Saturday, December 3, 2011

Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 Review

AT&T and Samsung have brought forth a tablet that adds to their set of sleek Android-based slates, this one the first to work with the carrier’s 4G LTE network. Inside you’ll find the rather powerful 1.5Ghz Qualcomm MSM8660 dual-core processor, Samsung’s custom user interface TouchWiz UX made specifically for tablets, and either 16 or 32GB or internal storage. You can take 3 megapixel photos and 720p videos with the back-facing camera, slightly less impressive media with the front-facing 2 megapixel camera. As this tablet is thin, so is it speedy, and as there are now more than four different models of tablet running Android from Samsung on the market today, surely they’ve gotten the formula correct enough to warrant such an array by now – wouldn’t you say?

Like its predecessors the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Galaxy Tab 7.7, the Galaxy Tab 8.9 is monumentally thin, and just as it was when we first laid eyes and hands on the pre-production build back at CTIA spring 2011, this tablet is a winner when it comes to industrial design. It’s simply lovely in its form, feeling like Samsung wanted to knock the tablet game out of the park with a simple set of matte black plastic along the back and silver plastic around the edge, with the entirety of the front being a tough layer of glass and a 1/2-inch border of black under the glass around the 8.9-inch display. This display is a PLS TFT capacitive touchscreen at 800 x 1280 pixel resolution and the whole device sizes in at 230.9 x 157.8 x 8.6 mm.

The display is no AMOLED, to be sure, but it is relatively bright and will suffice for your everyday indoor activities. This tablet is in a class with the iPad and the top-tier Androids when it comes to overall quality, and you’ll know good and well where your $479.99 (with a free phone) went when you’ve purchased it. This tablet is the ideal size for those of you wishing for a tablet that’s both compact but not so small to fit in your pocket, and certainly light and thin enough to keep in a purse. You’ll want to think about purchasing a case for the tablet if you’re carrying it around in your daily satchel, especially since you don’t want the screen to get all nicked up by keys and coins.

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