Special Edition Galaxy Tab 10.1 review

Google was gracious enough to give out Samsung Tab 10.1 tablets to everyone in attendance at the annual Google IO event in San Francisco. The Tab is no slouch, with high end specs a plenty, this thing definitely gives the Apple iPad 2 a run for its money, if not a marathon. So, does Samsung have what it takes to beat the Palo Alto based behemoth? Lets find out.

At first glance...
The Honeycomb Galaxy Tab 10.1 is quite the looker. The smooth 10.1 inch glass covered front compliments its slim design, and this thing is slim, 8.6 mm thin to be exact. Along its side is a plastic silver bezel, that doesn't look or feel cheap. Interrupting the otherwise seamless line are two mesh covered speakers and a USB dock connector. Upfront is a 2 mega pixel camera for video chat, with a 3 mega pixel camera around back with LED flash. Now, the one thing that makes the Google IO Tab different from the production model that will be launched on June 8, is that the back cover is white with an army of “bug droids.” This little detail would make any Android fan-boy giddy like a little school girl (or fan-girl), myself included. Much thanks goes to Google and Samsung for this collaboration.

Design
It will be hard to find someone that will argue that Samsung has pulled a miracle out of thin air here. Just a week prior to the release of the iPad 2, Samsung announced a fully functional production model of the 10.1 Tab, and it was a eye candy then! Shortly after Apple "flummoxed" everybody at their iPad 2 launch, Samsung pulled the 10.1 Tab from production and went back to the drawing board. Now, less than 4 months later they are about to launch their new and improved model that is thinner and lighter than the iPad 2. Woah! there are a lot of resources that are used in these new product releases and apparently, Samsung has them and some to spare. This feat is astonishing, and only a company as large as Samsung could pull it off. OK, not only did they “wip” up this new design in record time, but in some aspects, it does better than the iPad 2. Having said that, getting the newly design Tab into the hands of 5000 google geeks is another feat all by itself but hasn't come without its fair share of flaws. As soon as IO attendees began playing with their new devices, the IO service desk became a bit busy. People complaining of light leakage were a common thing there. Fortunately, Google had spares and swiftly replaced them. Unfortunately, this IO attender's Tab started showing its flaws a few days after the conference. I get a little light leakage on the left bottom corner, but that's not the worst part. On the three of the four corners on the Tab (yes, they weren't able squeeze another corner in there somewhere) my screen is slowly lifting from its case, and on one side its so bad I can fit my finger nail into the opening...don't get me wrong, I always love freebies and I’m grateful, but this is becoming a bigger problem with manufacturers and the end users are suffering, but that is an editorial for another time. So, as for build quality, the Tab falls short of great or even a good rating, there is something to be said about a company that churns out products that can’t even last a week...

Hardware

Where Apple’s iPad 2 seems to have left off, Samsung is right on the heels of the iPad 2 to pick up the pieces. After the re-engineering of the beefier MWC debut of the Tab 10.1, the Galaxy Tab is lighter and thinner than the iPad 2, a whole .2 mm thinner at 8.6 mm and has just as much processing power. Besides the diet, the innards are still the same and packed to the gills with the latest processing power. The Tab runs a Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core processor operating at 1 ghz. This makes gaming a real joy and the tablet doesnt even break a sweat with even the most intensive games in the Android Market. Moving on, sensors, including gyroscope, accelerometer, and ambient light are all present, and AGPS works! The screen is nice to look as well, and compliments the tab nicely. It is a wxga screen at an impressive 1280 x 800 screen resolution, perfect for watching movies or gaming. Now, what about the cameras? Samsung did us a favor for the front facing camera and made it a 2 mp sensor for those “close-ups” in g-chat. on the other side of the tablet is a measly 3 mp sensor compared to that of the Motorola Xoom at 5 mp. But, lets be honest, outside of a conference full of geeks that just got a tablet, no one should be using these things as their primary shooter...its just embarrassing. Overall, the hardware of the Tab is quite impressive, but it doesn't differentiate itself very much from its other Honeycomb brethren.

Photos
Like I said above, there are not very many situations where the Tab can substitute in for your everyday point and shoot cam. The pictures that I reluctantly took in public were sub par at best. In low light, it gets worse, the compression in the photos are hard to ignore. Flip the Tab over, and we find the video chat camera. At 2 mp it bests most of the tablets that are currently in the market. Aside from the 2 mp sensor, the camera does its job and it does it well, but there isn't much differentiation from the PC cams out there if you need a comparison. Furthermore, the Galaxy Tab undoubtedly needs high spec-ed cameras to even been considered in the market that its in, because the average consumer loves numbers and the higher the better. As for quality, this pair of cameras seem more of a “hook” to buy the Tab than utility.

Battery
The battery has to be the most impressive element here. It has held its charge better than any other android device that I have owned or researched. I have had it for a week now, and I have charged it only three times! and I have spent time with it, we are talking some heavy use with video, document editing, and of course Angry Birds (guilty)...I am especially impressed that Samsung was able to cram a 7000 mah battery in the new compact size. Other than that, the normally power greedy Nvidia processor seems to sip on the energy source so there are some major power consumption tweaks built into this thing, yet it still gives the dual core processor speeds that we all crave.

Overall
The Galaxy Tab brings a gun to a gun fight, it is evenly matched with all the other high end tablets out in the market. It most definitely gives the iPad 2 a run for its money, and its a “toss up” for someone that is jonesing to get their hands on a tablet. I would recommend the Tab 10.1 to anyone, but when it comes down to it, you have to ask yourself; are you a fan of Android? A fan of Apple?  Do you want something that is iconic and has tablet specific apps? Fragmentation vs integration? These are all things to consider, and its hard to say which one is better, both could give equal satisfaction, so ill take the easy way out and  just say, “its up to you.”