The iPad needed a nemesis, and this month Samsung offers up the first credible one. To some, the Galaxy Tab is a compact - or just too small - iPad wannabe; to others, it's a stretched-out version of the popular Galaxy S Android phone, minus the ability to make calls. But to Steve Jobs, it should be a flaming arrow in the iPad's thatched roof. One little fire may be easy for Apple to douse, but it's the first of many arrows. Things are gonna burn.
I've been playing with Sprint's version of the Galaxy Tab for a few days now, and while I was immediately struck by its likeability, it's far from perfect. As I'll explain, every minor advantage over the iPad comes with a potentially major tradeoff. And while the 7-inch tablets are "cheaper" than Apple's 10-inchers, that's only because they are attached to wireless plans and two-year contracts. iPads generally come with no strings attached, even if you buy the cellular-capable 3G ones. But it's a strong first move, and a more serious contender than the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, which ended up kicking off a pretty major revolution. People will buy it, either now or in a Wi-Fi-only model that hopefully arrives by the end of the month.
Tablets are different
To better understand why the Galaxy Tab is a contender, it's important to seize on the things you actually do with a tablet, that you wouldn't do with a smart phone. An iPad has a surface area that makes it conducive to reading, to playing games, to watching movies and to making you interact with your fingers in a way that goes beyond the staccato chicken pecks of a 3.5-inch smart phone's screen. In fact, the Galaxy's screen has about three times the surface area of most smart phones, including the iPhone. In this sense, even though it runs mostly the same apps as the Evo, the Droid, the MyTouch and others, the Galaxy Tab is a tablet - it's imperative that you feel like you can do more with it.
The iPad of course is much larger, and clad in aluminum, it weighs slightly more. Most importantly, that 3-inch difference in diagonal screen size actually means that the iPad has twice the touch surface. If Galaxy Tab is a tablet, iPad is still the tablet. When it comes to tablet fundamentals, here's how the Galaxy measures up to the iPad:
Books
While reading on a tight-screened smart phone is annoying, reading on an iPad suffers from a different problem: It's too big and unwieldy for many people. The Galaxy is about the size of those larger trade paperbacks, and can be loaded with the Kindle and Nook apps for "just right" reading of e-books.
Android's OS makes it easy to access system brightness, a must for people who read at night. Reading with an iPad requires some extra jiggling (which will hopefully go away when the new iPad OS turns up).
But battery life is key when you use a tablet as an e-book reader, and the Galaxy Tab is not impressive in this regard. Though boasts reach as high as 13 hours a charge, Laptop Magazine's battery tests estimate it closer to 7 or 8 hours, notably less than an iPad.
Wilson Rothman
- msnbc.com