Introduction
Not so long ago the tablet was a futureless species, stuck in an evolutionary dead-end. The technology and the the operating systems didn't offer the right balance of portability and usability to suit its needs. But just look at it now...It was the Apple iPad that made the first splash and many other tablets are on their way on following its steps. We guess Samsung’s had an easier job than Apple bringing it to market. They already had the Samsung Galaxy S in the works and just had to make it bigger. Plus, they didn’t need to go to great lengths explaining what a tablet is and what it does.
Official photos of the Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab
If nothing else, the Galaxy Tab makes the S in Galaxy S meaningful. But the Tab itself is not size XL. In a nutshell, the new Samsung tablet is a Galaxy S with 3 inches added to the screen and 2 megapixels taken away from the camera. The Tab is equipped with the same 1GHz Hummingbird processor and PowerVR SGX540 graphics accelerator, 512MB RAM, a complete connectivity set and 16GB internal storage. The whole thing’s running on Android’s latest – v2.2 Froyo.
Key features
- 190.09 x 120.45 x 11.98mm, 380g
- Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G support, 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA support
- Full GSM phone calling functionality
- 7" 16M-color TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen of WSVGA (600 x 1024) pixel resolution, Gorilla Glass
- Android OS v2.2 with TouchWiz 3.0 UI customization
- 1GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird CPU
- PowerVR SGX540 graphics accelerator
- 512 MB of RAM
- 3.2 MP autofocus camera with smile detection and geo-tagging
- D1 (720 x 480 pixels) video recording at 30fps
- Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n support
- GPS with A-GPS connectivity; Digital compass
- 16GB internal storage, microSD slot
- DivX and XviD video codec support, Full HD video playback
- HD video out (with a proprietary dock)
- Accelerometer, ambient-light and gyro sensor
- Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
- 30-pin connector and stereo Bluetooth v3.0
- Office document editor
- Secondary video-call camera
- Swype predictive text input
- Adobe Flash Player 10.1 support
- Stereo speakers
- 4000 mAh Li-Ion battery
- Great audio quality
Main disadvantages
- Poor viewing angles
- Picture ghosting due to slow LCD response
- Some apps incompatible with the new resolution
- Gallery displays downsized images only
- Quiet loudspeaker
- No FM radio
- No USB host support
Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab live shots
When Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Tab they stated that its purpose was not to rival the iPad but to bring something different to the tablet market. This might have just been a face saving statement but it’s obvious the iPad and the Galaxy Tab are each aimed at quite different types of users.
Samsung Galaxy P1000 Tab over Apple iPad
- Lighter and smaller, easier on the pocket
- Telephony (including 3G video calls)
- 3.2 MP camera with D1 video recording @ 30 fps and LED flash
- Android OS v2.2 Froyo
- Proper multitasking (though the iPad is getting that too in a couple of months)
- microSD card slot for memory expansion
- Uses regular size SIM card
- 16:9 widescreen display
- Adobe Flash player 10.1
- DivX/XviD 1080p video playback
- Bluetooth 3.0
Apple iPad over Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab
- Larger and better screen
- Metal body
- iOS 3.1.3 with more than 25 000 apps tailor-made for it
- Larger internal storage (iPad 64GB)
- Better battery life
- YouTube app streams higher-quality footage
The Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab compared with the iPhone 4 and the Apple iPad
It’s not about which one is superior: more powerful or better looking. It’s about what you need the tablet for. Some will call the Galaxy Tab plain smaller. To others it will mean more pocketable, manageable and easier to handle. Some need to make calls on their tablets, to others it’s irrelevant. Where some will see a small screen, others will appreciate the better DPI.
For all the good and bad of it, the Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab has finally arrived at our place and we are ready to give it a test ride. Everything you may want to know starts right after the jump.
Unboxing the Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab
The Samsung Galaxy Tab retail box is not nearly as exciting as the tablet itself. It has the basics covered and that’s that – an Apple-influenced charger, a 30-pin USB cable and a one-piece wired headset.No, it’s not the best, but at least the package is better than the iPad’s, which only had a USB cable/charger combo included.
The Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab comes in a modest retail package
Of course we would have really appreciated a carrying case, a QWERTY keyboard or an HDMI dock, but these are things you’ll need to buy separately.
Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab and its optional QWERTY keyboard • HDMI dock
Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab 360-degree spin
The Samsung Galaxy Tab fits somewhere between top-end smartphones like Galaxy S or iPhone 4 and the currently available tablets such as the 10-inch iPad. With a surface measuring 190 x 120mm, the Galaxy Tab is not a small device, but the 7” screen says it all.
The Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab compared to the iPhone 4
Apple’s iPad is way bigger than the Galaxy Tab. The Samsung’s tablet has a proper wide aspect ratio and handles comfortably regardless of which orientation you prefer (portrait or landscape). The 12mm thickness is another thing to be impressed with.
Design and construction
In the Galaxy Tab design the sides match the color of the front rather than the back panel, and the body is curved in the opposite direction. And the result is really smooth and convincing despite the all-plastic build. The white rear is quite sleek too and surprisingly fingerprint resistant.The plastic body also brings another advantage – it lowers the Galaxy Tab overall weight to a manageable 380 grams. Of course it’s much heavier than any phone, but feels light as a feather next to the iPad.
Unfortunately, the front glass, Gorilla or not, is the usual fingerprint-prone surface we find on most devices today. Whatever you do, no matter how often you clean it, the glass will be always covered in smudges.
Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab
The front of the Samsung Galaxy Tab is mostly about the 7” WSVGA (1024 x 600 pixels) LCD touchscreen. It has great picture quality for an LCD unit and even though the contrast isn’t quite as impressive as on SuperAMOLED, it’s good enough to rival the iPad. Of course the higher density (192 ppi) also helps here.
