Samsung Galaxy Tab P1000, More Than Just A Large Android Handset?

The native browser, irrespective of the boost with Flash 10.1 support and everything turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. When I compared it to the iPad’s browsing experience, the Galaxy Tab fell drastically short on speed even though functionality was a bit more. Pages tended to be laggy while scrolling and there always seemed to be a jerky break when moving through screens. Unfortunately, it was s similar experience with Opera’s new beta Mobile browser even if rendering was a lot faster.

The Galaxy tab also comes with GPS capabilities supported by A-GPS. Samsung hasn’t quite included any software with this device like it would with others namely Route 66 Navigation. You’ll have to stick to Google Maps or use the Layar browser for an augmented reality GPS enabled search. Of course Bluetooth 3.0 and all the goodies that it comes with including A2DP is supported and of USB 2.0.

Misc. Features
Like I said, everything you’d expect from an Android handset is available. The Calendar syncs with Google and Facebook to keep track of your appointments, anniversaries, birthdays etc.  It has an Alarm clock, world clock, memo pad, News and Weather aggregaor, ThinkFree office (read only) for accessing MS document files in the drive or via your ThinkFree online account. The Tab can also be used as a Digital Photoframe thanks to a preloaded application.

Camera
A 3 megapixel autofocus camera with all the trimmings including an LED flash Face and smile detection, a few scene modes, geotagging and video recording – 720 x 480 @30fps are all present and accounted for. A forward facing VGA camera is also present for self portraits and video calling when that gets here. As for image quality I found the pictures to be as good as any 3MP camera out there. Indoor images with plenty of light gave some pretty focused pictures.

Outdoor images weren’t too bad either although excess sunlight did make certain portions of the image seem a little over exposed.

Outdoor shot

Battery Life
The Galaxy Tab actually managed to dish out a relatively high battery life. With a single charge and using it as my primary device for net and calls, I squeezed out a good two full days of usage out of it. Considering it was my birthday weekend, the calls were pouring in and the average call time it raked in was easily over 4 hours and 40 minutes of just talk time. That’s quite impressive in my book.

The Bottom Line
I’ve become quite the fan of the Galaxy Tab and tabbing in general even though the web browsing or gaming experience was nowhere near as fluid as the iPad’s. However the Rs. 38,000 (MRP) price tag is a bit unnerving. As well rounded a device as the Tab may be, it’s not very well priced. If the price drops to less than Rs. 34,000, I might consider this worth a purchase as a secondary internet device, a replacement to my netbook, but it’ll never replace my trusty handset that does it all in a pocketable size. The accessories for this device are also available and those include a slightly heavy physical keyboard dock and a slightly bare HDMI dock amongst others, none of which are reasonably priced.

For a more pictorial view of the Tab go here.