Samsung Galaxy Tab - The AnandTech Review
by Vivek Gowri on December 23, 2010 9:48 AM ESTSamsung Galaxy Tab - Performance
The Galaxy Tab’s internal hardware feels pretty familiar. As with the Galaxy S phones and the newly launched Nexus S, there’s a Hummingbird chip underhood. Samsung’s proprietary SoC bundles a 1GHz Cortex A8 with Imagination’s PowerVR SGX540 GPU and 512MB of LPDDR1.
Performance is about expected, given how the Galaxy S devices performed. The second generation 45nm Snapdragon chips are really nipping at the heels of Hummingbird, even surpassing it on the CPU side in our benchmarks. Snapdragon has always had strong FPU performance so the Linpack score is expected, but in SunSpider’s JavaScript benchmark, we see the 1GHz myTouch 4G basically beat everything this side of the Cortex A9/Tegra 2 combo. We talked more about how A9 compared to A8 in our Tegra 2 performance preview here, so look at that to see how the Galaxy Tab stacks up against the tablet platform of the future.
On the graphics benchmark side, we only have two tablets to compare head to head - the Galaxy Tab and the Viewsonic G Tablet that we used in the Tegra 2 preview. The Galaxy Tab handily won out in Neocore - the 54 fps figure is basically capped by the vsync - but the Tegra 2 exhibited slightly faster performance throughout the rest of our smartphone graphics benchmarks. We initially had some issues with Quake 3 on the Tab, as detailed in our Tegra 2 performance update, but overall, SGX 540 is definitely competitive as far as graphics performance goes even if it isn't the clear cut leader anymore.
Our Galaxy Tab unit was a Verizon model, but for some reason the 3G data was very slow. I’ve tested it in multiple regions in the Seattle area and I have yet to break 700 kbps down and 500 kbps up. I haven’t had a Verizon device to test before, but even so, speeds around 600 kbps are not what I was expecting. I later talked to some Verizon employees and was told that such speeds are normal for Verizon 3G in Seattle, so their LTE rollout really can't happen fast enough.
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sciwizam - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
Wikipedia has:Dimensions 190.09 mm (7.484 in) (h)
120.45 mm (4.742 in) (w)
11.98 mm (0.472 in) (d)
Weight 380 g (0.84 lb)
These make a lot more sense.
VivekGowri - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
Fixed, so sorry - it got pushed live before I had a chance to edit that part.medi01 - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
"HD video recording is sadly not supported"Having in mind how "huge and powerfull" are the lens "HD resolution" would make sense, wouldn't it?
I understand, when this BS comes from usual customers, but when it comes from a reviewer, sigh...
VivekGowri - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
Why Samsung decided to spec their bigger, better device with a lower end camera than the Galaxy S phones is an openly debatable question that I have no real answer to, but it doesn't support HD video recording. What else am I supposed to say?medi01 - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
Obviously neither HD video nor 5+ megapixels photos make any sense on devices with tiny lens.Whether they upscale or produce "HD" noise is completely irrelevant, mentioning "lack of HD video" as a real disadvantage reiterates the myth and confuses the customers.
NesuD - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
You're getting things wrong on the other comparison units as well. Droid X Nand is 8GB integrated and a 16 GB micro SD. This is a well publicized spec of the Droid X from launch. Fact checking and verification is an essential part of Journalism that seems to be slipping here at Anandtech of late.VivekGowri - Saturday, December 25, 2010 - link
I copied that part of the table out of the Fascinate review, so I'll look into it. But I'd like to point out that this is literally just a spec table, don't call our journalistic integrity into question based on that alone.aniallator - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
You have posted the dimensions and weight values for the iphone 4 (well those values match) all other areas of the Samsung galaxy tab hardware information appear to be correct.veri745 - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
The posted dimensions have to be wrong.misterjohnnyt - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
Listing Proper Dimensions FAIL