However when it comes to viewing angles the Galaxy Tab appears to be behind the Apple tablet. It seems the colors start to wash out at much wider angles than on the iPad. This is not to say that you are unable to see the Galaxy Tab display from an angle – the colors might not be accurate but the image is still there.
The 7" screen of the Tab has great picture quality but small viewing angles and just descent contrast
While browsing the gallery we noticed one more thing we didn’t much like about the display – picture ghosting. Some fast scrolling through the image gallery revealed some unpleasant ghosting, especially on darker images. This issue is probably caused by a slower LCD response time (16ms or higher).
The bright side is the sensitivity of the Samsung Galaxy Tab touchscreen, which is simply superb. But hey, that is hardly any news when talking about a capacitive unit. It may make styluses and gloves a no-go but every single touch of your bare fingers is sure to register.
Above the display we find the video-call camera and the ambient light sensor.
The video-call camera on top
Below the display we find four capacitive buttons. Those include Back, Home, Context menu and a dedicated Search key. They are all large enough and comfortable to use. And since the keys use the same technology as the screen, the transition is as smooth as it gets.
Four Android keys under the screen
The right hand side (assuming portrait is its default position) of the Galaxy Tab is quite busy. Samsung has placed the volume rocker and the power/screen lock keys there, as well as the SIM card tray and the microSD card slot. There are small plastic lids covering the two slots so they’re safe against dirt and moisture.
The right-hand side of Samsung Galaxy Tab is quite busy – two key combos and two card slots
By contrast, the 3.5mm jack is exposed and it’s the only thing of interest to find on the top of the device. There is one more concern too – the jack position. When you plug the headphones in, they easily become an obstacle for your left hand in landscape use.
On top there's only the 3.5mm audio jack
The left is also pretty bare, with the microphone pinhole the only thing to note. It’s located near the top so it’s harder to muffle with a finger when holding the phone.
The left-hand side is empty save for the mic pinhole
The bottom of the Galaxy Tab is where the stereo speakers and the 30-pin connector are located. Samsung did consider using a standard microUSB port instead, but that would’ve ruled out accessories such as HDMI cables, so they went for the proprietary connector.
Unfortunately the Galaxy Tab does not charge over the USB cable, you’ll need to plug the charger in for that.
If you look closely at the USB cable you’ll find that it’s exactly the same unit (length, connector, shape of the USB plug) as the one used with Apple’s iPad/iPhone 4. Just don’t try using either cable on the wrong device, it won’t fit. The cables use completely different pins and any attempts will result in damage on the wrong receiving port.
At the bottom you can see the stereo speakers and the proprietary 30-pin connector that looks like Apple's
We conclude our trip at the beautiful white rear where we find the 3.2 megapixel camera and its LED flash. Samsung has never considered the Galaxy Tab as a device that you can use to take photos all the time. Instead they placed the camera as a tool that enables more apps to run on the Galaxy Tab. There are plenty of apps in the Android market that need the camera to work and that’s the main reason why the snapper is there.
The 3.2MP camera with LED flash is on the back
The battery of the Samsung Galaxy Tab is not user removable. In the event that you need to change it, you'd have to visit an authorized service center. Samsung claims the 4000 mAh unit is good for 7 hours of video playback (we are assuming SD content here). This doesn’t sound bad at all but the iPad does 10 hours of that on a bigger screen so it’s not exactly great either.
The general impression of the Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab hardware is very positive. The display is not as good as we hoped, but the controls are large enough and there are generally no ergonomic blunders. We are sorry they had to go for a proprietary connectivity port but at least that does allow HDMI output (via the optional dock), which makes good sense on a 1080p DivX-capable device. We would have been definitely happier with a higher-res (5MP or so) camera with HD video recording.
Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab held in hand
The Samsung Galaxy Tab handles great in general and that’s down to its slim profile, narrow bezel and light weight. It is also pretty compact and you might even be able to squeeze it in a wider pocket depending on your clothes that day. This is all, of course, only true if you look at it as a tablet. If you want it to replace your phone on the other hand, things look quite differently.
Okay, so now that we have the hardware covered, let’s see what the Galaxy Tab has to offer on the software side of things. Join us after the break.
User interface: Froyo XL
For the Galaxy Tab user interface, Samsung has used the latest reincarnation of the Android platform, 2.2 Froyo, but unlike their Android smartphones kept the customizations to a lower level. This means that you won’t be getting the full TouchWiz experience, though most of the important parts are here anyway.
It’s more Froyo and less TouchWiz with the Galaxy Tab
The homescreen offers you up to nine panes to populate with widgets. You are free to rearrange them as you see fit and delete the ones you do not need to speed up the navigation. The easiest way to manage your homescreen is to pinch zoom out and than use the Samsung equivalent of HTC Helicopter view.
Pinch zoom out the homescreen and you are in editing mode
As usual Samsung has added a few widgets of its own to the standard Android selection, but this time there’s no separate entry for them when adding content to your homescreen. Anyway, with so many widgets (and even alternative homescreens) available from the Android market this is hardly considered as big a differentiating factor as it was before.
The set of widgets that comes with the Tab
Unlike the Galaxy S and the rest of the TouchWiz gang, the Samsung Tab has three buttons docked at the bottom of its homescreen and only the middle one remains visible when you open the menu. It’s the one used for alternating between your main menu and you homescreen.
The other two take you to the email and stock web browser by default but you are free to change them as you see fit.
The main menu consists of side-scrollable panes, much like the homescreen. You can add new pages manually, by dragging an app to a new screen while in edit mode. Unlike most Android smartphones however the Tab offers landscape mode here.
When the launcher is in edit mode, you can uninstall applications (only the ones that you installed) just by tapping their right corner.
