Review: Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

For a small gadget, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has certainly caused a lot of controversy in its short existence. As a result of a legal injunction from Apple, it can’t currently be sold in Australia or in parts of Europe. Apple claims that the Galaxy Tab 10.1’s design infringes on iPad patents. Whether the case has merit or not – and there are arguments both for and against – the mere fact of it should tell you that Samsung’s design is attractive, at minimum.

The white plastic and aluminium rear of the device, combined with the black screen surround and 10.1-inch widescreen is both good to look at and easy to hold. It’s lightweight – at 565 grams it’s lighter than the iPad, and it seems made for media playback thanks to the widescreen design.

There’s no ‘home’ button, but Samsung does share one thing with the iPad that we could cheerfully have done without – a proprietary connection for charging the Tab. It’s hard to understand why Samsung did this rather than opt for the standard micro-USB.

Around the edges of the device are two speakers – one either side – an on/off switch, volume control and 3.5mm headphone jack. The on/off switch is not in the most obvious spot – top right is where your finger naturally gravitates when you hold the Tab in its natural-feeling landscape mode. On the 3G version – we tested the Wi-Fi model – there’s a SIM slot next to the headphone jack. There’s a rear-facing 3-megapixel camera with LED flash, and a front-facing 2MP camera suitable for video chats.

Despite being supremely lightweight, the Tab is pretty tough. There’s little flex or give, and while the plastic back may not have the resilience or stain-resistance of an aluminium unibody, it’ll withstand knocks, bumps and scratches. There are no rough edges, and the only place that will trap dust or grime is the proprietary power socket. It even shines up nicely.

The 10.1-inch, 1280 x 800 resolution TFT LCD screen is not as bright as that of the iPad 2, but it has a sharper dot pitch (149 pixels per inch, compared to the iPad 2’s 132ppi) and it stacks up well compared to other tablets we’ve seen through the labs this year. During 1080p video playback, some areas were clearly blocky, and edges didn’t always seem sharp and crisp, even though detail levels were good. Colour accuracy was excellent, though we found that for best results, eliminating glare was essential. The ambient light sensor can handle moderately sunny conditions, which was great for gaming, internet and productivity, but we found the brightness levels a little frustrating for media playback unless in a darkened room or glare-free environment.

Specifications

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, in line with its multimedia look, includes a 1GHz dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. The Tegra is optimised to use minimal processing power on video and audio decoding, which allows long video and audio playback times. Samsung quotes nine hours of video or 72 hours of audio from the 7000mAh battery, which is outstanding. To ensure that playback is smooth, there’s 1GB of RAM, and lest you fear that you won’t be able to store nine hours of video on the device, you can get it with capacities ranging from 16-64GB. There are no slots for external memory cards.

With 802.11n and Bluetooth 3.0, connectivity is handled well, and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 also includes Wi-Fi Direct to let you connect to gadgets such as printers and cameras even when there’s no Wi-Fi hotspot handy. The internal gyroscope, accelerometer and compass are used for the A-GPS (which offers turn-by-turn with Google Maps) and gaming. They are also used to implement a neat feature called Tilt and Pan which allows simplified zooming in and out of images, web pages and similar.

User interface

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 runs Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), designed for tablets. Samsung has layered its TouchWiz UX interface over the top. The TouchWiz update has a number of features.

First is a set of widgets, which Samsung calls Live Panels, that can be placed on the main screens and resized as desired. They cover main tablet tools such as weather, social networking, mail, photo gallery and bookmarks, among others. They’re big and bright, and you can add and rearrange to suit your needs. By default, the tablet comes with a set of them pre-placed.

Second up is the mini-app tray at the bottom of the screen. This contains a calculator, task manager, calendar, world clock, music player and pen memo. We couldn’t find any way to customise the mini-apps that appear, but it’s handy to be able to access them.

Beyond that, most of the changes to TouchWiz UX from the previous Galaxy Tab (or from the Galaxy S2) are cosmetic. The social and music hubs look cleaner than they have in previous TouchWiz interfaces.

As with our experience with Honeycomb in general, most tasks are easy to accomplish. There are five main screens within which you can add touchWiz widgets and apps.

New apps are added to the home page by default as they’re installed. To move them, it’s a simple matter of clicking the Apps button at the top of the screen. From there, press and hold your finger over any app, and the five-screen view of the entire ‘desktop’ is visible, allowing you to drag and drop apps to an appropriate spot. The same can be done for TouchWiz widgets by clicking the + sign at the top of the screen.

The mail app is solid – particularly the Gmail app – and the camera app has a range of excellent options. The browser supports Flash, and the YouTube interface is very straightforward. Using the tablet was honestly a pleasure. It’s still not quite up there with the iPad – at moments I found myself wondering which button I should press to go back to a previous screen – but it allows for an excellent selection of optimisations and apps.

In the last Samsung Galaxy Tab model we looked at, we had some issues with sound and video, but those appear to have been fixed up significantly. The sound, while a little thin and lacking a small amount of detail, is rich. Photographs taken in darkened rooms show none of the blockiness of previous models, though they aren’t as sharp as we’d like.

What else is there to say? The battery life is excellent, and I didn’t manage to wear it out during my review. Overall, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the best that Android has to offer at the moment, and while it still has flaws, it’s a joy to use.