After we met with Samsung in late May, company representatives didn’t seem entirely sure that the corporate would meet the rumored June 8th ship date here within the US, but lo and behold, it’s done just that . The tablet’s launching at noon today on the Best Buy in Ny City’s Union Square, and if you cannot make it as much as ny, it’ll hit the remainder of the nation on June 17th. But here’s the true question: is it worth making an effort to snag it on either date? The Galaxy Tab 10.1, similar to its Limited Edition sibling that we reviewed last month, is ever-so-slightly thinner than the iPad 2 , a slate that the majority sane individuals (and competitors, for that matter) would confess is the market leader today.
Naturally, everyone and their sister is gunning for Apple on this space, and Honeycomb’s the 1st mobile OS we have seen that has the aptitude to position any variety of damper on Cupertino’s ongoing rave. Most likely, the patron version of the Tab 10.1 is equal to the device launched at Google I/O , but there’s two key differences that we are going to take care of here: the tamed design, and the thoroughly different OS version (v3.1 here versus v3.0 before). Head on past the break for an in-depth investigate either one of those, but be sure you first take a gander at our Limited Edition review to wrap your noodle across the basics.
Hardware and design
You are going to hear this loads inside the review, but every opinion we drew from using the Tab 10.1 Limited Edition applies here. Every. single. one. Why? The patron model is is a spitting image of the LE variant, save for the motif at the rear; the single you’ll pick up this month has a glossy white plastic rear, while the LE model had a glossy white plastic rear… with an Android army adorning it. Weight’s a similar, size is a similar, build quality is identical. It is a tremendous thing to carry, and it truly oozes quality from corner to corner.
Outside of the colour scheme at the rear, nothing is different this go ’round. We promise.
Performance and battery life
While the internals remain the identical here as at the Limited Edition build (1GHz Tegra 2, 1280 x 800 resolution display, front- and rear-facing cameras), something’s changed with Android 3.1. Google claimed that the most recent build of Honeycomb would perform even faster than 3.0, and in practice, things did appear to operate at a subtly brisker pace. Animations were a pinch quicker, and transitions were ever-so-slightly faster. Web browser performance was noticeably better, although we did see a number of videos load up in a smaller window while an analogous video expanded out to fill the screen within Android 3.0.
But that said, we’re having a tricky time aligning our real-world experience and our benchmarks. The Tab 10.1 Limited Edition (which shipped with an admittedly wonky version of Android 3.0) managed to hit a mean of one,970 within Quadrant benchmark — an ordinary benching tool that was extensively utilized in our 4 G-Slate 4 and 5 Xoom 5 review. You’d expect the streamlined Android 3.1 sibling to accomplish better, but alas, that wasn’t in any respect the case. After running the identical test five times at the Tab 10.1, we hit a normal score of one,540. The top we saw was 1,546. That’s off of a fresh reboot with nothing spinning within the background except for the occasional widget update. It’s as baffling to us because it likely is to you; we’re guessing that Quadrant just reacts dramatically different to v3.1 than v3.0, and we’re obviously desperate to see if future Android 3.1 slates score lower around the board than the three.0 devices that came before.
After we sat all the way down to our video loop test, with WiFi on and display brightness at about 65 percent, we scored slightly below ten hours (again!). That’s second only to the iPad 2, and by merely half an hour. Jack that brightness down a little, and also you could probably squeeze 11 hours out. The upside is that Android 3.1 doesn’t appear to have a negative impact on battery life; the drawback is that Android 3.1 doesn’t seem to any extent further power efficient than Android 3.0.
As for audio and video playback? It’s what you’d expect; Music Beta streamed our cloud library sans issue over a house WiFi network, and the audio output is on par with every iDevice you have ever tested. It isn’t quite up there with 6 Cowon 6 or anything, but on the other hand, nor is the rest on this field. Flash, DivX, MPEG4 and H.264 files all played back exceptionally well. Even 720p content appeared to cause no strain whatsoever at the system, though we’d still probably recommend transcoding any of these files you have got sitting around in esoteric containers. Again, this is not a Cowon, so it ain’t going to support everything you throw at it.