Managing the main menu
The task switcher has been updated too and now features shortcuts to the eight (as opposed to six) most recently used apps. There is also a button that takes you to the Samsung home-brewed task manager, which turned out to be rather capable.
The task switcher and task manager of the Galaxy Tab
It allows you to close running apps or even uninstall them completely. You can also move an application to the SD card (as long as the app supports it). In contrast, this requires a 3rd party app on the Galaxy S even after the Froyo update.
Finally, the task manager also brings an app monitor widget, which if placed on you homescreen, will warn you if there are any running apps that might consume your battery.
The notification area has the usual Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and sound toggles, but this time also adds auto-rotation switch (which can disable the accelerometer-based rotation) and brightness slider. With all those a single swipe away, you will rarely need to enter the Settings menu on your Galaxy Tab.
The notification area now has a brightness slider
When you turn on Wi-Fi your Galaxy Tab automatically connects to any known network in the vicinity. If there are no known Wi-Fi networks, a pop-up appears that lets you pick a network. It doesn’t get much simpler than that really.
Unlike the Galaxy S, Samsung Galaxy Tab comes with the stock Android lock screen, where you need to swipe sideways and place the padlock icon over the green dot to unlock. There are cool alternative unlocking patterns too when you have a missed event – a message or a call. Not only do they indicate what events you have missed but they also take you straight to the call log/messaging app when you use them.
Also bear in mind that the Android market offers several apps that allow you to customize your unlock screen beyond recognition. You can change the image, the unlock pattern, the presence and location of the clock etc.
Some interesting touches by Samsung are to be noticed in the Galaxy Tab settings menu. This is the first Android-running device that we can think of to offer display settings such as saturation and contrast.
The performance of the Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab was quite impressive. The ghosting (which as we told you is probably the hardware’s fault) aside, everything is as smooth and quick as you could hope for.
Now according to Samsung’s official information, the Galaxy Tab is supposed to have the same amount of RAM as the Galaxy S (512MB each). Yet the tablet has access to over 400MB of those in the task manager, while the smartphone gives you just over 300MB. So you can be sure that the Tab will have enough free operating memory at all times.
On a side note, that difference between the two will further fuel the rumors about the Galaxy S not having the full promised 512MB RAM inside.
We're now giving you a short video demonstrating the Galaxy Tab real life performance.
Finally, we ran the usual benchmarks on the Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab and it did pretty well. As you can see the Tab’s performance is not much better than that of the Galaxy S running Froyo.
The Galaxy Tab benchmark results
Samsung I9000 Galaxy S benchmark results (Android 2.2 Froyo)
Phonebook for tablets
The phonebook is one of the apps where Samsung decided to put the large screen estate to a better use and they’ve redesigned the interface. The updates are mostly about looks and showing more information on one screen, as the functionality is the same as in the stock app.A flawed gallery
Samsung decided against customizing the P1000 Galaxy Tab gallery and went for the stock option instead. It’s quite functional, automatically locating all you images and videos and sorting them by folders and it even syncs up with your Picasa web albums.There’s also plenty of eye-candy with cool 3D effects and some nice transitions. The different albums appear as stacks of photos, which fall in neat grids once selected. Each time you select a stack from the gallery (that is automatically named after the folder) the background changes to a blurred version of one of the images within.
The gallery is cool but for a fatal flaw
The gallery supports finger scrolling or panning so you can skip images without having to return to the default view. Just swipe to the left or right when viewing a photo in fullscreen mode and the previous/next image will appear.
There are tons of options for a picture – you can crop or rotate it directly in the gallery. The Send feature offers quick sharing via Picasa, Email apps, Bluetooth or MMS.
Checking out a single photo • the available options • zooming in
The pinch zooming is also available here thanks to the Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab multi-touch support.
Unfortunately, zooming in on the Galaxy Tab doesn’t reveal any more detail. Obviously the gallery displays only a downsized version of your images and you need to transfer them to a computer if you're into pixel-peeping.
Video player is a treat
Samsung were keen to promote the P1000 Galaxy Tab video player and they have good reasons for that. In addition to the DivX and XviD video support, it also delivers smooth performance in up to Full HD video resolution.Of course not all Full HD content is a go, but if you keep the bitrate reasonable you’ll be fine. And chances are 720p will always work – the Tab had no trouble with our testing clips, that’s for sure.
The video player app
If you feel like spending the extra cash for the multimedia stand you can also get 1080p TV-out, making the Tab pretty good at home entertainment center duties. DLNA is also there if you need it.
There is a nice feature that automatically splits the videos into separate scenes so you can skip directly to a specific part.
The video player automatically splits the movie into scenes
There are still a few things wrong with the video player. First MKV files didn’t play for some reason, but you can fix that with a third-party video player from the Android Market.
Watching a video on the Tab
Also we noticed that there’s dithering in some of the samples, which wasn’t present when we played the videos on a computer. It’s not so bad as to have a great impact on the overall experience but we felt it’s worth pointing it out.
Finally, we tried loading subtitles in English and they worked just fine, but there's no charset setting, so non-Latin languages may have issues.
Music player got a new interface too
The Galaxy Tab music player got a treat similar to the email client with two tabs. The filtering criteria entries (artists/albums/genres etc) are on the left, while the currently selected one gets its tracks listed on the right.
The music player got an update too
In addition, Samsung has enabled equalizer presets on the Galaxy Tab. The great feature that allows you to quickly look up a song on YouTube or via Google search is also here.
The now playing interface and the available settings
The handset also prompts you to select whether to look up the artist, the song title or the album. What's even better, the YouTube search results are loaded straight into the YouTube client.
And with the added eye-candy, album view and song scrolling, things are about as good as they could get.
Samsung also added the music hub app here, which allows you to browse, purchase and listen to music from one place. The library is quite extensive so if you feel like getting a track from here, chances are it will be available.
