Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 Test

(Pocket-lint) - With the arrival of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, the size and course factor of tablets are finally set in rock. A year ago, tablets could have gone anywhere - they could take get neat and meaty like the BlackBerry PlayBook and the first Samsung Tab, or they could have bloated into 12-inch Windows monsters.

But with Samsung and Motorola falling into line behind Apple, information technology seems this is the battleground where the tablet wars will be fought: a x-inch-ish screen, a premium finish and the minimum of buttons and ports.

On the hardware and pattern side, the Tab 10.1 is startlingly similar to the iPad 2. Information technology weighs just five% less than the Apple tree tablet, boasts a chip more screen estate and resolution, and is simply a fifth of a millimetre thinner. Even the silver-lined black glass bezel is virtually identical - but slightly smaller.

Inside, Tab ten.one owners go more RAM, a sharper camera and a dual-cadre chip. This is the game Samsung likes to play. It offers a device that is priced identically to the iPad 2 but that but pips information technology in terms of hardware. Of course, hardware is only one-half the story. Tin Android Honeycomb compete with the all-conquering iOS? Or volition the lack of good apps concord information technology back? And how well does Samsung'due south hardware integrate with Google's ever-expanding assortment of cloud services?

Our quick accept

So it turns out that making tablet hardware is piece of cake. Building something that looks similar an iPad 2, something that feels every bit low-cal and solid and well-made, that takes a good photo and glides a polish touchscreen and pumps out a punchy, colourful video, is apparently non that tricky to make. If this was a competition between specifications, iPad would just be another funny word, instead of a noun, a verb and possibly a style of life.

Simply that's not the globe we live in. As hardware converges into distinct families, software comes to the fore. Some things virtually Android Honeycomb would make anyone sing. The infinitely customisable home screens are simply unbeatable, delivering simply the information you want and putting every aspect of search, navigation and functionality correct at your fingertips.

Google's cloud music and navigation apps are the best out there today and voice search is besides extremely handy. Merely Honeycomb is still riddled with bugs, especially compared with the less well specified but most-faultless iPad iOS. Then compare the anaemic Marketplace to the well-fed App Store when information technology comes to tablet apps and the gulf is most embarrassing.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab ten.i is certainly one of the best Android tablets so far and deserves to be high on the list for anyone who tin can't stomach Cupertino'southward controlling neediness, but if a wider run of hardware connections are what y'all crave, you lot'll accept to look elsewhere.

Samsung Milky way Tab x.1

4.5 stars - Pocket-lint recommended

For

Lush screen
Lite
Sleek pattern
Practiced specs
Dual cadre innards
Decent photos and video
Solid battery life

Against

Honeycomb is still buggy
UI not every bit seamless as iOS
Must-take apps are still few and far betwixt
Lacks physical connections

Screen and build

The Galaxy'south slimline/widescreen format feels great in the mitt. Like the iPad 2, information technology remains on the heavy side for extended ebook reading, say, but ii-handed utilise is like shooting fish in a barrel and natural. Dissimilar the Apple tablet, there'south no metal here, simply a plastic argent surround morphing into a silver/grayness back that has been textured to wait like carbon fibre, just isn't.

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Samsung's quest for slimness means a paucity of ports. An unprotected xxx-pivot connector serves for both data and ability, but at that place's no HDMI output, USB or SD menu connections. You tin get adapters though for all of these to connect to the dock, so if it's essential then you'll need an adapter like you lot would on the iPad. The only other holes are two tiny speaker ports, a miniscule microphone and a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. A slim power push wakes the Tab up, and there'due south a volume rocker abreast it.

Samsung's 10.ane-inch screen is 1280 ten 800 resolution, which gives it 25% more pixels than the iPad two plus a noticeable bump in pixel density, up to 149ppi. Brightness, dissimilarity and colour are all excellent, although the iPad 2's screen has a noticeable edge in viewing angle, staying crisp and white while the Tab takes on a sickly grayness tinge when tilted. Both suffer equally from reflections, glare and fingerprints but are, merely, usable outdoors.

At that place's nothing to choose between the tablets for bear on responsiveness - both are merely excellent. However, the Apple is slightly smoother and speedier when it comes to scrolling and re-drawing graphics.

At home with Honeycomb

Although the Tab 10.1 is one of the outset Honeycomb 3.1 devices, there are few visible upgrades - most of the stability and speed boosts are under the hood. You can see a total run-down of the changes in our feature here, or our review of Honeycomb hither.

