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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Size Certainly Matters With Nintendo's DSi XL

Photo by Jim Merithew for Wired.com

When other companies bob, Nintendo weaves. As it s rivals attempt to make their handheld game machines smaller and more portable, Nintendo hits us with the DSi XL, a supersized version of its pocket player. DSi XL, currently available in Japan and set to be released in America in the first quarter of 2010, is the size of a paperback book. It’s also about 30 percent heavier than the DS Lite. Why? Because the unit’s two screens are much, much larger — 4.2 inches diagonally, compared to the DS Lite’s 3.25-inches.
Why did they supersize it? Nintendo says the massive screens (with wider viewing angles) are in part aimed at senior citizens who don’t want to squint while playing Sudoku. But granny typically plays from home, where portability isn’t really a concern. If you do the bulk of your DS playing on your couch instead of on the bus, you likely won’t mind the tradeoff.
The larger screen isn’t just some frivolous purchase — it’s completely awesome. Seriously, we can’t imagine going back to smaller screened DSi. The screens have the same resolution as previous models, but the blown-up images look fantastic. It’s much easier on the eyes, even if finely detailed 2-D art does look a bit pixelized on occasion. It’s less obvious with 3-D graphics.

Beyond pure visual splendor, it’s also easier to interact with the DSi’s touchscreen. And although it features a standard stylus that stores inside the unit, DSi XL also comes with a comfortable pen-sized stylus that’s much easier to hold. (There’s nowhere to store it, though.)
At all of its five levels of screen brightness, XL has better battery life than the regular DSi: an additional one to three hours, depending on the setting, for a total of four to 17 hours. That’s still not quite as good as the older DS Lite’s five to 19 hours, though.
In terms of functionality, the XL isn’t different from the standard DSi: Besides playing games, you can download games from the DSi Shop, browse the web, listen to music and take pictures with the unit’s dual front- and rear-facing cameras.
When it’s released in the United States in early 2010, the DSi XL will come pre-loaded with downloadable apps. Nintendo hasn’t said which, but the Japanese version comes with a web browser, an animation program called Moving Memo, two bite-sized Brain Age games and a dictionary.
Getting a few apps for free should help to soften the sticker shock: At roughly $200, DSi XL is the most expensive model in Nintendo’s portable lineup.
If you haven’t yet traded up from a DS Lite to the DSi, you might want to wait until the XL comes out. If you’ve already upgraded, the benefits are less obvious at first — but we bet that once you try XL for yourself, you’ll want one too.
WIRED Big, gorgeous screens and comfy Sharpie-sized stylus prove it: Size matters. Better battery life than DSi.
TIRED Blown-up art looks a bit pixelized. Where are we supposed to store that giant stylus?

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Xbox 360 Slim Is Leaner, Meaner, Quieter Machine

When the Xbox 360 hit in 2005 it promised to revolutionize gaming. Microsoft got most of the way there (conceptually), but the original 360 hardware wasn’t without its … quirks.
Enter Microsoft’s upgrade/redo, the Xbox 360 S. Not only is the chassis slimmer (hence that weird, floating “S”), but it’s packed with a lot of the extras that used to be sold separately. The most dramatic change takes place under the hood. Redmond swapped out the 360’s power-hungry setup with a much more economical (e.g. smaller) motherboard and an integrated CPU/GPU/eDRAM chip. On top of the spatial benefits, this means that the 360’s operating volume — normally a hissy, Harrier-esque din — has been greatly reduced. The difference was almost immediately noticeable. While streaming Nextflix, we no longer had to turn up the volume to drown out the sound of the fan, and the act of the disc drive cycling up no longer made the doors on our entertainment center rattle.
The benefits of this engineering go beyond operating volume. Paired with the console’s newly integrated 802.11n, bevy of USB 2.0 ports, and a (finally) built-in optical audio port, the 360 S actually feels like the living room-ready entertainment powerhouse Microsoft promised five years ago. Playing DVDs and/or downloaded video seems like a much more natural extension of the console’s capabilities (though we’d still love some Blu-ray love), and the army of USB ports proves nifty for charging gadgets. The aesthetic impact is palpable too. Now that so many features are tastefully built in, the console finally looks like a serious, streamlined home theater device rather than a whirring, blinking gadget with countless peripheral flagella.
To be fair, this revamp isn’t quite the second coming either. In vying to be taken seriously, the 360 S has gotten rid of old favorites like customizable faceplates. Also, the power brick is back (though it has gotten smaller), and the included 250-GB hard drive is still proprietary (and not backwards compatible with older 360s). And, of course, there’s the largest elephant in the room: If you already have a 360, there probably isn’t a huge incentive to upgrade.
In the end this isn’t all bad. Microsoft ultimately set out to make a better (and Kinect-ready) version of the 360, and they’ve largely succeeded. The end result isn’t necessarily worth, say, drowning last year’s model in the tub and rushing to Best Buy. But, if you’ve yet to join the Xbox fold — or at least want an inexpensive, quiet, gaming/DVD/Netflix/Hulu box — this year’s model is your best bet.
WIRED Leaner, (slightly) meaner and quieter. Inches closer to the all-in-one entertainment box we’ve been waiting for. Cosmetic touches like touch-sensitive power and eject buttons class up the joint. Thrusts overpriced accessories ($80 for a Wi-Fi dongle?!) into obsolescence. Want to splurge on the Kinect in November? There’s an (integrated) port for that.
TIRED In many ways the same console we’ve been playing since Senior Year. Inter-console data transfers still require a wonky proprietary cable.

