Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Honeycomb Tablet

for anyone who has the tab and has used an ipad 2, how does the tab feel in terms of lag/sluggishness when swiping around the home screen/apps compared to the ipad2? I had a play with one at the weekend and the overriding feeling I came away with was that it felt a bit sluggish in general navigation.

Swiping it always felt like the os was a split second behind my finger. I'm not sure if this is just the fact that the ipad2 focuses on very quick motion between homescreens and that android is just different (i don't have much android experience) in how google have designed the os.

Apart from that I took away the following pros/cons:

+ the widescreen format is great and the display in general was very sharp and had good colours although didn't seem as bright as the ipad, but i'm not sure if that was the fairly dark store environment and the ambient light sensor.

+ felt as nice as the ipad2 in hand albeit i'd prefer a metal case I think.

+++ LOVED the fact you could quickly/easily turn on/of things like bluetooth and wifi compared to the cumbersome approach of iOS.

- App selection didn't seem great, particularly for content consumption (things like flipboard, pulse news, economist, magazines etc)

- 8.9 seems more tempting to me as it seems identical apart from a smaller screen which would make using it on the tube a bit easier, that and I've got very used to the high dpi screen on my iphone4 and everything else always looks pixelated in comparison!

i'm a bit on the fence at the moment. I think i may wait until early next year and see what the ipad3 and corresponding android competitors (and app selection) look like before springing for a tablet.
 
Bush,

I felt the same, i tried both the HP Touchpad and the Samsung 10.1 and for smoothness the Touchpad put the Samsung Tab to shame.

Overall i felt a bit let down by the samsung tab, i was going to buy the 3g version... After playing with it i might not bother (2 minds).
 
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I think that's a running theme of Apple devices over the Android alternatives - the UI is designed to be very fluid, whereas on Android the UI isn't as smooth, but it does generally offer a lot more functionality. That's the short of it really. The iPad 2 is better finished, but out of the box, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 will always have more options for customisation and functionality, plus it's a but cheaper. The OS is just more function over form than iOS. That's how I see it based on the devices I've used. The Android app selection for tablets isn't as good as iOS, but it's growing very quickly. The models we're discussing here are all relatively new, but if you look at how popular the ASUS Transformer is for example, it'll only be a short matter of time before the number of tablet apps matches or even exceeds iOS in my opinion as just as many people will be using them - I certainly plan to get one before the year is out.

Not sure about the pricing of the Tab 8.9 - the last price I saw was outrageous, so I'm guessing we don't know for sure yet.
 
I have not noticed any sluggishness on the tab, seems to be very fluid with a whole load of stuff on it.

The problem when you try them in a store they tend to have loads of crap and some have store experince loaded on them

Also anyone know how to get a facebook app for it? Does one even exist?

Thanks

Kimbie
 
alex24 said:
I think that's a running theme of Apple devices over the Android alternatives - the UI is designed to be very fluid, whereas on Android the UI isn't as smooth, but it does generally offer a lot more functionality. That's the short of it really. The iPad 2 is better finished, but out of the box, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 will always have more options for customisation and functionality, plus it's a but cheaper. The OS is just more function over form than iOS. That's how I see it based on the devices I've used. The Android app selection for tablets isn't as good as iOS, but it's growing very quickly. The models we're discussing here are all relatively new, but if you look at how popular the ASUS Transformer is for example, it'll only be a short matter of time before the number of tablet apps matches or even exceeds iOS in my opinion as just as many people will be using them - I certainly plan to get one before the year is out.

Not sure about the pricing of the Tab 8.9 - the last price I saw was outrageous, so I'm guessing we don't know for sure yet.
Click to expand...

I certainly liked the more functionality and the fact the home screen was actually useful versus a grid of applications, I'm just not sure it was enough to offset what felt like just sluggish performance when navigating around. I suspect as you say the apps will take off as more devices arrive, so I think that is a temporary problem at the moment. In terms of pricing it was exactly the same as the ipad2 as far as I could see, though i guess it may be discounted over the coming months.


In terms of bloatware installed on it, from what I could see it was just a load of applications which if that causes it to slow down seems slightly concerning. I couldn't see any 'store experience' loaded onto it that could be causing problems, but I couldn't be definite.

I saw the 8.9 on amazon at about 650 or something, but from what I recall the xoom/10.1 were at similar prices prior to release.

think i'll wait and see. I have to say that Apple does make the retail experience very easy to sit down and play with these things and get a feel for it vs the one galaxy tab hidden away in a dark corner that couldn't be lifted up and really get a feel for size/weight.
 
Nikumba said:
I have not noticed any sluggishness on the tab, seems to be very fluid with a whole load of stuff on it.

The problem when you try them in a store they tend to have loads of crap and some have store experince loaded on them

Also anyone know how to get a facebook app for it? Does one even exist?

Thanks

Kimbie
Click to expand...

This tab had nothing much loaded on it, only one screen with 5 icons. Cycling though to the next screen brought it back on itself just felt a bit rough.

I have time to decide if i want one, the 3g one is a few weeks away :)
 
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I think most of the problem with the sluggishness is due to the CPU, the Tegra2 is the only soc that can be used for Honeycomb and it's a bit pants, the A5 in the iPad2 is a bet better on the CPU side yet a whole heap better on the GPU side (and iOS does have GPU accelerated UI transitions/animations)

There's also the aspect that historically Android on similar hardware has been a bit sluggish as well, although it's not really possible to compare Honeycomb like that. When Ice Cream Sandwich is out hopefully we see a better range of soc's in the tablets, as well as the better soc's available at that time (lets face it, if the galaxy tab 10.1 had the Exynos chipset, and the work Samsung put into the UI of Gingerbread, it would be a whole different story...)
 
Still now sign of TouchWiz UX but that little Google Video update also restored browser quick controls and appears to have got rid of any browser lag. Could be that the I/O Tab remains a "pure" Google experience.
 
Dumb question but what changes will I see with TouchWiz? Checked for update daily but still got no update, but when looking around for changes it looked like I already had them?

Kimbie
 
Nikumba said:
Dumb question but what changes will I see with TouchWiz? Checked for update daily but still got no update, but when looking around for changes it looked like I already had them?

Kimbie
Click to expand...

If you bought the UK retail version which was launched last week then you already have it. The build is P7510XXKFC.

About TW:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/03/samsung-details-touchwiz-ux-update-for-galaxy-tab-10-1-ota-roll/

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/03/hands-on-with-touchwiz-ux-for-the-samsung-galaxy-tab-10-1/
 
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