Samsung Galaxy Tablet Review

The iPad's toughest competitor to date is making us crave frozen yoghurt.

At first sight it looks like someone trimmed the iPad by two inches and gave it some frozen yogurt (FroYo)- that's the nickname of Google's Android 2.2 operating system. It also, quite uncannily, happens to have a black front and a white back. Regardless of the similarities in appearance with Steve Jobs' latest wunderkind, you can’t deny that the Samsung Galaxy Tab is a beautiful gadget, and unless you have short fingers and a child size palm, it will actually fit in your whole hand.

The device launched in India a few days ago and yesterday we attended a reviewers workshop in Mumbai to find out if the Tab delivers on all the features it promises on epaper.

First impressions:
The menu icons are quite big, at around an inch in size. That will help touch-phobics, as well as the fact that the touch response is strong. The screen also moves around in circles so you can have fun pretending it’s square-shaped pizza dough.

We started opening apps at random, such as the GPS app, the weather report, music, movies and - how could we resist - Reader’s Hub. When we returned to the home screen a tiny icon lit up in red. It was small enough to distract, but large enough to tell you that at least three applications were running simultaneously and that they were using up the tablet’s battery power. Quite a handy tool, if you're wondering why your gadgets need to be recharged so often. With enough battery power to support seven hours of non-stop video time this tablet is no weakling, but there's certainly no harm saving some energy for later.

If you fear you're afflicted with chubby and stubby fingers, the Tab won’t let you miss the mark no matter how bad your hand-eye coordination is. Its messaging app has big letters on its Qwerty keypad, comparable a small laptop. It also supports Swype, an ingenious feature that lets you form whole words just by swiping your finger over the alphabets. It also has a high threshold for spelling errors so all you need to do is guide your finger to what you think is right and let Swype breeze through conversations.

OS: Android 2.2
Camera: 3 mp with LED flash in the back and 1.3 mp in the front
Video: Full HD video player and recorder
Memory: 16GB, 32 GB and extendable up to another 32 GB with Micro SD
eReading: Books, Magazines and newspapers
Price: Rs. 38,000

Availability: The Samsung Galaxy Tab will be available in selected stores across 15 cities in India from November 10. If you can’t wait, then pre-order via the Samsung India website.