A Tablet that can Actually Replace my Computer – Samsung Galaxy Tab 750

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 750 – A tablet for which I was anxiously waiting, finally landed in India on 10th August (Launch video at the end). The talks and reviews all round, made me drool over this tab.

It is sleek and has an elegant & intuitive user interface, Touchwiz in which Samsung has done a really good job in designing it, everything touched perfection. Before I start, there’s a video which I would like you to watch once:

Some Specification Talk

Talking about its specifications, Samsung Galaxy Tab 750 (a.k.a Tab 10.1 because of its screen size) boasts a gorilla glass display with a resolution of 1280×800 and a pixel density of 149ppi, it’s among the best tablet displays right now.

Detailed specifications:

For those wondering what is pixel density, wikipedia can come to your rescue,
and for those thinking how well its screen compares with others, here’s a comparison chart.

Though, I’m jealous that Samsung has just announced it’s 8.9 inch Tab with an updated 1.5 Ghz dual core processor. I hope India is among the list of countries where it’s going to be launched.

Features that are awesome

The Tab packs in a plethora of features but some of them can really be tagged with the word – Awesome:

1. The User Interface

The user interface is what makes the Tab different from all other tablets in the market. The Touchwiz interface can be simply termed by three words – neat, bright and polished. I had got a chance few weeks back to use my friend’s Tab and I found all the transitions silky smooth & snappy. The touchwiz widgets can be re-sized in both directions; a handy feature and there’s a mini app tray at the bottom as well containing shortcuts to Task Manager, Memo, Calendar etc.

Its home screen, ‘Live Panel’ is a customizable home screen experience from where content such as real-time Facebook & Twitter feeds, Agenda, eMails, app shortcuts, RSS feeds, weather, Picture slideshow and much more can be directly accessed.

Another interesting cookie in it’s interface is “Tilting” and “Panning”, which is a tweak to android’s pinch to zoom feature. Hold the tablet with both of your hands, keep 2 fingers on the screen and then tilt it forwards or backwards, this will zoom in and zoom out. The Galaxy S2 also has this and it’s really handy when surfing the internet.

2. The Hubs

A tablet is surely a productive device but the Tab 10.1 takes this experience to another level. Among the several hubs present in it, the Social Hub and Readers Hub are highly useful stuff that I think Samsung has made for Touchwiz. The social hub lets you surf through multiple email accounts, facebook updates, twitter tweets, blog feeds, instant messaging and much more.

Now, talking about Readers Hub, it opens the door to thousands of magazines, newspapers and millions of eBooks! The hub also provides some magazines for free which I read almost daily, like PC Pro, Wallpaper magazine etc. It’s the digital age where paper seems to be vanishing slowly, being overtaken by digital prints and reading on the Tab, on the 10.1″ screen is very enjoyable.

Just for a note, three other hubs are also included in Touchwiz, namely Music Hub, Media Hub and Reader’s Hub. But Music and Media Hub are not available in India. More on Readers Hub later.

3. Entertainment

When it comes to entertainment, Galaxy tab is still seen to be leading the way. The Tab 750 can play true HD videos smoothly. When combined with its screen and the dual speakers, it’s like having a portable home theatre in your hands. According to Anandtech, the Tab 750 gives a battery backup of about 9.5 hours. That’s like watching 4 movies back to back and you’re still left with 1.5 hours of battery!

And not just movies. The support for flash is a very important part of Honeycomb. Surfing through videos on Youtube, Vimeo, playing flash games etc. gives a rich web experience on this HSPA+ enabled Tab.

4. Productivity

Productivity cannot be directly termed as a feature but the apps bundled along with Touchwiz takes the definition of productivity to a new level. With the The Polaris Office app (came bundled along with the phone; not available on the market) , editing documents, making presentations, managing spreadsheets etc is very easy. Let me tell you that Polaris is more powerful than any other office suite available. I’ve tried Docs2Go and Quickoffice as well but none could match its features.

For instance, while editing a spread-sheet, I can resize cells, add background colors to them, modify cell borders, add functions with a tap, change font styles and much more, many of which, aren’t possible in others. In short, the Tab is perfect for business professionals.

And it’s not only limited to this. The PenMemo, Notes and Tasks applications are really handy and the email app, modified by Samsung is also another good addition, with two pane browsing for emails (and also messages). Google maps for navigation, Instant messaging, seamless multi-tasking capabilities and more are also present

5. Gaming

Gaming on Android! As soon as you hear this word, several popular games like Angry Birds, Switch, Guerilla Bob, etc  start rushing into your mind, right?

Well, the tab has a beastly Tegra 2 GPU chipset and a dual core 1GHz CPU hidden inside the shell of Tab and gaming is a wonderful experience on it. Moreover, the Tab also has a Games Hub packed with it where you get access to several games including multiplayer titles as well.