Very good audio quality
Unsurprisingly, the Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab passed our audio quality test with flying colors. It did even better than the already pretty good I9000 Galaxy S, but that's little surprise considering that the engineers had much more room this time.As you can see the Galaxy Tab performs excellently when an external amplifier is used and there is only slight deteoration when headphones are attached. The stereo crosstalk reading took the biggest hit, while the intermodulation distortion and dynamic range were also affected but still remained great.
Check out the table and see for yourself.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| +0.02, -0.17 | -90.7 | 90.0 | 0.100 | 0.065 | -87.0 | |
| +0.72, -0.14 | -90.4 | 89.9 | 0.018 | 0.360 | -53.4 | |
| +0.01, -0.07 | -90.5 | 90.6 | 0.0041 | 0.011 | -92.0 | |
| Samsung I9000 Galaxy S | +0.03 -0.04 | -90.7 | 90.6 | 0.014 | 0.019 | -90.6 |
| +0.01, -0.07 | -90.4 | 90.4 | 0.0036 | 0.092 | -68.4 | |
| Samsung I9000 Galaxy S (headphones attached) | +0.40 -0.12 | -90.7 | 90.6 | 0.018 | 0.329 | -43.3 |
Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab frequency response
The phonebook is well adapted to the larger screen
You can pick which contact list should be displayed (phone memory, SIM-stored and all Google contacts) and you can search the entries by either flick-scrolling the list or using the alphabetic scroll bar.
This time instead of having one screen for browsing your contacts and another for checking out the details of a single entry you get them both at the same time. The list goes on the left and the details are on the right. Handy, eh?
The Quick contacts functionality is still here – a tap and hold on any name brings up the bar with available options. You can then initiate a call, text, or email with a couple of clicks.
Quick contacts are here too
There are many info fields that you can assign to each contact, but it still remains perfectly organized. You have all the types listed (numbers, email addresses, etc) and there's a plus sign on the right - clicking it adds another item of that type. Pressing the minus sign under it deletes the unneeded field.
Editing a contact’s details
You can also check on the call history of a single contact straight from their profile in the phonebook. Again it’s only a click away.
Telephony is all there
And here we come to one of the more interesting aspects of the Samsung Galaxy Tab. With the handset supporting voice and video-calling, it could in theory replace your phone all together. Now we don’t know how practical it is to have a 7” device as your primary phone but if you decide to go for it, the software is all there to support you.You can talk by using the loudspeaker or you can go for a pair of headphones and again use the microphone on the device itself. The more sensible approach will be to use a handsfree (wired or Bluetooth) as you won’t need to go shouting at the device from a distance.
The only thing you can’t do is pretend you are Gulliver in Brobdingnag and hold the Tab next to your ear. Technically, you can do that too, but there is no earpiece and the loudspeaker might hurt your ears, so it’s not generally recommended.
As far as reception is concerned, we experienced no issues or in-call voice quality drops.
On the software side of things the Galaxy Tab starts strong with Smart Dial. As good as on the company’s dedicated smartphones it searches both contact numbers and names.
Smart dial works like a charm
The available options during a call include hold, add another call (create conference call), mute and, of course, end call. The keypad is visible at all times, which is convenient for those interactive call handling systems and in case you need to write down a number.
The in-call screen
We also ran our traditional loudspeaker test on the Galaxy Tab. The big guy was rather quiet ending with a Below Average score. Missed calls are likely in noisier environments with this one. What is more worrying is that you’ll probably have hard time using it for consuming multimedia content.
| Speakerphone test | Voice, dB | Ringing | Overall score | |
| Samsung I9000 Galaxy S | 66.6 | 65.9 | 66.6 | |
| Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab | 66.7 | 64.6 | 68.6 | |
| Google Nexus One | 69.9 | 66.6 | 79.1 | Good |
| Apple iPad | 66.5 | 65.8 | 69.7 | Average |
| HTC Legend | 78.0 | 74.3 | 79.7 | Excellent |
More info on our loudspeaker test as well as other results can be found here.
Messaging is what the Tab does best
Now while we’re a little uncertain about calling, messaging on the Tab seems a far more likely scenario. Email is probably where all the focus will go but with a SIM card already inside the occasional SMS and MMS messages aren’t out of the question either. Fortunately the software is all there to take care of it.The SMS and MMS messaging section is quite straightforward and simple - there are no folders here, just a new message button. Under that button is a list of all your messages organized into threads.
The Tab messaging department
Going landscape allows you to check out the list of conversations on the left and see the messages in the currently selected one on the right.
It all feels more natural in landscape mode
Swiping on a message header will do exactly the same as in the phonebook – a left swipe starts a new message, while swiping to the right will start a call.
There’s an application-specific search that lets you quickly find a given message among all your stored SMS and MMS.
To add message recipients, just start typing the corresponding name or number and choose from the contacts offered.
Any unsent messages and drafts are marked with a red "Draft" label. What we really like is that each thread keeps the text in the tap-to-compose box even if you exit without sending it or explicitly save it. The "undelivered messages" section has been removed.
If you wish to manage a specific message in the history, you can press and hold a message to bring up options such as edit, forward and delete as well as view details and copy message text.
A press-and-hold in the tap-to-compose area gives you access to functions such as cut, copy and paste. You are free to paste the copied text across applications like email, notes, chats, etc. and vice versa.
Converting an SMS to MMS is logical and easy. When you add multimedia content to the message, it is automatically turned into an MMS. You can just quickly add a photo or an audio file to go with the text or you can choose to go into a full-blown MMS editor, depending on your needs.
