Samsung Galaxy Tab Review - read honest Samsung Galaxy Tab reviews

 

Hot on the heels of the success of the Apple iPad, many phone manufacturers are keen to get their foot in the touchscreen tablet market. Samsung is the latest company to give it a go and their offering, the Galaxy Tab, looks set to be a real contender.

 

As the name might suggest, the Galaxy Tab takes a lot of design cues from Samsung´s popular Galaxy range of smartphones. For starters, it runs on Android Froyo. This instantly gives the Tab a cutting edge considering the growing number of Android fanatics that will lap this device up for that fact alone. The Google OS has been modified to run on the Tab and so will offer a slightly different experience than you may be used to on an Android phone.

 

 

Unlike many tablets that have been rushed out in recent months, the Galaxy Tab looks like one of the few that actually offers real competition to the Apple device. The iPad received a lot of criticism on its launch for the lack of a camera, yet the Galaxy Tab exceeds expectations by including two. The main camera is 3 megapixels and the secondary camera is 1.3 megapixels. These may not offer as great a resolution as is available on many phones these days, but it does allow the Galaxy Tab to be used for video calling – something that automatically gives it an edge over the iPad. The cameras also include great features such as facial recognition.

 

These cameras can also be used in conjunction with various augmented reality (AR) apps. Combined with the Tab´s built in GPS, you can hold the tablet up in front of you and it can point out directions, label places of interest and even locate places to eat. While navigational map apps such as Google Maps are becoming a standard feature on virtually all phones and gadgets possessing a GPS receiver, AR is set to completely revolutionise being lost all over again. It´s with features like AR that you really can´t help feeling like you are living in the future.

 

 

The 7" screen is ideal for full web browsing, and yet again the Tab has an advantage over the iPad by its support for Adobe Flash. While Apple´s CEO Steve Jobs may insist that Flash is on the way out, it still does not change the fact that a significant percentage of the internet uses Adobe´s software and this isn´t likely to change soon, not even with the imminent release of HTML5. Including Flash support dramatically increases a device´s web functionality.

 

Being a similar size to Amazon´s Kindle eReader, the Galaxy Tab is a perfect device for reading. As well as allowing you to easily read eBooks the Galaxy Tab offers quick access to various electronic magazines and newspapers. You can turn the page with a quick finger flick, or zoom in on particular portions of text. As an eReader the Tab yet again performs better than the iPad due to the mere fact that it is more of a similar size to a traditional paperback than the Apple tablet.

 

 

Obviously the Galaxy Tab has much more to offer than the features mentioned above, and like all Android gadgets comes with access to the Android App Store, helping ensure that you never run out of things to do with the device. The Tab offers numerous advantages over the Apple iPad and this, combined with the pre-existing Android fanbase is sure to give Apple something to worry about when it is released.