In the market, a special section of games can be seen rising these days and that is the ‘Tegra Optimized Games’ which includes games optimized for tegra such as Samurai II: Vengeance THD, Guerrilla Bob THD, AirAttack THD etc that can surely make your friends jealous.

Also check out our guide for playing temple run for pc game.

Benchmarks

Until Nvidia completes its highly buzzed project, “Kal-el” (no, not superman) which will bring 4-quad GPUs to mobiles, the Tab will remain as the dominant tablet for gaming, for sure.

One thing that I’ve observed about Samsung is that they pay special attention to the device’s design. They make sure it is light and solid. The same applied to SGS2 (its mesh texture on the backcover) and the Tab 10.1 sports the same feel.

6. Samsung Dive

Samsung Dive is a feature that’s very rare in Android devices. In common words, it’s a find-my-mobile-if-it’s-stolen/lost service baked into the Tab, which allows the tablet to be remotely tracked, locked and wiped from the web. When I am spending more than $650+ (Rs. 30,000+) on a gadget, this is, of-course, among the most important features in the Tab.

Btw, I hope you’ll never have to use it 😉

7. Finally, a Tablet that can totally Replace my Desktop

My desktop is a place where I spend hours daily. Be it be day or night. It has been the same since years but I think, now is the time to change it. Now its Time to Tab!

With the Galaxy Tab 750, one can watch videos on Youtube, read eBooks, newspapers & magazines using Readers Hub, stream TV shows, (meanwhile, also get push emails), browse reddit and much more, that can be done on the PC. I can carry it everywhere I want because it weighs only 565 grams, even lighter than a typical mathematics book. The best part of it – customization. In my opinion, this is the most important factor where iPad lacks from Tab . I can’t live without customizing it or without having a Homescreen (rather than just an app menu as in the iPad). It’s my tablet, I can make it look the way I want it to look.

From a blogger’s point of view, I can blog on the go. There would be no need of carrying a Laptop to any event, a Tab will be all that I’ll need.

From a student’s point of view, the Tab has everything that I want. A month back in my college, we were asked to make a presentation on any topic for Communication Skills project. I chose a topic – ‘Augmented Reality’ because I am obsessed with this technology, seeing its possibilities it has in the future (a good example is Layar). For making the presentation, my Samsung Galaxy S2 was all that I had, as we were not given any laptops till then. It’s not a tablet but it has every thing that a tablet possesses except for the OS and the screen size. The Polaris app helped me to make a powerpoint presentation over it and not to forget mentioning, I got good grades too.

So, you must be getting the idea by now. A tablet can change the way we work. Or in simple words, replace the traditional ways of doing work. Taking it to the class for notes, making presentations, playing games when a boring lecture is going on and much more.

The parliament of India is all set to go ‘Paper-Less’. The ministers are getting bonuses for purchasing a tablet. Cool, right?

You can see how, this world is getting inclined to tablets.

The Galaxy Tab 750 getting Unveiled in India

vs. The Competition (or the iPad 2)

The word Tablet has become synonymous with iPad just like, mp3 player with iPod. I don’t blame the general public for this perception when Ipad has patented almost every single aspect of a tablet! So much so that even the rectangular shape is patented, which was sufficient to get the Tab banned in Europe recently. Frankly speaking, I found it baseless; some even say the photos were forged.

If you look  at iPad 2 from one angle, it is  simply an over sized iPhone with a separate section of market for apps to suit its screen! But the Samsung Galaxy Tab 750, is powered by Android 3.1 ‘Honeycomb’ which is an OS specially designed for tablets, with a large market of applications and games. Actually It’s a tablet that can actually replace a PC. It has a different, dedicated OS for it unlike iOS.

Other rivalries of the Galaxy Tab’s main rivalries apart from iPad includes the Asus Eee Pad transformer (because of its keyboard dock). But as you can see the benchmark scores, the Tab edges out both of its competition.

Although there’s a flaw in the Tab which some people complain about and that’s the lack of external SD card slot. But I think that’s not a very big deal and the cloud is the solution for this. Google is trying hard to bring this tech world to their cloud-verse. Google Music, Chrome OS all of them aim to make the flash/hard drive extinct from this world.

Wrap Up

Well, The Galaxy Tab is definitely the best android tablet you can get right now. The elegant UI, body, features everything is of high level. The UI is what makes the Tab different from others, it isn’t too integrated as to disrupt the Android experience, but at the same time it includes some nice additions that actually improves upon stock Android. I wish I could play more with the Tab, I would have written my views in a more detailed way.

Well, if there is one Tablet that can take over iPad and beat it hands down its Samsung Galaxy Tab 750 for sure. It does have its shortcomings like no support for SD card as I mentioned earlier. But hey, nothing’s perfect right?

[Photo credits: Anandtech, Thisismynext, Skattertech]