Samsung’s Galaxy Tab: iPad’s First Solid Contender

iPhone:iPad :: Galaxy S:Galaxy Tab


That simple analogy is all you really need to know about the highly anticipated Galaxy Tab and what it can do.
With the first legitimate competitor to iPad for the consumer-focused tablet-computer market, Samsung continues to take its cues from Apple — just as it’s been doing with cellphones.
That is not necessarily a bad thing. For all its faults, the iPad is still the tablet to beat. The Galaxy Tab takes direct aim at iPad’s shortcomings and does a credible job at addressing nearly all of them.
The most immediately noteworthy difference from the iPad is that the Galaxy is considerably smaller — physically about half the size and weight, with a 7-inch diagonal screen instead of the iPad’s 9.7 inches. However, the Tab’s 1024 x 600–pixel resolution makes this less of a big deal than you might expect. Considering the iPad’s 1024 x 768–pixel resolution, you’ll find the Tab nearly as spacious, although the screen (a standard LCD) is not as bright and as clear as the iPad’s beauty.
What you gain, however, is considerably better portability: The iPad is not always convenient to tote with you, while the Tab really feels like a jumbo-sized cellphone and slips easily into any bag and many jacket pockets.
Any screen shortcomings are rapidly put out of mind by the Galaxy Tab’s rich feature set. Everything you’d want from a modern Android phone (version 2.2, upgradeable when 3.0 hits) is here: Full app support (though, as with running iPhone apps on the iPad, many apps look JUMBO SIZE in use), a fair-enough camera (3.2 megapixels) with flash, a mobile hotspot and tethering option, and virtually no buttons. The only physical buttons are the power button and volume toggle, both on the upper right side. Four touch-sensitive Android-standard buttons on the bottom of the front screen are usable only when the display is active.
Storage is what you make of it: A 16-GB microSD card, accessible via a flap on the side, is installed by default, and you can upgrade to 32 GB.
In use, the Galaxy Tab performs well, but is not exemplary. It feels snappy enough, but longish load times can sometimes be tiresome, and webpages invariably loaded more slowly than the iPad — sometimes taking twice as long. We also ran into a few issues with apps hanging and the Wi-Fi connection suddenly vanishing without explanation. Reboots solved both issues.
On the hardware side, the light, 13.4-ounces unit just fits in a single hand, but the slick surface tends to be slippery and prone to dropping. If you’re the kind of person who is always finding his phone falling out of your grip, your Tab is going to spend a lot of time on the floor. (Maybe that’s why Jobso was so critical of these devices?)
Compounding matters is the problematic location of the power and volume buttons. Holding the device in your left hand often causes you to hit these by accident. They’re temperamental and touchy, until you eventually adapt to a grip further down the chassis.
Pricing is complicated and modeled after the cellphone, so pay close attention: The base unit is $400 with a new or upgraded two-year contract, or $600 without a rate plan. Data costs extra: $30 a month for 2 GB of service plus unlimited messaging, or $60 a month for 5 GB and unlimited messaging. Mobile Hotspot support is extra ($30 a month), and Sprint Navigation is extra, too.
These are relatively minor complaints, in the end. The Tab requires some retraining in the way you use a mobile device — it’s somewhere between a phone and a regular tablet — but once you get it, it’s a pleasure to use. The Tab ultimately reveals itself not as a competitor to the iPad but as a new class of mobile devices: a minitablet that is designed to go everywhere you do.
WIRED Smaller form factor offers much better portability. Bright, high-resolution screen. Runs Flash? Oh, yeah.
TIRED Some stability concerns. Proprietary connector and cable (looks like an iPod port, but ain’t). Battery is nonreplaceable.

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Slim Fast: Apple’s iPad 2 Leads the Race

Everybody wishes the iPad 2 had a higher-resolution display like the iPhone 4, but Apple didn’t even have to go there yet.
All Apple did was put the iPad on a treadmill. The tablet shed some weight and gained some speed to become the iPad 2, and it’s incredible what a difference that makes. It feels like a brand-new product.
Most important of all is the iPad 2’s thinness. The iPad 2 is 0.34 inches thick, about 33 percent thinner than its predecessor. Now, reaching your fingers across the screen to swipe and tap is far easier than it was on the chunkier iPad 1.
People who enjoy reading will love the thinner body: Cradling an iPad 2 in your hands for an hour doesn’t feel that cumbersome. You’ll also be surprised how often you’ll be using the tablet with one hand. Even though it’s only a few ounces lighter than the older iPad (1.3 pounds versus 1.5 pounds), the changes to the tablet’s weight and ergonomics feel substantial.

The iPad 2 is only slightly thicker than a pencil.

Imagine how significant thinness and weight are for people who are considering tablets for use in a professional field that requires a lot of moving around, such as doctors who could use the iPad to replace a stack of X-rays, architects relying on an iPad as an interactive display for blueprints, or students using the iPad as an all-in-one textbook, note-taker and daily planner. The thinner and lighter a tablet gets, the more useful it becomes for various types of customers.
As a standalone device, the iPad 2’s soft keys still aren’t ideal for typing compared to a physical keyboard. However, this problem seems to be eroding over time, as the skinnier profile already makes it easier to hold the device with one hand while pecking away on keys with the other.
Also, Apple’s Smart Cover protective accessory (sold separately for $40 to $70) is a cover that folds to create an angle to prop up the device so you can type on it more comfortably. The built-in magnets, which cling to the side of the iPad, are very cool and make the cover extremely easy to take off or put on. Personally, I prefer using most gadgets bareback, but the Smart Cover is the only cover I’d consider keeping with the iPad 2 since it’s so easy to take off.
The other most important change is speed. Apple claims the new A5 processor in the iPad 2 offers double the performance of the original iPad. Indeed, apps and websites load more quickly, and 3-D games look more detailed; the entire iOS experience is just buttery smooth.

