Details
Price: $600
Manufacturer: Samsung
Website: www.samsung.com
Predominately black in colour with a silver
trim, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 features a high quality capacitive WXGA
screen delivering a resolution of 1280x800 pixels with a propensity for
collecting finger smears. The tablet has dimensions of 256.7x175.3x8.6mm and
weighs 565g. While too large to fit into most pockets, the unit can easily be balanced
one handed allowing the other hand to carry out actions.
Galaxy Tab 10.1
Samsung has made a conscious effort to keep
the external controls and connections to a minimum. Occupying the top left of
the unit’s body are the on/off switch and volume control rocket. In a more
central position is a 3.5mm jack socket for inserting the supplied earplug
style headset. Sound, when not using a headset, is delivered from speaker
grills on either side of the unit. While not up to the quality of the screen,
the audio is more than adequate for many tasks.
Completing the external options is a 30-pin
connection socket on the base of the unit. This connection, used in conjunction
with the supplied lead, allows you to recharge the device’s 7000 mAh battery
pack via the mains or a USB port on a computer. However, this is the sole
purpose of this USB link.
The Galaxy Tab is powered by an NVidia 1GHz
Tegra dual-core processor with 16GB of RAM for storing apps and the Android
Honeycomb 3.1 operating system. Powering up the unit from cold took
approximately 30 seconds to arrive at the unlock screen. Following a quick
finger swipe, the home screen appears and you have the option to create panes
for specific tasks.
Helped by the tablet’s built-in four-way
accelerometer and gyro, scrolling in any direction and switching between
landscape and portrait orientation is quick and smooth. Graphics quality is of
a high standard with a well-defined and bright appearance usable in various
lighting conditions.
Galaxy Tab 10.1
Both front and rear-mounted cameras are
available. The front camera is a 2MP model while the rear unit is of the 3MP
variety. The supplied camera app allows you to switch between these two cameras
enabling you to take a self-portrait using the tablet’s screen as your
viewfinder.
When held in either orientation, a taskbar
runs across the bottom of the screen. This bar displays status details, task
icons including a screen grab feature, and a pop-up that holds widgets for Task
Manager, Calendar, World Clock, Pen Memo, Calculator and Music Player.
The full complement of standard Android
apps (Gmail, Google Maps, Google Search etc) are provided along with certain
Samsung offerings. Featured among the Samsung apps is a Social Hub with links
to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn plus email and scheduling management. You
also get links to the Android Market plus Samsung’s own app store which
duplicates many of the Android offering but does include some specific NVidia
Tegra programs.
Performance-wise I cannot fault the Samsung
Galaxy Tab 10.1. You get great graphics with a range of features plus a speed
of operation that should satisfy most users. In tests I was downloading web
pages within a two second window while battery life was approaching nine hours
when used for a mixture of tasks. I do, however, have one request for the next
model in the series: could we please have a standard USB port to make life
easier when wi-fi access is not available.
