Batterie Tablette Samsung Galaxy Tab 2

(Pocket-lint) - With the arrival of the Samsung Milky way Tab ten.ane, the size and form factor of tablets are finally set in stone. A twelvemonth ago, tablets could have gone anywhere - they could accept go neat and compact similar 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, it seems this is the battleground where the tablet wars will exist fought: a ten-inch-ish screen, a premium finish and the minimum of buttons and ports.

On the hardware and design side, the Tab 10.1 is startlingly similar to the iPad 2. It weighs just 5% less than the Apple tablet, boasts a chip more screen estate and resolution, and is but a fifth of a millimetre thinner. Even the silverish-lined blackness glass bezel is virtually identical - but slightly smaller.

Inside, Tab 10.ane owners get more RAM, a sharper camera and a dual-core flake. This is the game Samsung likes to play. Information technology offers a device that is priced identically to the iPad 2 but that simply pips it in terms of hardware. Of grade, hardware is only half the story. Tin can Android Honeycomb compete with the all-conquering iOS? Or will the lack of good apps concord information technology back? And how well does Samsung's hardware integrate with Google'south ever-expanding assortment of cloud services?

Our quick take

So it turns out that making tablet hardware is easy. Building something that looks similar an iPad 2, something that feels every bit light and solid and well-made, that takes a good photograph and glides a polish touchscreen and pumps out a punchy, colourful video, is manifestly not that tricky to make. If this was a competition between specifications, iPad would but be another funny give-and-take, instead of a noun, a verb and possibly a fashion of life.

Only that's not the world we live in. As hardware converges into distinct families, software comes to the fore. Some things almost Android Honeycomb would brand anyone sing. The infinitely customisable home screens are simply unbeatable, delivering merely the data you want and putting every aspect of search, navigation and functionality right at your fingertips.

Google'southward cloud music and navigation apps are the best out in that location today and voice search is also extremely handy. But Honeycomb is notwithstanding riddled with bugs, especially compared with the less well specified but near-faultless iPad iOS. Then compare the anaemic Market to the well-fed App Shop when it comes to tablet apps and the gulf is almost embarrassing.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab x.1 is certainly one of the all-time Android tablets and then far and deserves to be high on the list for anyone who can't stomach Cupertino'due south controlling neediness, merely if a wider run of hardware connections are what you crave, you'll have to look elsewhere.

Samsung Galaxy Tab ten.1

4.v stars - Pocket-lint recommended

For

Lush screen
Lite
Sleek design
Good specs
Dual core innards
Decent photos and video
Solid battery life

Against

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

Screen and build

The Galaxy's slimline/widescreen format feels great in the hand. Similar the iPad two, it remains on the heavy side for extended ebook reading, say, but ii-handed use is easy and natural. Different the Apple tree tablet, there's no metal hither, simply a plastic silverish surround morphing into a silver/grey back that has been textured to look like carbon fibre, but isn't.

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Samsung'due south quest for slimness ways a paucity of ports. An unprotected xxx-pivot connector serves for both data and power, but there's no HDMI output, USB or SD card connections. You can get adapters though for all of these to connect to the dock, so if it'south essential and so you'll need an adapter similar you 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 in that location's a volume rocker abreast it.

Samsung's 10.one-inch screen is 1280 x 800 resolution, which gives information technology 25% more than pixels than the iPad 2 plus a noticeable bump in pixel density, upwardly to 149ppi. Brightness, contrast and colour are all excellent, although the iPad 2's screen has a noticeable border in viewing bending, staying crisp and white while the Tab takes on a sickly grey tinge when tilted. Both suffer equally from reflections, glare and fingerprints but are, just, usable outdoors.

There'south nothing to choose betwixt the tablets for touch responsiveness - both are simply first-class. However, the Apple is slightly smoother and speedier when it comes to scrolling and re-drawing graphics.

At dwelling house with Honeycomb

Although the Tab 10.i is ane of the kickoff Honeycomb three.ane devices, there are few visible upgrades - nigh of the stability and speed boosts are under the hood. You can come across a full run-down of the changes in our feature here, or our review of Honeycomb here.

