[Galaxy Tab General] ftgg99:
***UPDATED 2ND FEBRUARY 2011***

Ive decided to write a quick review of the Galaxy Tab. It may help some of the undecided to make up their mind before release day.

I purchased my device in Russia, though the hardware and some bloatware is from Italy. It is the 16GB model, running stock JK5 firmware.

Specs

Full hardware specifications can be found at GSMArena. They also have a nice 3D view and lots of high res photos.

Price

I paid $1200 for mine in early October - it was one of the very first in town. Can now be had for $800 though. Its unlocked and works flawlessly on both the carriers i subscribe to (MTS and Megafon). No regrets.

Build

Solid as they come. No flex of any kind. Good glossy materials that look expensive. Combined with the SGP Argos case the tab just looks so much richer than an ipad. I think its the Gorilla Glass :)

Usability

Very easy to hold in one hand and also (importantly for ipad owners) very natural to hold in two. The keyboard can be typed on with the thumbs of both hands in landscape, which is excellent.

The screen is a glossy but sunlight proof Super TFT LCD (aka S-IPS, the same tech as the ipad), with excellent color, good whites and contrast. Color saturation, as well as black/white density are easily adjustable from the settings menu so the picture can be tweaked to taste. Whats more, you can always tilt the tablet just a few degrees in your hand to avoid most reflections - the viewing angles are what youd expect from an IPS display - excellent!

It has been said the display is inferior to the ipad. This is not entirely true - hydis supplies the same tech to both sammy and lg (who assemble ipad displays).

There is a ghosting issue, but it is unnoticeable under normal conditions. I wonder if its connected to the gpu rather than display itself, because it seems quite unlikely that a modern lcd could possibly have such slow response times as to be clearly visible...

My only gripe is the 16:9 resolution, which is not all that useful for viewing web pages. We could have done with a less widescreen form factor (16:10 would have been perfect). That said, it really does fit excellently into almost any jean pocket, and in most of my inside jacket pockets.

Speed

The device boots quickly and the default Touchwiz home launcher is very smooth. Applications scroll smoothly, as does the app drawer. LauncherPro works flawlessly and has the added advantage of removing the taskbar if needed.

The biggest problem Ive encountered speed wise is in the stock 2.2 browser, which is slow to render and unresponsive in my JK5 Tab. Hopefully there will be significant improvements in Gingerbread and Honeycomb, but for now Im using a combination of Dolphin Mini and Firefox/Fennec nighlies.

Apps

The majority of applications i use on my phones work well in high resolution, but there are many out there that do not. I can see that the market has a long way to go before the kind of apps that are available on the ipad appear there too.

There is now a tweak which will stretch most apps to fullscreen perfectly using an app called Spare Parts from the market.

The simple theming options now available from XDA members here should be welcomed by anyone interested in making small tweaks to the interface. In my book this is definitely a win for android in general.

Playback

Annoyingly, youtube videos are pretty crappy. The app seems to do a lot of post-processing, probably because it defaults to a 480p resolution (though i counld be wrong on this). In any case, the ipad is definitely a winner in this department.

For general viewing i use vPlayer Alpha - it plays almost every video with no problems. AVI and MKV files are my mainstay, and to finally use them on an android os device with a gorgeous screen, as they were intended, is a joy.

The Allshare app that streams via DLNA is also quite good, though slow populating lists from my 2tb server. Not to worry though, XDA members have already got cifs.ko working, so head on to the dev section if you want to speed things up.

Also, the internal SD's FAT file system wont allow files larger than 4GB, so you'll have to split your 720p movies. Pretty annoying, all things considered.

The speakers on the device are excellent for listening to music, but in an annoying position if you are holding your tab and watching movies.

Phone, messaging, GPS

The phone works very well. Calls are clear and crisp, though the awful audio is pretty annoying without earphones. The Samsung email app is excellent, especially in landscape mode. A great replacement for gmail. Messaging is also very good and reminds me of handsent sms, but you can always replace it if you're a heavy user.

GPS worked flawlessly for me. Most of the time without A-GPS to conserve battery and accuracy was excellent. Apparently the Orange firmware has superior GPS, so if you are looking to increase the accuracy and acquisition speed a simple tweak is available to everyone with root in the dev section.

Bugs

In the four months Ive been using it, the Tab has exhibited few errors. It runs nice and cool and has experienced very few force closes.

However, i did have trouble connecting to the Kies software for a while. It took some shamanism to get it going at first, but having upgraded to the JK5 OTA everything is now stable on my x64 machine.

The Samsung email app sometimes fails to provide notifications to the taskbar, despite having downloaded mail.

Battery

The battery is excellent. Personally i find that with heavy use (and i don't watch much video) the battery lasts 8-10 hours. In standby it lasts for many days, especially in airplane mode+on demeand wifi. With nonstop use it would probably do no more than 6. I dont use the power saving feature, and brightness is generally set about half way.

Conclusion

The Tab is a great device right now, but i expect it will get a lot better with a few firmware updates down the road. Android at its best.

Pros:

Ergonomic, svelte, fast, good GPS, full market access, almost bug free

Cons:

Annoying aspect ratio, no files larger than 4GB.

XDA GALAXY TAB BIBLE - ALL GUIDES ON ONE PAGE