Saturday, March 09, 2013

Week 1 Post-mortem - Samsung Galaxy Tab

Source: www.samsung.com/au

In a nutshell, I wasn't able to use the Galaxy Tab for the whole week as I wanted - although it's still quite capable despite its age, I just wasn't able to do all the stuff I wanted to do on it. Actually, it's not even that - all of the things I needed to do: connect remotely to my work computer, check work emails, catch up on buzzfeed, podcasts and twitter -  were all possible using the Galaxy Tab. The annoying thing was that it didn't do it as well as my other devices. Therefore, when I needed to visit a customer site for work, I had to bring my daily driver (iPad 3), because I couldn't be confident of being able to do all the work critical stuff I might need on the Galaxy Tab. I couldn't even use the Galaxy Tab as my GPS for said trip to the customer, since the Galaxy Tab was just over the maximum width that could be handled by my adjustable GPS car mount; that job ultimately went to my iPhone 4s (using Google maps, not Apple maps).

Because it was running older hardware, things would be a noticeably slower on the Tab, and combined with the fact that the screen is a lowish resolution (1024x600) on a 7 inch screen, meant that websites required a lot more scrolling, and bogged the device down (if I forced it to view the full desktop version), or I was forced to use mobile versions with reduced options. This, combined with the tendency of android apps to look a bit less 'polished' than their iOS counterparts, just made the experience a bit 'meh' for me.

Even now, a day before my week with the Galaxy Tab is supposed to be over, I'm typing this post on my Asus Transformer, just because it has a physical keyboard that I can use and a nice big screen to view all my text in.  So on that note, I'll start tomorrow with my next device (iPad mini) and report back next weekend.

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