Enormous and Powerful: Samsung Galaxy Tab Review

The tab weighs just 13 ounces, is 12 millimeters thin and easily fits in a pocket or purse. It offers us a smaller screen than iPad but with almost the same resolution as iPad. Coming with a 3-megapixel rear camera with flash and a 1.3-megapixel front camera mainly for video calls, the still-photographs and videos may be of average quality, but videos taken with the front camera were fuzzy. The Tab uses the latest version of Android, and it generally worked very smoothly, even though Google has warned that Android isn't yet ready for tablets.

"I was especially impressed with Samsung's attractive and usable rewrites of the calendar, email and contacts apps, which, like their iPad cousins, use multiple panels to make them more computer-like, while still remaining touch-friendly."

Its 7-inch screen may seem to be weaker versus the 9.7-inch display on iPad. But the numbers are deceptive, because screen sizes are always described using diagonal measurements. In fact, the actual screen real estate on the Tab is less than half of iPad's. That's a disadvantage, but it allows the overall unit to be much smaller and lighter, and thus more easily used in one hand, something some users will welcome. The Tab doesn't have a Super AMOLED screen like its Galaxy S smart phone brothers, but the 1024 x 600-resolution LCD is still stunning.

It can be regarded as the first Android slate to come from a major manufacturer, and probably will be the last one to release with Fro-Yo. It makes creating and sharing images and video fast and portable with its two cameras. Users can align the Galaxy Tab with video chat clients including Qik and Fring and seamlessly talk with other people over a WI-Fi connection.

The Galaxy Tab offers full support for Adobe Flash Player 10.1 for accessing Flash-enabled websites, watching video and playing games, and with built-in support for ultra-fast Wireless-N WI-fi, the Galaxy Tab's portable screen is ideal for watching the latest movies and entertainment. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is almost a pure Google experience, but Samsung has made a few minor alterations, most of them with good intent. For instance, they've included a more iOS-like standard Samsung keyboard as default with the 10.1. Gone also are the oddly huge widgets Samsung showed off at CTIA this year, which didn't seem to add much but slowed the OS down considerably.

The Galaxy Tab is loaded with leisure options which are in a position to give actual multimedia experience. A number of the unique functions such as Samsung Media Hub, Qik video chat, and Kindle for Android are embraced. The Galaxy Tab is bundled with great messaging capabilities like SMS, MMS, Email, Push Mail, IM, and RSS. It leads one to a quick access to personal and work e-mail, together with assist for Microsoft Exchange e-mail, contacts and calendar. It supports all the wireless connections such as WI-Fi for streaming movies and Bluetooth 3.zero for transferring records data and streaming to external units like headphones and speakers.

The screen resolution is the same as with the previous model, 480 x 800 pixels, which means that the pixel density is somewhat lesser, while this is not noticeable in practice. Screen imaging is exceptionally sharp and light, with very vivid color. The screen is quite sharp and generally responsive to touch, though a bit slower than iPad's screen. The Tab comes with 16 gigabytes of flash storage, the same as the base iPad. Its storage is internal and in others, it's on a removable memory card. The card slot comes on all models and can hold up to 32 gigabytes at extra cost if you like.