The Bone remains a joy to use, with five home screens that you can populate with all manners of icons and alive widgets. A 3D-ish transition betwixt screens helps navigation, as practise the icons in each of the corners. Top 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 always blame my English accent with these U.s.a.-tuned devices).

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What is undeniably annoying is that if your phonation search fails and you want to effort again from the Google page, you're not given the Vocalism Search choice that now appears in Chrome browsers even on desktops. You have to return to the home screen and hit the microphone icon again.

Back on the home screen, top right is where you manage apps and widgets. Lesser correct is the useful notification area and lesser left is where yous'll find the back, habitation and multi-tasking icons. Honeycomb 3.one is certainly more stable than Google'southward first shot at Android for tablets, but it'southward far from perfect. During our tests, nosotros 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.

Image witting

With a 1GHz dual-core Tegra ii flake inside, information technology'south no surprise that the Tab ten.ane skips and glides through graphics-heavy tasks. Video playback is faultless, games look fantastic and apps like Google Maps and the grisly new Google Torso feel very assured. Tablet-specific games like Angry Birds Rio are now as polished and professional equally anything you'll find on the iPad 2, although obviously there are still far fewer of them. We've been compiling a list of our favourites that you can read here.

Downloading Adobe Wink from the Market open doors that are all the same locked to the iPad ii. Flash compatibility gets ameliorate with each iteration of Android and the 10.1 had no trouble with Flash videos, Kongregate games and the interactive page furniture nosotros came beyond during testing.

The Milky way Tab is mostly good at multi-tasking, with a few hiccups. Bizarrely, the multi-tasking interface itself, with its rolling column of live screenshots, is a piddling "sticky" and sluggish. More than serious, perhaps, is Samsung'southward weak, slow on-screen keyboard that lacks spell correction. Swype for Honeycomb might merely exist our saviour.

Audio and vision

It's thumbs upward for the Music Beta by Google cloud music service (currently United states of america simply). Uploading music from iTunes was slow but steady and the Honeycomb app has a clean, modern 2D graphical interface that'southward fast and easy to utilize. The 10.1 streamed and downloaded songs over Wi-Fi without a hitch. The on board speakers are predictably tinny, even more so than the iPad 2, but they're fine for occasional listening. Headphones amend the sonics merely music withal sounds rather deadened.

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The camera app needs some piece of work. Likewise equally regularly freezing or falling over, the app is dull to get going. Once it'south awake, at that place are the usual Android camera options and furnishings but goose egg to rival the quality of the all-time iPhone apps. Left handers will capeesh the fact that if you flip the Tab 10.1, horizontally or vertically, the type flips but not the location of the shutter or menu buttons - thoughtful.

Image quality is generally good, with the 3 megapixel snaps sporting good exposure and colours. The focus is a bit wobbly and dissimilarity is wishy-washy but compared to the iPad ii'southward shockingly bad sub-megapixel snapper, information technology'southward hard to mutter.

The 720p video recordings are clear, well-baked and wouldn't shame a decent smartphone, you lot can observe a sample on YouTube here. The sound is hissy and prone to wind racket but, again, this is hard to criticise as well much on a device that is unlikely to exist your primary music role player, camera or camcorder. (As well, geeky shout out to Samsung for the best epitome file names e'er: twelvemonth/month/day_time/seconds.jpg should be compulsory industry-broad.)

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Everything else

The Tab x.1's battery life is in the aforementioned form at the iPad's. Yous tin await to a solid 8 hours web/multimedia from a fresh battery - anything beyond that should exist considered a bonus. The device gets quite warm during intense use and if you lot have the effulgence turned way upwardly, the screen will go toasty, too.

The front webcam is a (seriously overengineered) ii megapixel affair which tin handle video conversation in HD, should you have the wish for other people to see every scroll and moving ridge of your nostril hairs. GPS locked on chop-chop and effectively, and held its indicate well even indoors. We didn't have the opportunity to cheque the Galaxy's 3G capabilities.

To recap

Samsung has shown that you don't take to be chosen Apple to plow out a smart, desirable tablet. Now it's over to Google and the app makers to develop software to lucifer

Writing past Mark Harris.