Samsung Galaxy tab 750 review, specification, features and price

When Steve Jobs introduced iPad on 27th January, 2010 to the world, the meaning of tablet became much more than what you take when you are ill. A queue of other tablets but top smartphone making companies jumped into the fray with Android tablets but no one could manage to erode the iPad fan base or for that matter its selling speed. Samsung with its Galaxy tab series led the competition but to no avail. No it is 2011 and Samsung has released Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9 running the latest Android Honeycomb, so, are these any different to make any space for itself in the top selling tablets in the market? Read on to find more..

 

Packaging and content on Samsung Galaxy tab 750

You would be surprised when you first see the packaging – a large sized box sufficient to accommodate two full frame DSLR cameras. But I am not complaining, the large packaging makes the precious content inside very safe, this safe that it would even survive the chock of being thrown out of a high speed moving car! Inside I found all the accessories including power adaptor, the proprietary USB connection cable and the tablet itself to be completely safe and secure, mission accomplished for the large package box :D

 

Hardware and styling of Samsung Galaxy tab 750

The design of Galaxy tab 10.1 is a wider one like the Acer tablets but thankfully, for Samsung tablet this implementation of widescreen design is superior due to the ultra light weight at 565 grams. It makes it comfortable to use in hand for longer time and it is also lighter than the iPad 2 by a small 36 grams. The comparison between tab and iPad 2 does not stop here as tab 10.1 is also thinner than iPad 2 by 0.2mm. This makes Samsung Galaxy tab 750 the thinnest tablet of today. Although the difference in thickness of Samsung Galaxy tab and iPad 2 of 8.6-mm vs 8.8-mm might look small but it does have its effect in its comfort during usage.

Samsung has taken this thinner and thinner inspiration from nowhere else but from its own portfolio. Be its LED television or smartphone, Samsung likes slim.

When Galaxy tab was announced i.e. before the launch of iPad 2, it has a thicker dimension but after iPad 2 Samsung did a total rethink of the design of its Galaxy tab. We must appreciate this decision of Samsung and more commendable is its effort to introduce this light weight feature in most of its products. The back of the Galaxy tab is a glossy white ultra light plastic also used in Galaxy S II. The body felt a little week in hand as I could actually suppress the body when pressed firmly in hand. The back houses the 3MP camera about which we will talk later in this post.

Samsung has told that it had used Aluminium in the construction, but I seriously doubt this. According to Samsung, the aluminium tapers down the side of the body and extends up to the near, covering the camera. However, the touch feeling of this silver strip gives more the feel of painted plastic rather than Aluminium metal.

Keep the tablet in Landscape and see it from a distance, you will get the impression of a smaller Samsung LCD television. However, Samsung could have produced a thinner bezel here, their own LCD TV has a bezel of 0.5 inches whereas the bezel of Galaxy tablet is 0.75 inches. Taking care of these small details could have made the Tab a sexier product that iPad 2 because even after the weight reduction attempt and change in profile reduction, the truth is that it still feels a bit bigger than iPad 2. Why I am comparing Galaxy tab to the best tablet in market is that Samsung is the only company right now in the market capable of out-foxing Apple in the design aspect. A big proof of this is Samsung outrunning Sony in the LCD TV market and no one can deny that Sony is a lowly player in the market.

Now, as for the rest of the features, Galaxy Tab 10.1 has a front facing camera for video chat and all the other buttons -- volume rockers, micro-SD card slot, 3.5 mm and power button are present on top of the device. The bottom side of Galaxy tab has the USB port and HDMI port. Sadly, the USB dongle and HDMI adapter are separate accessories and could not be in-built for the want of slimness. However, it is not being their separate from the device that bugs me, but what bugs me is that fact that these dongles have a separate price for them when they should have been included in the package.

But in any case, one cannot deny that fact that Samsung Galaxy tab is one of the most precious and useful piece of tablet and I would even take the liberty to consider it a better tablet to carry than iPad 2 which is a big appreciation for Samsung considering they completely redesigned the chassis after the launch of iPad 2.

Interface of Samsung Galaxy tab 750

Android Honeycomb has already made itself a space in the Indian market with Motorola Xoom and Acer Iconia A500. However, both the products have no major difference in their internals nor in their OS and the only small difference between the two is form factor and the ISC support offered in Iconia A500. So the question is whether Samsung has something unique to offer in Galaxy tab 10.1? Well, the answer s a huge yes! It is the TouchWiz UX implemented as the Android screen on Galaxy tab.

Samsung has used TouchWiz on its previous smartphones too but this is the first time that it has been used on a Honeycomb OS smartphone. Like in other smartphones, TouchWiz has its advantages as well as bugs but there is not any major performance problem.

With TouchWiz, we have Live Panels which feature Samsung widgets like AccuWeather, Samsung Mail and Calendar. Here the icons of Android are also replaced with cheaply looking cartoon icons which look like a bad plagiarized copy of iOS icons. Nothing but complains with the looks of these icons. Somethings after all should be left professional with such a high end smartphone.