Texting Dexter
The email client is another part of the Galaxy Tab interface that has been modified to make better use of the larger screen and higher resolution. You now get the list of your emails on the left and a preview of the currently selected one on the right. You are also free to change the size of the two fields by dragging the dividing line that’s between them.
The email client got updated too
Both the regular email client and the the Gmail app supports batch operations, which allows multiple emails to be deleted, mark as read etc. Multiple POP or IMAP accounts accounts are naturally supported (and now those can be quickly switched with the shortcut on top). You have access to the original folders that are created online, side by side with the standard local ones such as inbox, drafts and sent items.
Composing an email is pretty straightforward
The Galaxy Tab also sports a combined inbox, which brings together all your mail in a single folder (color-coded to make orientation easier) so you don’t need to check each one for new mail. This can be quite handy if you have lots of accounts and you just want to check if there is a new message needing your attention.
And you won’t have much trouble with the input either. On a screen this big and with a device that can lie on a table steadily you can speed your way through quite a lot of text. You get QWERTY in both portrait and landscape modes and there’s Swype to give you that extra speed.
There's an excellent tutorial to answer all your Swype-related questions and to teach you all the little secrets - capitalizing, punctuation etc. If Swype isn’t your cup of tea or your native language isn’t supported, turning it off and using the rather comfy Samsung keyboard is also an option.
The available text input options
You may not be crushing the records of your netbook-owning buddies, but you will have little trouble entering text on the Tab.
Typing on the Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab]]
A flawed gallery
Samsung decided against customizing the P1000 Galaxy Tab gallery and went for the stock option instead. It’s quite functional, automatically locating all you images and videos and sorting them by folders and it even syncs up with your Picasa web albums.There’s also plenty of eye-candy with cool 3D effects and some nice transitions. The different albums appear as stacks of photos, which fall in neat grids once selected. Each time you select a stack from the gallery (that is automatically named after the folder) the background changes to a blurred version of one of the images within.
The gallery is cool but for a fatal flaw
The gallery supports finger scrolling or panning so you can skip images without having to return to the default view. Just swipe to the left or right when viewing a photo in fullscreen mode and the previous/next image will appear.
There are tons of options for a picture – you can crop or rotate it directly in the gallery. The Send feature offers quick sharing via Picasa, Email apps, Bluetooth or MMS.
Checking out a single photo • the available options • zooming in
The pinch zooming is also available here thanks to the Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab multi-touch support.
Unfortunately, zooming in on the Galaxy Tab doesn’t reveal any more detail. Obviously the gallery displays only a downsized version of your images and you need to transfer them to a computer if you're into pixel-peeping.
Video player is a treat
Samsung were keen to promote the P1000 Galaxy Tab video player and they have good reasons for that. In addition to the DivX and XviD video support, it also delivers smooth performance in up to Full HD video resolution.Of course not all Full HD content is a go, but if you keep the bitrate reasonable you’ll be fine. And chances are 720p will always work – the Tab had no trouble with our testing clips, that’s for sure.
The video player app
If you feel like spending the extra cash for the multimedia stand you can also get 1080p TV-out, making the Tab pretty good at home entertainment center duties. DLNA is also there if you need it.
There is a nice feature that automatically splits the videos into separate scenes so you can skip directly to a specific part.
The video player automatically splits the movie into scenes
There are still a few things wrong with the video player. First MKV files didn’t play for some reason, but you can fix that with a third-party video player from the Android Market.
Watching a video on the Tab
Also we noticed that there’s dithering in some of the samples, which wasn’t present when we played the videos on a computer. It’s not so bad as to have a great impact on the overall experience but we felt it’s worth pointing it out.
Finally, we tried loading subtitles in English and they worked just fine, but there's no charset setting, so non-Latin languages may have issues.
Music player got a new interface too
The Galaxy Tab music player got a treat similar to the email client with two tabs. The filtering criteria entries (artists/albums/genres etc) are on the left, while the currently selected one gets its tracks listed on the right.Organizer is all set
Organizing your time is what a mobile computer should be able to do and the Galaxy Tab strives hard to match that definition. And while it’s not a proper OS you are getting, the time management features are as good as you are ever going to need.The calendar, which can be easily synced with your Google account, allows you to easily create and manage events and comes with a shiny new UI designed for tablet use. You get the usual view modes available but now the events can be previewed for all of them – including the monthly one.
Enter the new calendar
Adding a new event is quick and easy, and you can also set an alarm to act as a reminder. Even adding a location from Google Maps is supported.
The Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab comes with ThinkFree Office pre-installed – it’s both a document viewer and an editor. It works like a charm and you can control zooming with a pinch gesture. Both panning and zooming are fast and the overall performance of the Office package is excellent.
Managing documents on-the-go is possible with the preinstalled ThinkFree Office
Strangely enough there is no calculator aboard. You will have to go to the market and grab one yourself, but at least there are plenty of free options there so it won’t cost you anything.
The Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab features a decent alarm clock application, which allows you to set numerous alarms, each with its own start time and repeat pattern.
Setting up an alarm on the Galaxy Tab
Samsung have included the My Files app – a simple to use but functional file manager. It can move, copy, lock and rename files in bulk, even send multiple files over Bluetooth. It will only browse the memory card and the large internal storage (it can’t access the system memory).
Next, Samsung Galaxy Tab features the Readers Hub app, which allows you to access over 2.2 ebooks ePub, PDF, and Adobe DRM. Samsung also promise that the will also allow you to to add ebooks bought or downloaded from other sources. The Readers Hub gives you access to a large selection of magazines and newspapers too. The subscription is pretty easy and is done from the app itself.
The Readers Hub
The user interface of that app is also pretty decent, supporting swipe gestures for turning pages as well as taps. Both Horizontal and landscape modes are supported.