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Realistic Rock Band Guitar Lends Cred to Your Shred

Rhythm games get a lot of guff from naysayers. If you’re a fan, you’ve surely heard the catty complaints: “That’s just a toy. It’s not a real guitar.”
And it’s true. The typical Rock Band or Guitar Hero controller is fun, but it’s a bit of a joke compared to the real thing. It may look guitarlike, but the primary-color buttons up top and the plastic flipper at the bottom don’t exactly impress the ladies. You can be the best guitar “hero” in the world and you’re really still just a loser with a plastic ax.
Well, the time is here to silence the naysayers — if you can handle it. For Rock Band 3, Mad Catz is seriously upping the ante with a whole new approach to guitar gaming. Put simply, the Fender Mustang PRO-Guitar Controller is not really a game controller at all, but a full-on guitar simulator. Seventeen frets split up a total of 102 buttons which correspond to a traditional six-string guitar fingerboard. Below that, you are now tasked with actually strumming the proper string — a real wire string — instead of moving a little plastic nubbin up and down. You can play with a pick or with your thumb and fingers. Callous lotion is not included.
The PRO-Guitar completely changes the Rock Band experience from top to bottom. No longer are you simply relying on muscle memory and blind luck to power through an Expert-level song, now you’re actually learning how to play it for real.
Is this difficult? Yes, it is difficult. If you’ve never picked up a guitar before, the learning curve is extremely steep. This is night and day vs. the standard rhythm game ax, and you’ll need to slave through the Rock Band 3 pro lessons — learning chords, arpeggios, muting strings and more — to have any hope of success. But as with a real guitar, practice and you’ll get there. I (a guitar novice) was at last breezing through Medium songs on day three, though completing tunes on Hard was still out of reach when my deadline arrived and the controller had to be returned to Mad Catz. The controller can also be used to play authentic bass guitar tracks, which are easier, and standard five-lane Rock Band guitar parts, which are surprisingly not.
What’s lacking? Despite the new approach, the Mustang still looks like a toy. It’s the same size as a standard guitar controller and is completely made of plastic. If you do want to eventually switch to a real guitar, you’re going to have to get used to everything being farther apart.
And sadly, this controller’s authenticity will do nothing to head off that other standby quip of the naysayers: “Why don’t you just play a real guitar?” Well, really, why don’t you?
WIRED You’re not playing a game any more, you’re learning how to play guitar. Totally revolutionizes Rock Band gameplay (and makes you the weakest member of the band).
TIRED No whammy bar — but, trust us, your hands will be full. Lacks weight. Big investment.

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Nintendo 3DS Review: It’s Totally in Your Face

What’s so appealing about 3-D, anyway?
A while back, I saw two landmark 3-D movies in the same six-month time span: Avatar and the revival of Captain EO at Disneyland. The latter, a 1986 Michael Jackson flick, used 3-D in the sort of ham-handed ridiculous way it had always been used: Asteroids flew into the seats. Evil monsters poked their claws and spears into your face. Cue screams and laughter from audience.
For a movie so closely identified with the current 3-D boom, James Cameron’s Avatar never tried any of these tricks. I quickly forgot I was watching a “3-D movie.” The depth, the added sensation of things being further away, had the subtle effect of making everything seem real, touchable. The 3-D technology was the medium, not the message.
The Nintendo 3DS is at its best when it does Avatar, not Captain EO. Games that make players go gaga over the innovative glasses-free 3-D display are all well and good. But it’s the way the small screen’s 3-D effects make every 3DS game look like a little animated diorama in a shoebox that impresses me the most. Something about that third dimension brings games to life.