A new and unique addition to the user interface is the screenshot button located right next to the ‘open app scroller’ option. Other than this there is the addition of dock containing some handy apps. This dock is located in the bottom task bar and can be opened from any app as it is nicely ingrained in the UI.

All major updated in Honeycomb with Android update 3.1 have been under the hood which means they are all background updates designed to improve performance, however there is a uber cool feature added in the UI also and that is that you can resize the widgets according to your wish.

I am not a big fan of QWERTY keyboard and SWYPE keyboard was never a preferred option for me, but that was on smartphones. However, on the large screen of Galaxy tab tablet it is a revelation. Though there is no match for the auto-correcting feature of iOS tablet keyboard but the stock keyboard in Galaxy tab is not at all a bad product either.

Besides the minor tweaks in the UI there has been a lot of addition in the app section but that is discussed in the heading under apps descriptively.

Multimedia of Samsung Galaxy tab 750

No tablet released till now has been low on multimedia and Samsung Galaxy tab is no exception. It is a complete multimedia box.

However it you own an Apple product from which you want to transfer songs like Mac for instance then it will be a tearful experience for you. Right now the Android file transfer utility does not support Mac OS X. Google better rectify this otherwise they are damaging chances for Samsung as Mac users are one of the first to get their hands on better smartphones and tablets.

You do have an option of using “'Kies Air' Wi-Fi sync app” but then leaving the Mac users without the option of being able to use an USB connection doesn’t sound a good move.

Thankfully, with my Windows PC I faced no problem whatsoever.

Honeycomb with update 3.1 had a new updated stock MP3 player with a beautiful interface and a carousel like, album art flipping UI. Did you notice I used past tense “had”? Well, that’s because looks like Samsung decided to strip Honeycomb its beautiful skin and what we now have is an amazing MP3 player sans the beautiful skin. Whatever made Samsung I don’t know but I am really disappointed.

As I said, the music player is amazing with well organized song list and multiple equalizer modes which allow you to modulate the sound frequencies according to the whim of the listener.

The dock which I told you about in the interface section has the shortcut to the MP3 player. You can just open the dock from the taskbar, maximize it and launch the MP# player, so no need to navigate to the main menu first.

Video playing capability is the best you will get on any tablet in the market. I say this because it has a 1200X800 LCD display which is the best to ever grace ay tablet till now and that includes iPad2. You get the best viewing angles, ideal brightness and contrast ratios. No doubt that whether it is their LCD television or their tablet, competitors needs to bite metal to defeat Samsung in the quality of their display devices. Do you know iPad also used Samsung screens only? Obviously it is clear that Samsung reserved the best one for them. I managed to play most of the video formats including the HD formats. Here too the default video player skin of honeycomb has been removed but in this case it improves the navigation.

I don’t care much about a camera in a tablet as I have never found taking images comfortable with a tablet. In Samsung Galaxy tab 750 the 3 MP camera is just ok. You get grainy images although the camera has various options like white balance, focus modes, Scene Mode, effects and Geo tagging. In tablets of Motorola and Acer too the cameras are not anything special to talk about and I won’t even say anything about the camera of iPad 2.

The video camera of 720p HD is similarly jittery however I doubt many customers even care about the back camera for the reason I mentioned above. All we care about the camera is for video chats for which the front camera works fine enough.

The tablet comes with a 16GB memory card which can be extended to 32 GB if needed.

PC sync and market in Samsung Galaxy tab 750

Like always, syncing is among the simplest things to do with the Android OS. Login in to your Gmail account and you are ready to go. But on Samsung Galaxy tab there is something more – the ‘Kies Air’ Wi-Fi sync app which featured in Galaxy S II before. This app just needs to be connected you’re your Wi-Fi network to which your Mac/Windows PC is connected. You will be asked to enter an IP in your browser and bingo! You have access to all your data. Drag and drop files, sync messages and lot more.

With the aim to give you more comfort, Samsung has given a Social Hub, designed to give you all your updates – emails, Facebook and Twitter updates within one app. In fact, Galaxy tab does not even have a dedicated Facebook or Twitter app so you only have the Social Hub. However, the browser will open the full PC version of Facebook and Twitter along with the chat in FB unlike iPad which is a big relief.


As for the Android market, there is nothing much to talk about as there are only 200 apps in the market optimized for Honeycomb. This is ridiculously low when even the WebOS powered HP TouchPad has over 1000 apps in the market store.

Samsung also has its own app store but that is not much useful as you in any case will get most of the similar apps from the 200 apps at the market store.

Specifications

Pros
Compact form factor
Beautiful Display
Tilt Motion controls
Wi-Fi sync

Cons
TouchWiz UX is a double-edged sword
No USB and HDMI dongles in package
Apps selection
Poor Mac OSX support


Ratings
Performance: 3.5
Price: 3.5
Ease of Setup: 4.5
Ergonomics: 4.5
Wow Factor: 4.5