Finally, comes the YouTube app which allows you to watch YouTube videos without entering the browser. There are standard and high-quality settings, but even if you select high-quality you still don’t get as good videos as on the iPad (which has no settings available whatsoever).
The YouTube app
Android Market is where the apps come from
The main strength of an operating system lies in its app base and Android is hardly short on apps. Fortunately the Galaxy Tab has access to the official android repository, or as we all know it – the Android Market. The number of apps there is huge and rapidly growing so chances are you will find something for every taste.
The Galaxy Tab has access to the Android Market
The market interface itself hasn’t changed much. The first screen of the Market shows several featured apps. The Market organizes apps and games into two separate tabs and each tab lists sub-categories (e.g. Finance applications, Arcade & Action games). In each category you can select to view the top free, top paid apps or ones that are “Just in”.
There's a third tab – Downloads – that keeps track of what you’ve already downloaded. With Froyo you won’t need to keep too close an eye on this tab – apps automatic updating is supported as long as you permit it. Still you can use it to uninstall apps, but it’s not the most comfortable way to do it.
Applications range from pretty silly (including one that simulates a doorbell), through fun (e.g. a virtual guitar) to real must-have's (including alternative launchers, themes, navigation software and more), but that’s true for every other app store.
Now for the bad news. The Galaxy Tab has a resolution higher than any Android smartphone and that means some apps aren’t designed to work with it. Of course there are also some app that have a version that can fill the whole 1024x600 pixel-display, but most will simply leaves the borders unused.
Most apps only use a part of the high-res screen
Of course making an app compatible with a higher resolution is easier than creating the app itself so it shouldn’t take long for the whole market to get Tab-friendly versions. And the number of tablets will increase in the future so it’s not like it won’t be worth the effort.
GPS with Google Navigation
With its 7-inch screen and built-in GPS receiver the Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab can easily become one fat-ass SatNav device. The sensitivity of the GPS module is decent, the Tab achieving a satellite lock in just over 3 minutes with A-GPS switched off. If you have an active data connection you can easily cut down on that time.
Google Maps will hardly surprise anyone
It comes as no surprise that Google Maps is the only mapping software that comes preinstalled. Unfortunately, voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation by Google Maps still has limited availability.
So, unless you are in the lucky few countries that do have Google Maps navigation already, you can either use the route planning to turn the Tab into a digital Map, which is reasonably easy to follow or grab a third-party solution from the market. The second option is certainly more comfortable but most good apps don’t come free and you might have some issues with the Tab’s screen resolution.
Back to Google Maps now and the Galaxy Tab Street View mode support. With the large screen and the built-in compass you can enjoy a 360-degree view of an area of your choice.
The music player got an update too
In addition, Samsung has enabled equalizer presets on the Galaxy Tab. The great feature that allows you to quickly look up a song on YouTube or via Google search is also here.
The now playing interface and the available settings
The handset also prompts you to select whether to look up the artist, the song title or the album. What's even better, the YouTube search results are loaded straight into the YouTube client.
And with the added eye-candy, album view and song scrolling, things are about as good as they could get.
Samsung also added the music hub app here, which allows you to browse, purchase and listen to music from one place. The library is quite extensive so if you feel like getting a track from here, chances are it will be available.
Very good audio quality
Unsurprisingly, the Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab passed our audio quality test with flying colors. It did even better than the already pretty good I9000 Galaxy S, but that's little surprise considering that the engineers had much more room this time.As you can see the Galaxy Tab performs excellently when an external amplifier is used and there is only slight deteoration when headphones are attached. The stereo crosstalk reading took the biggest hit, while the intermodulation distortion and dynamic range were also affected but still remained great.
Check out the table and see for yourself.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| +0.02, -0.17 | -90.7 | 90.0 | 0.100 | 0.065 | -87.0 | |
| +0.72, -0.14 | -90.4 | 89.9 | 0.018 | 0.360 | -53.4 | |
| +0.01, -0.07 | -90.5 | 90.6 | 0.0041 | 0.011 | -92.0 | |
| Samsung I9000 Galaxy S | +0.03 -0.04 | -90.7 | 90.6 | 0.014 | 0.019 | -90.6 |
| +0.01, -0.07 | -90.4 | 90.4 | 0.0036 | 0.092 | -68.4 | |
| Samsung I9000 Galaxy S (headphones attached) | +0.40 -0.12 | -90.7 | 90.6 | 0.018 | 0.329 | -43.3 |
Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab frequency response
Even tablets need a camera
With so much more space available, Samsung could have easily slapped an umpteen megapixel snapper on the back of the Tab. That wouldn’t have made much sense though as shooting stills with a 7” slate is a rather…well, uncomfortable experience.Instead the camera on the Tab is an extra feature that would enable an app here and will let you snap a contact photo there. It’s not meant to replace your dedicated camera, nor should it be considered as a key selling point at all (though it gives it an edge over the iPad).
The still camera interace
What you get with the Galaxy Tab is 3 megapixel resolution, LED flash and no shutter key.
At least you get the same camera interface as on the Galaxy S. While we appreciated it on a screen this big is a whole other question, as you need to reach much further to get to the two tabs.
On the other hand you can hardly miss one of the keys with them being so big. The interface offers readily accessible Scene and shooting modes as well as exposure compensation and flash settings.
Features are also well covered with geotagging, face and smile detection all on board.
The image quality is pretty decent considering the 3MP resolution. The noise reduction algorithms are well balanced and mature enough so there is neither too much noise nor too great a loss of fine detail. Colors are natural and dynamic range is good.
But for the pink spot issue (which is most evident on the res chart shots below), the Galaxy Tab has a great little snapper.
Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab camera samples
Synthetic resolution
We also snapped our resolution chart with the Samsung Galaxy Tab. You can check out what that test is all about You can check out what that test is all about here.
