By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
2010 was the Apple iPad’s year. It took the tech world by storm and simply became one of the hottest devices to hit the market and its success has been phenomenal with just over 9 million units sold as of this writing.
As of late November, the iPad’s only competition came from Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, a sexy 7-inch Google Android powered tablet with a staggering array of features but whose operating system was that of a smartphone. Still, Samsung was able to sell 1,000,000 units in the firs two months, proving that there is a demand for a 7-inch tablet with features similar to the iPad's.
Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android have been around for over three years, they have each been successful in the smartphone space and now are poised to take the next logical step in the tablet segment. Apple has an impending update to the iPad which is rumoured to be thinner, sport multiple cameras and also integrate a better speaker.
As for Android, the Google tablet space will be further enriched by Android OS 3.0 Honeycomb which will be previewed by Motorola during CES 2011 and aims to make the Android experience on non smartphone slate devices even more compelling. Right now its a two-way battle with the dominant Apple iPad (probably the most gifted high-tech device this holiday season) and the still too-expensive, yet strangely effective Samsung Galaxy Tab. Let's see how things stand between the two.
Apple iPad with OS 4.2
The Apple iPad itself is an incredibly sexy piece of technology. It elicits the same awe and wonder as the MacBook Air did when it first came out. The cool and solid aluminum back wraps and tapers around the vast expanse that is the 10'inch touchscreen. The screen is surrounded by an inch-thick black bezel that serves no function except to house the light sensors. Everything about it screams high-quality and thoughtful design.
The operating system you get on the iPad is also sandwiched between iPhone OS and Mac OS as it has elements of both like pop-over windows, which are the iPad’s version of right-click option menus. These are subtle and take a while to discover.
Now with the new and improved iOS 4.2, the iPad has become less of a toy and more of a serious computer. Multitasking elegantly allows you to juggle applications without losing your data, folders give greater organization options and wireless printing as well as media sharing are now possible.
With the new OS, the iPad is very fast. Everything from loading pages and opening apps is on par with the iPhone 4, take into consideration the (much) larger screen real estate that needs to be populated and this is quite a feat.
The 1024x768, 9’7-inch screen on the iPad is phenomenal. We watched the slick YouTube trailer for Green Lantern and episodes of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated show and they were crisp and vivid even at the lowest brightness setting. How is this possible? Apple's iPad uses IPS LCD screen technology offers much wider viewing angles and substantial brightness while consuming less power. The iPad is also offered in Wi-Fi only and 3G+Wi-Fi variants which gives users access to the technology even if they don’t want to sign up with an expensive data plan.
The lack of Flash support on the iPad, however, is inexcusable. There are millions of websites and videos on the Internet that just won’t show up on the iPad, crippling the devices and confounding its users.
Apple seems adamant that Flash will not be supported because it is a resource hog but the ones who suffer are the users faced with blank screens. Still, a growing number of Flash videos have been recoded for HTML5 playback and with the SkyFire browser; users can actually access Flash content.
Paving the way for tablet computers, the iPad took on netbooks, ebook readers, portable gaming consoles and steadily gained momentum and popularity as a game defining device and a serious new computing platform.
Samsung Galaxy Tab with Google Android OS 2.2
The Samsung Galaxy Tab represents the first real competition to the iPad. From the time it was leaked in June, the Galaxy Tab gained a lot of hype from Android users hungry for a tablet experience as well and others who found the iPad too big and heavy.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab looks great on paper. A powerful 1GHz Hummingbird processor, 512MB or RAM, a high-resolution 7-inch multi-touch screen, 3G and Wi-Fi capabilities the ability to expand memory from 16GB to 48GB (with a MicroSD slot) plus dual-cameras for video chats. The Galaxy Tab runs Android OS 2.2 Froyo, the latest and most refined version of the Android OS.
With its diminutive size and weight plus the addition of the two cameras, the Samsung Galaxy Tab addressed two of the biggest complaints about the iPad. That it was too big and heavy for prolonged one-handed use (i.e. Reading eBooks, websites and email) and that it couldn’t handle video chats (like Apple’s FaceTime which is now available on all their mobile devices, except the iPad).
We use the Samsung Galaxy Tab daily as our main non-smartphone device. Our initial impressions were that it was smaller than we expected but also heavier and thicker than we imagined but not in a bad way. Our day-to-day use of the device showed that we were more likely to bring it with us everywhere we went. It didn't attract as attention as the iPad did (because it looks similar to a Kindle) and aside from a poor screen typing experience, we found it to be an amazing device for consuming content, managing emails and using Google's rich collection of web apps.
Moreover, we like Google's no fuss app update setup as well as the fact that you can easily access all your previously purchased and downloaded apps on any new device.
The Galaxy Tab is a device that you can easily hold with one hand and the thickness does make it feel rigid. It is small enough to fit a jacket pocket and is the sort of device we wouldn’t think twice about picking up and taking with us around town. We are bringing the Galaxy Tab with us to Las Vegas for CES, hopefully to use it as a means to livestream some event or even liveblog some of the keynotes we are attending.
While the size and hardware is hot, the high price and the shoehorned smartphone OS is not. Without tablet specific OS and apps, the Samsung Galaxy Tab is sadly just an overgrown Samsung Android smartphone and this needs to change. The price is also a downer and we feel Samsung will sell a lot more of these if it shaved $100 off the purchase price or introduced a scaled-down Wi-Fi only version without the 3G connectivity.
There is definitely potential in this device specially when the Honeycomb OS is made available to current Samsung Galaxy Tab owners. The hardware specs are already there, the OS just needs to be refined further.
Conclusion
The iPad’s larger screen and better-designed, notebook-inspired software keyboard are far better suited for typing and getting work done. The iPad also offers iWork that is designed around the device in order to make its users more productive. The Samsung Galaxy Tab does not really work well for typing long documents right now.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab is the better device for portability and content consumption on the go. Placing the iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab side by side, once really gets the impression that these cannot be competing products, not by a long shot.
The size disparity is just too large and aside from both being tablet devices with multi-touch features running a mobile OS, each device is clearly in a different segment.
The iPad has its own OS with features and capabilities that focus on its specific tablet specs. The Samsung Galaxy Tab on the other hand runs your garden variety Android OS with some tweaks from Samsung’s TouchWIZ skin but 90 percent of the experience is identical to any other Android phone albeit on a larger screen.
In terms of usefulness and versatility, the iPad wins this round hands down. You can just do so much more on a larger device even if it is heavier and lacks cameras; these are issues we expect to see rectified during the next iPad revision coming April or May. In terms of portability and ease of app management, the Samsung Galaxy Tab is the preferred device. Know your tablet needs, check both devices out and see how they feel to you and choose the one that makes the most sense for what you need.