the Map navigation service.
Google Places
is awesome here. Scrunched and canned on my Droid X, the restaurant, coffee
shop and other options sit in a window on the left, with the Maps in the
background.
Tapping pubs,
for example, calls up the O Bar and Grill near my house here, possibly because
I've rated it via Places' Hotpot recommendation engine from my desktop. The
cloud at work, works for me.
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