Samsung Galaxy Tab resolution chart photo • 100% crops
Video recording
The video camera of the Galaxy Tab is in a pretty much identical situation to the still camera. You get D1@30 fps video recording, which isn’t bad, but won’t blow your mind either.
Camcorder mode
The amount of resolved detail is good and we like how Samsung took the same relaxed approach to processing, leaving the videos with a nice natural look and little noise. If you are into punchier output you might be a bit disappointed as there are no settings available to increase contrast or saturation.
Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab video sample
Connecting people
Being able to get internet connectivity everywhere is vital for a tablet device. Fortunately the P1000 Galaxy Tab won’t let you down, sporting all the radios you might possibly need.The tally starts with quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and dual-band 3G with HSPA, going at up to 7.2 Mbps for downloads and up to 5.76 Mbps for uploads.
On the local connectivity front you get Wi-Fi (b/g/n), the new Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP support and USB v2.0. Unfortunately Samsung went for a non-standard 30-pin port instead of microUSB (the Dell Streak uses a similar port too).
The reason behind this, according to the manufacturer, is the inclusion of a miniHDMI port on the multimedia stand, which wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Now here is one for you – what if they had both ports separately instead of combining them into one? You wouldn’t need to spend extra on the dock and you would get standard interfaces. And we just can’t see that adding too much to the weight or thickness.
We are also missing the USB host functionality. It would certainly make sense to include it on a tablet with such great multimedia capabilities, so you can, check out a few movies straight from your thumb drive or download a few shots from your camera memory card with a card reader.
Next comes the Bluetooth v3.0 connectivity, which on Android Froyo can be successfully used for transferring all kinds of data.
Besides its 16GB integrated storage, the Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab supports microSD cards of up to 32GB. The slot is hot-swappable so if you prefer you can get a card reader and move your files that way. However, we find that a little too inconvenient to justify the slight increase in the transfer rate speed.
The 3.5 mm standard audio port completes the connectivity rundown. You can keep your favorite headphones and use them with the Galaxy Tab hassle-free.
The web browser gets an extra point for Flash
The web browser has always been among the strongest Android elements and with Froyo it’s probably the best you can get on the market. Not only are its usability levels top notch but its functionality is unrivaled too.The user interface of the Tab browser is identical to what you see on a Froyo-running smartphone.. All you get on the screen is the address bar, which disappears when you scroll down. If you are dealing with apps that need all the screen estate they get, you will be fine with the Tab.
The Tab has a pretty powerful browser
With both pinch-zooming and double tap supported you will also have no trouble going to the desired magnification level and you get text reflow so the Tab saves you some needless, irritating scrolling.
Going fullscreen and lanscape
Hitting the menu key makes six keys pop up. You can add a bookmark, search on page, manage your bookmarks etc. You can also reach for the top of the page if you need to open a new tab or switch between the currently active ones. A quick brightness setting is also available here, but you can just as easily use the slider in the notification area.
Managing open tabs and bookmars
The bookmark list shows a thumbnail of the bookmarked page and you also get a “most visited” list in addition to the history.
And finally we come to Flash, which the Samsung P1000 handles with ease. It doesn’t have Flash Lite, but the real desktop thing – Adoble Flash 10.1, which guarantees compatibility with everything you might encounter.
Flash support is here too
Now performance is a whole other story for two reasons. First, not all Flash elements were meant for touch-use and second, Flash is known to be pretty demanding on the hardware. That’s why despite managing to play 1080p videos on occasions, the Tab has issues with 720p Flash videos. If you keep things at about 480p however you will be fine.
The couple of random Flash games we tried worked pretty well too. At any rate if you happen to be dealing with Flash sites, an uninspiring performance is infinitely better than no performance at all.
And if you happen to only access non-Flash sites, or sites where Flash elements aren’t required (banners, for one), you can switch it off to improve loading times.
With web browsing the main reason to go for a tablet in the first place and Flash being pretty popular, this support gives the Tab quite an advantage in comparison to the iPad.
Organizer is all set
Organizing your time is what a mobile computer should be able to do and the Galaxy Tab strives hard to match that definition. And while it’s not a proper OS you are getting, the time management features are as good as you are ever going to need.The calendar, which can be easily synced with your Google account, allows you to easily create and manage events and comes with a shiny new UI designed for tablet use. You get the usual view modes available but now the events can be previewed for all of them – including the monthly one.
Enter the new calendar
Adding a new event is quick and easy, and you can also set an alarm to act as a reminder. Even adding a location from Google Maps is supported.
The Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab comes with ThinkFree Office pre-installed – it’s both a document viewer and an editor. It works like a charm and you can control zooming with a pinch gesture. Both panning and zooming are fast and the overall performance of the Office package is excellent.
Managing documents on-the-go is possible with the preinstalled ThinkFree Office
Strangely enough there is no calculator aboard. You will have to go to the market and grab one yourself, but at least there are plenty of free options there so it won’t cost you anything.
The Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab features a decent alarm clock application, which allows you to set numerous alarms, each with its own start time and repeat pattern.
Setting up an alarm on the Galaxy Tab
Samsung have included the My Files app – a simple to use but functional file manager. It can move, copy, lock and rename files in bulk, even send multiple files over Bluetooth. It will only browse the memory card and the large internal storage (it can’t access the system memory).
Next, Samsung Galaxy Tab features the Readers Hub app, which allows you to access over 2.2 ebooks ePub, PDF, and Adobe DRM. Samsung also promise that the will also allow you to to add ebooks bought or downloaded from other sources. The Readers Hub gives you access to a large selection of magazines and newspapers too. The subscription is pretty easy and is done from the app itself.
The Readers Hub
The user interface of that app is also pretty decent, supporting swipe gestures for turning pages as well as taps. Both Horizontal and landscape modes are supported.
