Samsung was not in attendance at the Computex conference in Taipei this year but we did manage to get our hands on the Samsung 10.1 inch Galaxy Tab due out soon, compliments of Nvidia.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 is a sweet addition to the companies portfolio and is a clear modern successor to the 7 inch Samsung Galaxy Tab. They got the design right, it is very light weight and very easily held just in one hand for a long amount of time. The design aesthetics are clearly evident with the absence of any physical navigation buttons, all of the normal Android functions are software based. So if you want to access settings, back, and home you do it via the software based interface.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 is a 10.1 inch touch screen tablet with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels and uses a Super PLS-based display screen. When we navigated various screens and applications everything loaded tremendously fast via the Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. There is enough storage for all of your multimedia assets such as videos, photos and applications thanks to the 32 GB internal storage.
The cameras on the device are great and the rear facing one has tremendous resolution at 1280×720 with 3 MP while the front facing one is great for video chatting with 1.3 MP camera. We checked out some of the video playbook using the rear facing LED flash and things displayed rather well.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 inch model we played with had a very modern version of Google Android 3.0 and is clearly a step in the right direction for a new device to be released in 2011. It irks me every time i see a company trying to peddle an outdated version of Android and hopes it will be a success with the consumer market.
Samsung regrettably did not offer any kind of cool applications on the device we played with like they did with the original Galaxy Tab. The original model came with many cool apps such as the Readers Hub, Music Hub and so on. It was a nice touch to have a different content distribution platform integrated into the device to get people doing business with the companies direct partners. We did notice a Samsung App World loaded into the unit, so it looks like the company is going to be issuing its own apps for people to download. This is a nice touch to have Samsung issuing applications that are tailored towards a 10.1 inch device. Although you do have complete access to Gmail and the Google Android Market.
I really liked the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 inch it felt lighter then the Motorola Xoom and felt like a more polished device.
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Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
