Battery Life: Personally, this has to be on my top 2 priorities. I own several toys/gadgets, great as some may be, once the battery goes out, I'm sorely disappointed. Hate the several hours of wait time for them to charge back up. So they either get very little use or go back in the original package and into the closet. Now this Galaxy Tab I've been using heavily over the past 3 days, during last week's long X'mas holiday, and it still has about 10% charge left in it. This said, it only took about 3.5 hours to re-charge and power it back up to 100%. Excellent.
Portability: Perfect size, perfect screen size for yours truly. I can finally and easily now see a lot of things as compared to my tiny smartphone screen. Fits tightly in my jeans back pocket, but fits nicely in my cargo pants pockets. I now carry it or have it nearby for use all over the house. Also, a quality built, solid product in my humble opinion.
Display: Awesome, just beautiful, 1024X600 pixel res. Turn on any of the live wallpaper screens and its better and/or comparable to my home LED and Plasma TV displays.
Touchscreen: Outstanding. I'm a desktop, mouse-kinda-guy, but am now a touchscreen newbie convert. Go ahead and try this touch pad Tab out at BestBuy or any one of the phone carrier's stores.
Internet: Super fast WiFi surfing. I'm benchmarking this in comparison to my HP 14 inch, 4 GB RAM, dual core, laptop. Excellent on AT&T's basic speed, lightning fast on Cox cable and AT&T's higher U-verse setup. Google search also works on voice command. Haven't had a need to switch to an alternative browser such as Dolphin since the basic browser works just fine for my purposes. Also haven't signed up for a data plan; still using WiFi for everything I've needed or wanted to do.
Front Camera: 1.3 MB only; sweet for taking self-portraits and more using the front display screen. Device is an eye catcher, conversation piece at the clubs & dive bars. LoL. You also can visit YouTube for the vids & how-to's using Fring, Qik, and Skype. Great shame though that all the US carriers dissected the voice calling feature on this device. I am not doing away with my smartphone, but AT&T voice calling service on the GT would have been a nice extra, just in case. Also, note that this AT&T device has a removable/swappable SIM card port.
Back Camera: 3.0 MB only; good indoor quality, better for sunlight/daytime pics. Sample Galaxy Tab pics available at Yahoo's Flickr. Biggie: This is the only tablet out there with an autofocus camera that comes with a flash feature!
Storage: 16 GB internal with up to 32 GB removable/swappable miroSD card; already installed an 8 GB microSD card in my Tab. Prefer using the external card memory for all my stuff versus using the internal available limited storage.
Bluetooth: Super sweet! Easily paired up with GF's and my laptop and our Nokia smartphones. Have moved a bunch of my pics over, both from my smartphone and laptop. More to move over. The Gallery app is great. Thing is, because of the Tab's hi-res screen display, any of the low-res pics I've taken clearly shows the image imperfections when zoomed out. An analogy would be like watching a VHS tape on my 1080 LED screen, not a good quality output display. I now just have to start taking digital pics with my other camera, set maybe at 5 GBs or more res.
Android Apps: Have checked these out some and yet have to find one I'd want to download in the GT. 100,000+ apps; who's got the time for this mega searching?. Not into games, might load a Chess game, but that's about it. Comes installed with 2 icon pages of AT&T's apps, i.e., Maps, Navigation works both touch type or voice command, music, video, MyFiles, Flash support, QikOffice, etc. Also, found very usable loaded Widgets to place in my homescreen, i.e., one-touch for WiFi connection, Bluetooth, refresh, etc. Signed up for a Gmail account, great app for sending out my txt messages and e-mails.
Voice/Video Calls: I've downloaded both Fring and Skype on my Tab to make voice calls or video calls (I'm using WiFi for this). Both apps are loaded in the "Market" app of the Tab. Free calls to other signed up/members. Some charges apply to non Fring or Skype folks. Its all explained in their respective web sites.
Media Hub: Limited movies and not exactly cheap to purchase one.
Lastly, AT&T has excellent on-line GT tutorials & I've also downloaded the user's manual for just about all the important info I need to know. Check out the GT's specs and all it has to offer. If any or all of the above features appeal to your liking, BUY ONE! I highly recommend this product. & you'll also help push to get the economy going!. :^) For the Naysayers out there: There is no such thing, or ever will be, a "perfect" product. Not even Einstein could find a Universal Theory.
Excerpt from CNET's GT review (Oct 2010): In fairness, what we enjoy most about the Galaxy Tab is that it's not trying to exactly copy the iPad's blueprint for success. Sure, Samsung's notepad, calendar, and photo apps look like pixel-for-pixel reproductions of the iPad's, but let's not overlook the fact that the Tab is half the size of the iPad. It's a different type of product that presents a different use case, one geared more for portability. That said, the Android smartphone market seems to cover a lot of this territory already. The Tab is also reaching out to all of the people who winced at the iPad's lack of Adobe Flash support, video camera, memory expansion, and drag-and-drop file support. If these are the features that have been holding you back from purchasing a tablet, then the Tab should be a perfect match.
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