Another take on the week 1 post-mortem

Source: www.samsung.com/au

After having read over my first post re the Galaxy Tab, it seemed to give the impression that the experience was pretty terrible, when that wasn't necesaarily the case. Although it didn't really suit my daily needs, there are quite a few things that the Galaxy Tab did well, so I thought I'd share those to balance out the previous post.

Great for reading text

Although the buzzfeed app would sometimes get quite sluggish when it has to render posts with lots of images, it works very well when the posts are mostly text. Plus, the paperback book-sized Galaxy Tab makes it easy to hold while in bed, or having dinner :) With google reader, reading through my feeds was a pleasant experience. The lowish resolution on a bigger screen also means that the text is a bit bigger than on a smartphone, so it helps my crappy eyes :p

Youtube video viewer

I like to watch old 90's kids cartoons on youtube, which tend not to be in the highest of resolutions, so viewing them full-screen on the Galaxy Tab actually works quite well since the image is big enough to see comfortably, while the lower resolution is more forgiving to the older low resolution content.

Instagram viewer

Annoyingly, instagram insists on restricting its app to portrait mode (blah blah blah intended for phones, not tablets blah blah). Being basically an oversized phone (I believe you can actually take calls on the 3G Galaxy Tab!), it's perfect for viewing instagram pictures on a larger screen.

Phone apps look normal

One of the criticisms I have about android tablets is that hardly any apps are available in the apps store that take advantage, or at least adjust for, the tablet formfactor and screen real estate. This means that for apps like twitter and instagram, what you get is the phone app, which just look comical being stretched out on a large, landscape oriented device. At least on the Galaxy Tab (and other 7 inch android tablets), the apps look acceptable, and only just look a tad jitterbug-ish (ie. catering for older users which appreciate bigger fonts and larger targets to hit vs on a smartphone).