The $250 3DS, already available in Japan and coming stateside March 27, is a gadget with the weight of the world on its bezels. Nintendo has enjoyed uninterrupted dominance in the handheld gaming space since it practically created that space with Game Boy in 1989. This is now under assault from Apple’s suite of touchable phones and tablets, which play an increasingly enjoyable library of games for significantly lower prices.
Once again, Nintendo’s proposal is typical Nintendo — staunchly conservative and wildly innovative in equal measure. On the one hand, it emphasizes $40 retail games over cheap downloads, and the company says it won’t try to attract indie “garage game” developers. On the other hand, it has positively leapfrogged the competition by utilizing a glasses-free 3-D screen, in the same way that the original Nintendo DS led the way with its touch interface.
As other writers have already elaborated upon, the 3-D screen is made significantly better by the “volume control” slider to its right. You can crank the 3-D up all the way if you want to enjoy the full depth-of-field effects, but to view these you’ll need to hold the 3DS rather close to your face, pointed square at your eyeballs.
This is not nearly as taxing as it sounds — I’ve played it at length with the machine in just that position and never felt tired. But if you want, you can crank down the 3-D, sacrificing the full force of its power for a more relaxed viewing angle.

Screen aside, the 3DS looks a lot like the original DS. There’s a D-pad, four face buttons, L and R shoulder buttons and Select and Start buttons. Oh, and there’s the lower screen, which isn’t 3-D but still has a touch interface.
The big additions are a comfortable analog “slide pad” joystick and a 3-D camera, which faces outward, so you can take stereoscopic pictures of the world around you. Every Nintendo 3DS comes with a 2-GB SD card, and photos are saved directly onto this in two formats — JPG and MPO.
When you look at the images on the 3DS’ tiny screen, they may not seem so bad. When you actually open them on a PC, they look pretty much awful. But because it uses the standard MPO file format, you can then open those 3-D images in other viewers or use them on other devices. (Nintendo says it will eventually update 3DS’ firmware to take 3-D video.)
The 3DS is packed full of preloaded games and applications, some of which are more interesting than others. (I wager none will prove as compelling as Wii Sports.) Several “augmented reality” games use the 3-D camera to overlay gameplay onto a real-time image of the real world around you.
Of these, the most fun is Face Raiders, in which a photo of your face is transformed into a series of grotesque laughing enemies that fly all over the room and must be shot down. It’s not the game’s very simple point-and-shoot mechanic that makes it fun, it’s the hilarious comic expressions that it morphs your face into. Nintendo is still the master of these little touches.
Other features use the system’s wireless connection. You can set three different connections to various Wi-Fi hot spots, and when the 3DS gets into range of any of them it will automatically connect and search for new content on Nintendo’s servers. The StreetPass mode constantly searches for other people’s 3DS consoles and automatically exchanges data with them if you get within range. You can swap your Mii characters, which you can create on the system or import from your Wii, for example.
You can also drop the 3DS into sleep mode by just closing the lid, and it will continue to search for other DS systems and hot spots while running on a minimal battery charge. I was able to leave the 3DS sleeping and carry it around for two days without having to recharge it. And with so many reasons to always have it on me as I go about my day, I fully plan on doing so.
That said, when you actually have the 3DS open and are playing a game, the battery will drain very quickly. If you’ve got the wireless turned on and the screen brightness going at full blast, you’ll be staring down the Blinking Red Light of Impending Death within about three hours.
Turn the Wi-Fi off and crank down the brightness and you might squeeze another 90 minutes out of it, if you’re lucky. To that end, Nintendo has included a convenient charging cradle with each 3DS, and you’d probably better get used to using it regularly.
Eighteen months from now, Nintendo will release the inevitable 3DS Lite and take us for another $250. Until that day arrives, I’m pretty comfortable saying that the Nintendo 3DS is the best gaming platform the company has ever created: The user experience is quite polished in a variety of ways, and its forward-thinking core feature really does make gaming better. Nintendo will sell a lot of them, and glasses-free 3-D will be a big deal in the next generation of gadgets, just like an avalanche of touch screens followed the first DS.
But all that may not be enough to keep smartphones and tablets from siphoning away more and more of the gamers who have long kept Nintendo in charge of the portable-gaming world.
WIRED 3-D visuals are true game-changer. Variety of fun, preloaded apps. Lots of reasons to carry it around in sleep mode.
TIRED Camera images are low-quality. Chews through battery in the blink of an eye. Games start at $40.

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