Mob!ler Mission 4 - Samsung Galaxy Tab (First Impressions)

Having finally got a day off from the endless cleaning of patients teeth, I took the opportunity to visit the Arndale Centre in Manchester to have a play with the much hyped Samsung Galaxy Tab.


On first impressions it's clear that Samsung have gone to some considerable effort to make the Galaxy Tab look and feel like a premium product. The rounded corners and bevelled back make the product pleasing to both the eye and touch. When you see it, you'll want to pick it up and play with it.


The build quality appears very good; it feels sturdy and the plastics used on the back lack the slightly cheap feel of the Galaxy S. With a 7 inch display the Galaxy Tab is portable too. Putting a demo product into your pocket in a shop is generally discouraged although I'm sure it would have fit on my inside jacket pocket with ease. It made other larger tablet pc's look a bit silly when you consider how it's going to be used by most people; on the move. One thing I did notice however was how many fingerprints the device had on the screen before I even picked it up. I don't know if some particularly greasy customer had had a play before I arrived, but it's something worth mentioning.


The screen (despite the poor photo) is very bright and crisp. The high resolution of the display makes reading text very comfortable and I could envisage myself reading pdf files which don't display properly on my ebook reader, without eye strain. I started up a sample 720p video on the device which it played without skipping a beat, and was very impressive.


The Android 2.2 interface was very smooth and applications opened nearly instantly. Web browsing was good fun, and I can see the potential for online newspapers and magazines to be viewed on it. Pinch to zoom is enabled and moving around the webpage was like floating. If you haven't tried web-browsing on a tablet device yet, give it a go!


Text entry is the one area I feel lets the Galaxy Tab down. Although it should come equipped with Swype, I couldn't seem to find an option to enable it on the demo version I tried. I am looking forward to see how my opinion of this changes when it is enabled on the tablet.


Overall, from my very brief hands on with the device, I found it very easy to use.  Combined with it's smooth interface and nearly limitless uses using apps from the android store, one thing is for certain: you won't want to put it down.