The short review: Galaxy Tab + Android fall way, way short. Samsung, did you pull an ostrich and just ignore the fact that the iPad has already captured the imagination and desire of the world over the past year?
Anyway, where was I...
First, the good, since the good is little:
- Widgets. It's nice to see things other than little grids of icons on the home screen.
- Swype input. Okay, it's pretty cool and revolutionary. But what the hell is up with the way the rest of the symbol and numeric inputs are displayed?
Grab the popcorn and beer, because the next part may take a while to read. The bad:
- Unreliable Wi-Fi connection that works about 1 % of the time. Really, Samsung? Really?
- Landscape form entry was designed by a masochist. Who had the bright idea that when we use landscape orientation to enter data on forms that we no longer need to see the form? Or even the label of the field into which we're typing?
- Thick form factor. Not appealing.
- Typo on the setup screen relating to Wi-Fi. See if you can find it.
- 802.1x-secured wireless network did not appear on initial setup but did appear later in Settings.
- Browser bug where the client gets squished into about the top 1/5 of the screen, making it impossible to change the address, see anything or open new tabs. Basically, I had to kill the app and relaunch it to get back up and running. If it's going to crash, just crash. Don't make it a pain for me to relaunch the app.
- Do I really need a Gmail account to access the Marketplace? Is my Google Account attached to my company email address not good enough for Android?
- And so much more that I couldn't remember it all...
Basically, if I had a choice between having a Samsung Galaxy Tab or having nothing at all, guess what I would choose... Hint: It's not having the Galaxy Tab.
