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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tipoo - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
No problem.SimKill - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
This is a minor pet peeve but when you( you != Specific author, you == general) write your reviews I think there was one more where you'd written '[Product] - The Anandtech review' instead of '[X] review' like before.I'm coming to Anandtech, it would be fairly obvious to me that the reviews on this site would be AnandTech reviews and wouldn't be rip offs from other websites.
Oh, and good job.
tipoo - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
I love how you used !=. Do I detect a CS student/graduate?SimKill - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
Nah, mech grad here with boatloads of programming. I find != the most unambiguous way to 'I don't mean X when I say Y'.tipoo - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
Ah, I see. From what I've seen people who haven't done any programming use =/= to denote "does not equal", whereas people who have programed like us use !=.TheStu - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
I would say that the reason for saying [Product - The Anandtech Review] instead of just calling it [Product Review] is that Anandtech reviews tend to includ more technical information than others, there is still subjectivity in the writing, but what I take away from Anandtech's reviews is a better objective view of the product.So, although it is self serving, and a bit narcissistic to label it as [Product - The Anandtech Review], it does serve the purpose of making it clear what you are getting.
synaesthetic - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
I find it helpful because I read most of my tech blows in an RSS feed reader, and can't always immediately tell which blog posted the article!SimKill - Sunday, December 26, 2010 - link
This is a fair point. But I generally group my RSS by websites. So if I click on Anandtech I can see AT reviews and so on and so forth.SimKill - Sunday, December 26, 2010 - link
We know what we get from them which is exactly why we come here time and again. I found this to be a little immature for such an awesome set of people.And why not let the review speak for itself instead.
Don't get me wrong, there's a reason why I wait for AT reviews before deciding on anything major but I felt that as a group of highly professional writers I believe that there should be no place for self-serving and narcissism. But then again as the subject title indicates clearly, it's a minor peeve.
I still love AT reviews.
ATOmega - Thursday, December 23, 2010 - link
I have two major complaints over how manufacturers are approaching android tablets:First, it's very difficult if not impossible to get one not as part of a carrier plan. So currently Apple has zero competition for their iPads without 3G/4G. As much as some people will see this as an outdated market, here in Canada lots of people are avoiding our major carriers because they're a bunch of greedy a$$holes. There's very little point in having their data plans on tablets because you're still stuck rationing out MBs...Kind of takes the fun out of it.
Second, they're way overpriced. If as a result of the price being designed to encourage data plans, or if the manufacturers actually think they're worth that...The SOCs are dirt cheap as advertised by the people who make them and as part of the Android promise. The additional hardware used to make up the systems aren't nearly enough to reach $700 either. At the very least, we should be seeing sub $400 prices for non 3G/4G models.
I want Android tablets on the shelfs of local computer stores (big box or wholesale alike) and available without data plans.
I'd love to see Anandtech take on these details in future reviews. But I'm glad they're looking at Android the way they are already. Good show.