Web performance has largely improved, thanks to iOS 4.3, the latest software update shipping with the iPad 2, which includes an improved JavaScript-rendering engine for Safari. The iPad 2 took 2,180 milliseconds to complete a SunSpider benchmark test, whereas the iPad 1 took 3,353 milliseconds. Running the earlier iOS 4.2, the iPad 1 took over 8,100 milliseconds to complete the same test. That means JavaScript-heavy websites (such as Gmail) should run significantly faster.
Surprisingly, despite the major speed boost, the iPad 2 retains a 10-hour battery life, the same as the slower, first-gen iPad.


As for the cameras inside the iPad 2, Apple took some shortcuts, presumably to keep the costs down and to make the device thinner. Apple claims it primarily designed the cams with FaceTime video conferencing in mind, so photos weren’t a priority. That’s an understatement: The front-facing cam is VGA, or 640 x 480 pixels, and the rear camera shoots 720p video. These resolutions add up to less than a megapixel, making the cams useless for still shots. The iPad 2’s video looks good and it’s adequate for video conferencing, but still shots are frighteningly bad.
The rest of the iPad story is the most important ingredient that defines a tablet: the apps. Without apps, after all, a tablet is nothing more than a fancy digital picture frame, and here, Apple is the uncontested winner: The iOS App Store serves about 65,000 apps made just for the iPad.

Here in the Wired newsroom, we were entranced with Apple’s new, $5 GarageBand app that launched with the iPad 2. People could pick up the tablet for the first time, fiddle with some options and immediately figure out how to compose a drum loop or guitar melody. Within minutes, we were passing the iPad 2 around the room as if it were a spliff.
The iPad’s closest contender, the Motorola Xoom, has about 16 apps made for Android Honeycomb, and the tablet has a starting price of $800. Here’s where the decision becomes easy: Why would you buy a tablet for $800 with just over a dozen apps, when you could pay $500 to $830 for a tablet with access to 65,000 apps?
Google and its manufacturing partners have their work cut out for them, and until we see some killer apps made for Android tablets, Apple will continue to lead this market.

As for which iPad 2 you should buy, it really depends on your needs. For most people, we’d recommend at least the 32-GB model ($600), which should come in handy if you plan to use the iPad for gaming, watching video or creating media. If you already own a smartphone with tethering or hotspot options (which all iPhones have now), you won’t need to plunk down extra money on an iPad 2 with 3G, so go with a Wi-Fi-only model. Those who plan to use lightweight applications — reading, web surfing and e-mail — will be fine with the 16-GB base model for $500.
WIRED Skinnier profile shows mercy to your joints. Big performance boost makes apps, games and web browsing more zippy. Same $500 starting price and 10-hour battery life.
TIRED Mediocre cameras make still photos look slimy. Thinner body makes physical buttons on the side a little harder to press.

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Dell Inspiron Duo Is Indifference Times Two

You can’t deny Dell some hard-fought gee-whiz cred with the new Inspiron Duo.
In a world of commoditized portables, it is nothing if not a unique product. Show it off to your friends; it looks like a netbook, and you pop open the laptop-like clamshell and wait for the bored expression to appear. Then comes the sucker punch: you rotate the screen horizontally within its frame and snap the laptop back shut. Ta-da, it’s a freakin’ tablet, bro! People are duly impressed. It’s a neat trick and, at the very least, a clever feat of engineering.
But what is the Dell Inspiron Duo? Cut through the mystery and you will find — sorry to burst your bubble — a Windows netbook with a rotating touchscreen.
And that begs the question, what is it good for?
Well, we’re still working on that one.
This is the problem with dual-function gadgets in general: They rarely do either of the things they’re designed for very well. As a netbook, the Duo is at least passable. While it’s heavier than other 10-inch netbooks by up to half a pound, it’s well designed and looks good, and the 1366 x 768 screen’s brightness is about average for the category. But performance is unfortunately poor all around (a 1.5-GHz Atom doesn’t get you very far), and the two measly USB ports could stand an upgrade.
As a tablet, the Duo fares considerably worse. Here, its three pounds of heft are way too much for extended use, and the clamshell design adds an uncomfortable thickness to the device that makes it hard to hold. The screen also suffers from the same poor viewing-angle problems that sunk the Streak 7. If you’re not holding it dead on, the screen is virtually illegible.
Of course, the biggest problem here really isn’t Dell’s fault, it’s that Windows just doesn’t work very well for touchscreen devices, especially not on a small scale like this. Use the Duo in tablet mode for more than three minutes and your skin starts to crawl. You want to get something done quickly. You try to hit Control-C. Soon you find you’re reaching over and over for a keyboard that isn’t there. Except, of course, it is. Thank God for that.
WIRED 320GB hard drive is bigger than my laptop’s. Flipping system works well, feels sturdy. Dell Stage custom launcher app loads automatically in tablet mode, makes Windows a bit more useful as a slate. Duo Audio Station ($100 more) adds much-improved audio and a vertical docking system.
TIRED Tediously slow all around; get used to a lot of waiting. Screen is hideous. Too heavy for regular, table-free use.

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