The Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus suffers from only one thing -- the fact that it will be current for about ten seconds. But that's true for any computer, TV, other hi-tek toy. On the other hand, I'm one of those people who (when I find something I like) will use it for a very long time, way longer than its expected life. For example, I still use my old trusty Sony Clie PDA (Palm OS) -- it's a really nice and simple address book and solitaire game machine. It's approaching 10 years old, and still running well, but I digress...this review is about the Tab.
The 7.0 Plus is a truly amazing product, so impressive that I even bought another one for my wife, a relative technophobe. It gets everything right, from the most important to the nit-pickiest detail. Rather than listing all of its great features, I'll mention a few that have been a pleasant discovery:
1. The battery really does last eight plus hours of use, unless I run a lot of processor intensive programs (Angry Birds!). Using the stock media player, I ran through a series of DivX movies, sound and brightness at mid-range levels. No kidding, 8 hours and a little. Will easily get me through a day of traveling.
2. The screen has just the right amount of touch sensitivity, I'm not making any serious number of errors. Contrasted with the overly sensitive Kindle Fire (which I owned for about a week), the Tab doesn't register a press unless you are actually touching the screen. On the Fire, it thought I was pressing things when I was still over 1/8" from the screen, not even touching it!
3. You can run about anything you can find from the various App providers, such as Google Apps. Eat your heart out Nook and Fire owners, I can run whatever I want. I could probably also Root this thing, but won't.
4. It's really fast and smooth -- all operations are intuitive, I like the Touch Wizard interface, and have not had any of the sudden shutdown problems that others mentioned.
Lastly, if you do get one of these, replace the browser ASAP with the Dolphin HD browser, much more better. The biggest complaint I have with the stock browser is that it's a "mobile" browser, and many of my favorite websites don't work well with this. With the Dolphin browser you can set it as a "desktop" browser and all the web sites look like on my PC.
See if you can find one for $350 or less, not hard. Oh, and get the KIQ case, it's thin and light, and has *almost* all of the holes you'll need (you will have to punch a hole for the infra-red remote emitter).
Enjoy, we sure are!
Update, 2/6/2012:
Thanks to a commenter, I now know how to set the default browser to "desktop". Was a bit tricky to find -- as mentioned, enter "about:debug" (without the quotes) in the address line, but instead of pressing enter, be sure to click the arrow to the right of the address line. Then select menu/settings and select the "debug" item in the left column. Then select UAString and there will be a list of words with one of them selected. By default "Android" is selected (makes some web pages give out really abbreviated info). Select "Desktop" and the browser will now get the rendering that is more conventional.
Of course, I had made Dolphin my default browser, and had to figure out how to set it back -- NOT trivial! The best way I've found is to send an email to myself with a web address in the body, open the email and click on the link. You will then be asked to select a browser. Gotta be a better way!
9/14/2014 update: this nice old tablet has been relegated to being a dedicated Pandora player for our stereo. It's gotten pretty long in the tooth in two years (amazing). Even the Tab Pro I just got is already out of style. This is one crazy world.
| Standing screen display size | 7 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1024x600 |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1024 x 600 Pixels |
| Hard Drive | 16 GB |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Intel Integrated Graphics |
| Chipset Brand | No Information |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Wireless Type | 802.11n, 802.11b, 802.11g |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 10 Hours |