The Bone remains a joy to utilise, with five habitation screens that y'all can populate with all manners of icons and live widgets. A 3D-ish transition between screens helps navigation, every bit do the icons in each of the corners. Meridian left gives instant links to Google text and vocalisation searches. Voice searching is, as usual, impressive when it works and irritating when it doesn't (PRs e'er blame my English accent with these The states-tuned devices).

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What is undeniably annoying is that if your voice search fails and you want to attempt once more from the Google page, you're not given the Vox Search option that at present appears in Chrome browsers even on desktops. You have to return to the dwelling house screen and hit the microphone icon once again.

Dorsum on the home screen, height correct is where you manage apps and widgets. Lesser right is the useful notification surface area and bottom left is where you'll find the back, home and multi-tasking icons. Honeycomb three.1 is certainly more stable than Google's first shot at Android for tablets, but information technology's far from perfect. During our tests, we regularly got booted out of the browser and YouTube app for no apparent reason, had to restart the unresponsive camera app on several occasions, and suffered several inexplicable slowdowns and screen flashes.

Epitome witting

With a 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 chip inside, it's no surprise that the Tab x.1 skips and glides through graphics-heavy tasks. Video playback is faultless, games expect fantastic and apps like Google Maps and the grisly new Google Body feel very assured. Tablet-specific games like Angry Birds Rio are now as polished and professional person every bit anything y'all'll observe on the iPad ii, although obviously there are withal far fewer of them. Nosotros've been compiling a list of our favourites that yous can read here.

Downloading Adobe Flash from the Marketplace open doors that are still locked to the iPad 2. Flash compatibility gets better with each iteration of Android and the 10.1 had no trouble with Flash videos, Kongregate games and the interactive page furniture we came across during testing.

The Galaxy Tab is generally good at multi-tasking, with a few hiccups. Bizarrely, the multi-tasking interface itself, with its rolling column of live screenshots, is a little "viscous" and sluggish. More serious, perhaps, is Samsung's weak, slow on-screen keyboard that lacks spell correction. Swype for Honeycomb might merely be our saviour.

Sound and vision

It's thumbs up for the Music Beta by Google deject music service (currently US but). Uploading music from iTunes was slow but steady and the Honeycomb app has a make clean, modern 2d graphical interface that's fast and easy to use. The 10.1 streamed and downloaded songs over Wi-Fi without a hitch. The on lath speakers are predictably tinny, even more than so than the iPad 2, only they're fine for occasional listening. Headphones improve the sonics but music still sounds rather muffled.

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The photographic camera app needs some work. Besides as regularly freezing or falling over, the app is slow to get going. One time information technology'south awake, there are the usual Android camera options and effects only nothing to rival the quality of the best iPhone apps. Left handers will appreciate the fact that if you flip the Tab x.1, horizontally or vertically, the type flips but not the location of the shutter or menu buttons - thoughtful.

Epitome quality is by and large good, with the iii megapixel snaps sporting good exposure and colours. The focus is a bit wobbly and dissimilarity is wishy-washy but compared to the iPad 2's shockingly bad sub-megapixel snapper, information technology's difficult to complain.

The 720p video recordings are articulate, crisp and wouldn't shame a decent smartphone, you can find a sample on YouTube here. The sound is hissy and prone to wind racket but, again, this is hard to criticise too much on a device that is unlikely to be your primary music histrion, photographic camera or camcorder. (Also, geeky shout out to Samsung for the best paradigm file names ever: year/month/day_time/seconds.jpg should exist compulsory industry-wide.)

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Everything else

The Tab x.1's bombardment life is in the same class at the iPad'southward. You tin expect to a solid viii hours web/multimedia from a fresh bombardment - annihilation beyond that should be considered a bonus. The device gets quite warm during intense employ and if you have the effulgence turned fashion up, the screen volition get toasty, also.

The front webcam is a (seriously overengineered) 2 megapixel affair which can handle video conversation in HD, should you have the wish for other people to see every curlicue and moving ridge of your nostril hairs. GPS locked on quickly and finer, and held its signal well even indoors. We didn't accept the opportunity to check the Galaxy'due south 3G capabilities.

To recap

Samsung has shown that you lot don't accept to be called Apple to turn out a smart, desirable tablet. Now information technology's over to Google and the app makers to develop software to match

Writing by Mark Harris.