Software
In the end, the first differentiator between the Tab 10.1 LE and the far-less-limited Tab 10.1: 0.1. 7 Android 3.1 7 brings along widgets which might be resized vertically and horizontally, access to the newfangled Movies component of the Android Market, improved performance and support for a number of USB accessories. Unfortunately, the flicks department is barely open for Android 3.1 tablets with 3G radios, hence, our 16GB WiFi test unit still showed it as unavailable. That said, we’ve already tested that exact aspect with a Motorola Xoom, which 8 should be seen here 8 .
0 The performance improvements, however, are here. They’re subtle, sure, but you will not find us kvetching about extra speed, irrespective of how minor it’s. Granted, we did not have any real qualms with performance at the Tab 10.1 Limited Edition, but it’s safe to assert we’ve even fewer qualms here. Resizing widgets worked, and worked well, but it’s mildly annoying that it only supports a smattering of ‘em promptly — we’re hoping to look more apps updated soon to make the most, and when that occurs, homepane tweakers will definitely find these remarkably useful. It enables each pane to be filled with useful, glanceable information — a large calendar prevents you from having to load the app at any time when, for instance.
1 Outside of that, the software’s largely unchanged from where Honeycomb began. Those anticipating a major overhaul can be sorely disappointed, but we’re thrilled to claim that Google’s polished up an already excellent foundation. Unfortunately, the Android Market still isn’t home to many tablet applications; Apple just 9 announced 9 at 0 WWDC 0 that the App Store is home to a few 95,000 tablet programs. El Goog hasn’t shared its numbers during this regard, however it doesn’t take lots of poking around to determine that it’s nowhere near. Honeycomb still has lots to prove, and it’s as much as developers to prove it. For now, those in search of a wealth of options can have better luck wading throughout the App Store, but hopefully things should be drastically different because the year churns on.
2 We’d also desire to talk about a large, huge issue with using the Galaxy Tab 10.1 at the side of OS X. For whatever reason, 1 Android File Transfer 1 still hasn’t been updated to support this slate, because of this you can’t (easily) use your Mac to transfer files onto your device. We need to wonder what Google was thinking when it fundamentally changed how Macs could interface with Android; our Nexus One (Android 2.3) simply pops up as an external drive at the desktop of a MacBook Pro, while Honeycomb devices require a dedicated piece of software that will or won’t work. Blech. We’re hoping Google updates AFT inside the hours ahead; otherwise, you’re able to expect the forums to return alive as Mac owners struggle to make contact with the $500+ slate they simply bit on.
Camera
3 No shocker here — the 3MP rear camera at the Tab 10.1 impressed us just up to the camera at the Tab 10.1 Limited Edition. We still aren’t sold on using a slate to take photos, and we still aren’t overly impressed with the picture quality here. It’s hard to knock something that almost all folks aren’t going to use, though, so we’ll just let the below sample shot gallery speak for itself.
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Wrap-up
The realization we came to after using the Tab 10.1 Limited Edition mimics the realization we’ve drawn here: here’s the simplest Honeycomb tablet to this point, and lucky for you, the one’s available to buy! Only time will tell if the Android Market will prove to be to boot-stocked because the App Store, and if you are willing to attend, this here slate provides an international-class Gmail experience, better handling than the iPad 2 (in our humble opinion, anyway) and a more robust resolution display.
9 The 16GB WiFi model will hit for $499 — exactly in keeping with the iPad — while the 32GB variant will demand $100 more (we’re still awaiting word on 3G prices). In case you are sold on Android, and also you aren’t too focused on having an LTE radio to your tablet, there’s really little need to go looking elsewhere. After all, the upcoming release of 8 iOS 5 8 makes it awfully hard to disregard just how good the iPad 2 would be q4, but who’s living sooner or later, right?
0 We’d still prefer 9 Music Beta 9 to be more more like 0 iTunes within the Cloud 0 , and we might love a microSD slot, but we cannot help but applaud Samsung for pushing Android tablets to a degree they’ve never reached up to now.
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