Samsung has been on top of the competition lately with a slew of Android phones being released, including the Galaxy Nexus. What Samsung has also gotten its tendrils into over the last little while is tablets. It started with the Galaxy Tab 7″ tablet which then became available with a data plan from certain wireless providers. After that was the device we are going to review and break down today, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet. We decided to get one as we needed something portable, lightweight and we are going to develop applications for Ice Cream Sandwich which is for both Android phones and tablets. Hope past the break for a full review….

Hardware

The first place we would like to start is the 10.1 inch Corning Gorilla Glass encased beauty. Speakers can be located on the left and right sides of the device, giving it high quality sound that is to be desired. On the bottom of the device is the proprietary charging port and to the left of it is the microphone. On the top of the device is the power button and volume rockers. We are quite pleased to find that the 1.0 GHz dual core processor is being supported by a Tegra 2 Nvidia chipset. The light sensor, gyroscope, accelerometer and GPS included in this tablet means they only forgot to include the kitchen sink! We chose the 16GB model as Android can find anything you may need on your device,in the cloud. The 1 GB of RAM also included in the device was more than enough to have the device be very responsive even when multiple applications were running, although I wouldn’t turn down an upgrade if it was offered.

Software

The software that comes preloaded on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Tablet is Honeycomb 3.1. This is looking to be upgraded to 3.2 which will enhance the performance and speed of the device but not give it a fantastic new look. Either way, the TouchWiz UI provided by Samsung makes the experience on the tablet vastly easier and more efficient. We liked the mini apps provided on the toolbar which include a task manager, calendar, world clock, memo pad, calculator and music player. This being our first honeycomb tablet we like the ability to resize any widget on the homescreen and see all of our recently run programs by clicking the double window icon in the toolbar. The fragments in a program were also new to us. For example, when we open gmail we are presented with two panes. When one item on the second pane is clicked we progress with the second pane taking the first panes place and another pane is created with the full content of what we just chose. You can imagine this like the WebOS slides way of presenting things as they are almost identical. With all of these new features for us to explore we have not found one thing on the software side of things to tout as bad or wrong with the device.

Camera

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Tablet actually had two cameras. One camera is front facing with a 1.3MP camera, while the rear facing camera has a 3MP camera. Both of these are quite good and do the trick for barcode scanning and business card OCR work but we found ourselves wanting for more. Call us spoiled after using the camera on the HTC Titan X310e but we thoroughly enjoy clear, crisp and vibrant pictures of which the Tab 10.1 would just not hand over. On the bright side, when are you really going to use the camera for any professional photos when you can carry a Windows Phone and download SkyDrive Explorer for Android and put them on your tablet that way. Look below for some sample pictures of the front and rear cameras.

Front Facing

Rear Facing

Battery Life

This is something that Android strives for again and again in all of its devices but the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 actually hits the mark. The 7000mAh battery housed inside this device is capable of up to seven hours of video playback and 72 hours of music playback. We decided to take this to the limit and added the usual 10 email accounts we have, play GTA III, tweet and fackbook our friends regularly, read some nook books from the nook app and we still didn’t reach half by the end of our work day (start at 5:30am and end at 11:30pm). We are definitely pleased with the battery life on this device and would recommend it based purely off this fact to any developer.

 Specifications

Size and Weight

Size : 256.7 x 175.3 x 8.6 mm
Weight : 565g

Display

10.1″ widescreen
1280×800 WXGA TFT LCD
149 pixels per inch (ppi)
4-way rotation

Memory

1GB (RAM), 16/32/64 GB (ROM)
Wireless

Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Dual-band support(2.4GHz, 5GHz)
Bluetooth v2.1
Wi-Fi Direct
Processor

1GHz dual-core NVIDIA® Tegra™ 2 processor

Battery

Built-in 7000mAh battery
Video : Up to 9 hours
Music : Up to 72hours
Samsung Touchwiz UX

Live Panel
Mini Apps
Clipboard

Samsung Hub

Social Hub (Basic) : Integrated messaging of E-mail, IM, and SNS
Music Hub : Easily search, download, and listen to over 11million tracks (mainly in EU & NA)
Readers Hub : Over 2.3 million e-books, 2,000 newspapers, and 3,000 magazines in 49 languages

Browser

Android Browser
Adobe® Flash® support

Camera

Back camera : HD(720p) Video recording, 3MP auto-focus camera with LED flash
Front camera : 2MP camera
Instant SNS sharing : GmailTM, Messaging, Picasa

Video

Full HD video playback (1080p) @ 30fps
Video codec : WMV9, WMV7, WMV8, H.264, MPEG4, Xvid, DivX, H.263, VP8

Audio

Formats : MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, RA
Surround sound speakers

Location

A-GPS
Location-based service with Google Maps™ (Turn-by-turn navigation)
Google Mobile Service
G-talk video chat, Gmail, Google Calendar, YouTube™, Google Maps™, Google Latitude™, Google Places™, Google Maps™, Navigation(Beta)
Location-based service with Google Maps™ (Turn-by-turn navigation)
Android Market

Mobile Office

Polaris Office : PPT, word, excel document creating & editing

Operating System

Honeycomb, Android’s latest for tablets
Multitasking & Split View support

Sensors

Gyroscope
Accelerometer
Ambient light sensor
Compass
Input / Output

30-pin dock connector port
3.5mm stereo headphone jack

Conclusion

With a tablet that rests in your hands weighing under two pounds it is hard to believe this device is as powerful as it is. The statement of Gorilla Glass indeed protecting the front gave us peace of mind (the Zagg InvisibleShield we also installed didn’t hurt to further that) that this device is of solid build and not a device to be taken lightly. We figure we will put the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1″ Tablet through its paces at CES 2012 come this January. Look for the articles being posting from this powerful device in the near future. This is definitely a must have whether you are a blogger or a developer. Until the next Review, Happy Hacking!

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