While on the way to other activities yesterday, I paid a call at Samsung’s retail store at the Time-Warner building, the mini-metropolis anchored at the start of New York’s Central Park.
The plan: give the Galaxy Tab a hands-on and see whether my opinions on the 7” gadget are shared by the reviews I read on Friday.
There’s truth in all the Tab critiques. I’m in complete harmony with Wired’s opinion that the Tab is a pleasure to use. I don’t own a smartphone, so my keystrokes and behaviors did not have to be “retrained.” Overall, this gadget felt comfortable, like an old pair of jeans. I could see myself reading docs, emailing, and using the over-sized phone interface.
In Gizmodo’s scathing review, the keyboard was pounced on as an example of an unsatisfying compromise Samsung made in this hybrid phone-tablet. No doubt I needed more fingering practice in hitting the smaller key outlines. I was expecting an iPad keyboard experience, which Samsung didn’t achieve within the confines of the Tab’s tight footprint. But still not nearly as bad as Gizmodo would have you believe.
A small section of the expansive Tab dial pad.
One surprise: I liked the haptic feedback that’s found on Android phones. Another: I enjoyed taking pictures with this phonelet. And by the way, Goggles is an impressive piece of photo analysis software. Yes, it still needs plenty of refinement, but impressive nonetheless.
The Tab does accommodate multi-tasking, and I didn’t quite get Gizmodo’s rant about the task manager being unnecessary. Um, having a light-weight manager to bring various tasks to the foreground is generally required in a modern OS.
Yes, the Tab takes its sweet time in loading embedded Flash swf objects. But the browser in general seemed pretty darn responsive.
It is expensive. And that may be its biggest turnoff.
My ten minutes were up and I had to move on. By the way, there was something of a crowd swarming around the Tab area of the Samsung store, but nothing like the mobs at an Apple outlet.
It is plain silly to dismiss Samsung Galaxy Tab as not a serious, competitive alternative for some users— save that criticism for Windows Phone 7. The Tab will find its market, and with further revisions of Android, close the iPad gap.
Related articles
- Samsung Galaxy Tab Garners Favorable Reviews (wired.com)
I was looking for the tab too but failed to find one in any AT&T or T-Mo store . One T-mo store told me that their demo piece had been shoplifted..