Finally, comes the YouTube app which allows you to watch YouTube videos without entering the browser. There are standard and high-quality settings, but even if you select high-quality you still don’t get as good videos as on the iPad (which has no settings available whatsoever).
The YouTube app
Android Market is where the apps come from
The main strength of an operating system lies in its app base and Android is hardly short on apps. Fortunately the Galaxy Tab has access to the official android repository, or as we all know it – the Android Market. The number of apps there is huge and rapidly growing so chances are you will find something for every taste. The Galaxy Tab has access to the Android Market
The market interface itself hasn’t changed much. The first screen of the Market shows several featured apps. The Market organizes apps and games into two separate tabs and each tab lists sub-categories (e.g. Finance applications, Arcade & Action games). In each category you can select to view the top free, top paid apps or ones that are “Just in”.
There's a third tab – Downloads – that keeps track of what you’ve already downloaded. With Froyo you won’t need to keep too close an eye on this tab – apps automatic updating is supported as long as you permit it. Still you can use it to uninstall apps, but it’s not the most comfortable way to do it.
Applications range from pretty silly (including one that simulates a doorbell), through fun (e.g. a virtual guitar) to real must-have's (including alternative launchers, themes, navigation software and more), but that’s true for every other app store.
Now for the bad news. The Galaxy Tab has a resolution higher than any Android smartphone and that means some apps aren’t designed to work with it. Of course there are also some app that have a version that can fill the whole 1024x600 pixel-display, but most will simply leaves the borders unused.
Most apps only use a part of the high-res screen
Of course making an app compatible with a higher resolution is easier than creating the app itself so it shouldn’t take long for the whole market to get Tab-friendly versions. And the number of tablets will increase in the future so it’s not like it won’t be worth the effort.
GPS with Google Navigation
With its 7-inch screen and built-in GPS receiver the Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab can easily become one fat-ass SatNav device. The sensitivity of the GPS module is decent, the Tab achieving a satellite lock in just over 3 minutes with A-GPS switched off. If you have an active data connection you can easily cut down on that time. Google Maps will hardly surprise anyone
It comes as no surprise that Google Maps is the only mapping software that comes preinstalled. Unfortunately, voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation by Google Maps still has limited availability.
So, unless you are in the lucky few countries that do have Google Maps navigation already, you can either use the route planning to turn the Tab into a digital Map, which is reasonably easy to follow or grab a third-party solution from the market. The second option is certainly more comfortable but most good apps don’t come free and you might have some issues with the Tab’s screen resolution.
Back to Google Maps now and the Galaxy Tab Street View mode support. With the large screen and the built-in compass you can enjoy a 360-degree view of an area of your choice.
Final words
The Samsung Galaxy Tab does exceptionally almost all the tasks it’s meant to do. But for the flawed gallery and the high-latency screen with sub-par viewing angles we are struggling to find an aspect of its performance to criticize. None of those are deal-breakers really.In many senses we get the feeling that the Galaxy Tab is better designed than the Apple iPad to which it will inevitably be compared. The microSD card slot, the widescreen display ratio and the telephony capabilities (not to mention the regular SIM card support) and to a lesser extent the on-board camera, make perfect sense on a modern-day device and give the Galaxy tab something of an edge.
Of course the iPad strikes back with a slightly higher-res screen with better viewing angles, a much better gallery and a slightly longer battery life but the over-reliance on iTunes brings us back to where we started.
Now we come to the matter of screen size versus portability. Mind you, we are not talking portability in the stick-it-in-your-pocket kind of way. It’s more of an easier to hold with one hand and weighs less so it won’t tire you so quickly kind of deal. It all depends on your personal needs, whichever of the two matters more to you.
And that’s why we believe the two devices can easily coexist on a market where exponential growth is certain to happen over the next few years. No we don’t mean that you should get them both so you have a device of every size, but we do believe they just cater for the needs of different audiences and there will be enough of both groups.
However if you thought that we’d suggest you rush to the shop and grab yourselves a Galaxy Tab, you are wrong. No, not even if you made the size-vs-screen choice in its favor.
The SIM-free pricing of the Tab is way too steep to swallow. 650 euro is the cheapest deal you can currently get and that’s 50 euro more than a 16GB 3G-enabled iPad.
Now as their financial reports suggest, Apple is hardly known for pricing their products reasonably, but the Americans have earned themselves a name as a premium product manufacturer and have a user-base with unprecedented loyalty. Samsung on the other hand is working hard to achieve the first (all it probably needs is a little more time), but is probably years away from securing the second.
So while the iPad can get away with being over-priced, we don’t see how the Galaxy Tab can justify a price tag higher than that of the Apple’s device.
Apple iPad
Just think about it – the 7” Froyo-powered Archos tablet will hit the shelves any moment for 250 euro, while the 10.1” version will cost 290 euro. Now those tablets lack 3G radio and proper cameras, the 7” one comes with a lower, WVGA resolution and honestly, Archos is not nearly as big a name as Samsung, but are those things really worth the 400 euro premium? So what if Archos fails to update their current tablets when the next iteration of Android comes around – you can get whatever their latest slate is by then and that would still cost you less than the Galaxy Tab.
The 7" Archos 70 and the 10.1" Archos 101
Of course, there’s another side to the coin here. Samsung has worked hard to secure deals with virtually all major carriers worldwide and they are offering the Galaxy Tab at a lower subsidized price (some even for free) if you are willing to sign a contract. Now given the fact that you are likely to need a new plan for the Tab anyway if your carrier of choice got it, those are probably no-brainers and you can safely disregard all our remarks about the pricing.
And if you aren’t willing to commit your long-term future, but do want to get your hands on a shiny new Tab, we’d suggest you wait a few months for its price to drop – by a lot.
