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Until Amazon's Kindle Fire hit the market late last year, no Android-powered tablet had made even a small impact on the marketplace. With its $200 price tag and customized user interface, the Kindle Fire was a real success. Samsung is now aiming to grab a significant piece of that success by building its own low-cost Android tablet. The catch is that Samsung's new entry, the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, looks anything but low-cost.
In fact, it features a much better spec sheet than the Kindle Fire, and uses the same streamlined body design as its more expensive brethren. From a hardware perspective, the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 looks much like any other recent Samsung tablet. This particular model features a black front with a titanium silver rear cover, and it feels very nice in your hands. There's a lot to be said for the 7-inch tablet form factor.
With a price of $250 for the Wi-Fi-only model, the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is an instant best buy. And when you consider that it is one of the few devices on the market that ships with Google's Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system from the get-go, it's even more of a steal.
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Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 GT-P7100
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 weighs 595 grams, it supports HSPA+ network speeds of up to 21Mbps, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n connectivity. It also features a 3 megapixel rear camera and a 2 megapixel front camera, providing seamless 1080p HD video. The device is powered by a 1GHz dual core application processor and features a 1280 x 800 resolution WXGA display.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7 inch GT-P3100
The Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 measures up at 193mm x 122mm x 10.4mm (7.6in x 4.8in x .41in). The 7-inch TFT display on the Tab 2 7.0 offers users 1024 x 600 pixels of resolution. The 7.0 does feature a microphone and speaker, as well as a forward-facing camera, which make it ideal for use with VoIP applications like Skype, it also features USB connectivity through its proprietary 30-pin Samsung connector.
User Comments: 21
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I like it; it looks like quite a nice little 7" tab, and at the price I think it will do pretty well. I'm holding onto my benjamins for the SGS3 however.
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Waiting for Black Friday / Boxing Day deal for this!
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Adjusting for 20% VAT and exchange rate of 1.6USD to 1GBP then it should only cost 190 pounds in the UK. For the price you'd have to be insane to pass it over. But I'm willing to bet they'll try and charge 250 quid for it...
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$250 for real? I didn't see it at Best Buy. I will go there tomorrow.
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That's an instant buy. But currency mark-up for Indian markets is just too much. Just saw it for $400 (Rs. 21000) at a retail store here.
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Users will enjoy, for example, the mini-apps that can be overlayed on the screen at any time.
Mini-apps.... as in widgets? Or are these different from widgets?
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I did notice that bit too Mike; it sounds like the reviewer has barely used Android before and comes straight from iOS...
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The mini-apps aren't the same as widgets. Rather than widgets which hang out in the background on your home screens, these are a separate set of apps that load quickly and pop-up in front of regular apps. Let's say you need to do some quick arithmetic while working on a document, you can load the calculator mini-app, which will then pop-up in front of your editor until you're done with it. Seems pretty handy.
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I didn't hear him mention the GPS function. That'd be a clincher for me, especially if it works without wi-fi.
Also, waiting for the Asus/Google 7 inch "whatever" that's supposed to show up in July for $199.
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Looks good but damn I hate proprietary connections, I just don't get why these companies continue to do this, especially for a simple USB connection.
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And let's not forget that one, definitive feature that puts the Samsung streets ahead of the Kindle Fire... You can buy it anywhere outside of the US. Nice one Amazon. Your window for sole international market share on a cost-effective tablet has officially closed. Clearly you didn't need the business.
...yes I'm still pissed about that.
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And let's not forget that one, definitive feature that puts the Samsung streets ahead of the Kindle Fire... You can buy it anywhere outside of the US. Nice one Amazon. Your window for sole international market share on a cost-effective tablet has officially closed. Clearly you didn't need the business.But don't you see, for amazon the US is the world!
...yes I'm still pissed about that.
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I got it today. I checked the storage and it shows 4.5 GB, instead of 8GB. did I miss something?
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Unfortunately, Samsung includes a lot of pre-installed software (bloatware?) on this tablet that can't be removed. That is what is taking up the other 3.5 GB of space. You can disable some or most of them, but it won't free up additional space.
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Just pre-ordered this in the UK (for a reasonable £199!) from Carphone Warehouse in white.
"Unfortunately, Samsung includes a lot of pre-installed software (bloatware?) on this tablet that can't be removed. That is what is taking up the other 3.5 GB of space. You can disable some or most of them, but it won't free up additional space."
--> but unlike the Kindle Fire, you have a microSD card to expand the memory up to 32GB. Plus there's Dropbox, Google Drive etc. Let's not forget you can also (theoretically) use the Samsung USB adapter that lets you transfer files via flash drives and SD cards.
[link]
"Looks good but damn I hate proprietary connections, I just don't get why these companies continue to do this, especially for a simple USB connection."
A work around this would be a 4-in-1 adapter (which also has a microUSB slot) like this that should work. Or even get a microUSB-USB adapter plus the above USB adapter.
[link]
Let's hope this thing performs
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On the surface it seems like a good device.... unfortunately, Samsung did a sneaky by not allowing access to the external SD card for programs (no APPS2SD function), so you're stuck with the internal SD card virtualization of its 8gb memory (only 4GB available for programs). Also, there is a bug in the Play Store app that will deny you installation of apps if it thinks that you don't have enough storage space on your tab. You have to empty the cache ever so often in order to make room for the apps to be installed (Cache is only 1GB in size, and download installations are placed there when downloaded so it can fill up fast). There is no automatic in-built function for this. You'll have to rely on a third party app for this. To make better use of this device as in others, root it if possible. There is already a rooting system available for the Tab 2... Titanium Backup will work fine and you will be able to back up your system and user files to the ExtSDCard. Unfortunately, the ExtSDCard can only be used for data files, pictures, music and videos... I don't know what Samsung was thinking when they denied access to the ExtSDCard for program apps...
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Does the tablet support flash
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Micro Center sells the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 Titanium Silver for the same price as the Kindle Fire $199.99
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This statement: "Users looking for HDMI output will need to use an adapter or a docking station (not included)" is misleading and should be removed from the review. There is NO HDMI OUTPUT for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0. The multimedia docking stations and cables work with the others but not with the galaxy tab 2 (as of this writing). I bought a galaxy tab 2 thinking from this review and other things I had read that it supported it, but read carefully and you'll notice that it never says it supports it.
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RotBot said:
This statement: "Users looking for HDMI output will need to use an adapter or a docking station (not included)" is misleading and should be removed from the review. There is NO HDMI OUTPUT for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0. The multimedia docking stations and cables work with the others but not with the galaxy tab 2 (as of this writing). I bought a galaxy tab 2 thinking from this review and other things I had read that it supported it, but read carefully and you'll notice that it never says it supports it.4 months later, and that line is still there. I almost bought a Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 over the Nexus 7 because a few reviews like this one mention it having HDMI output through MHL. The other Galaxy Tab models have HDMI, but it was cut from this one to reduce costs.
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I cannot agree with "...as well as a forward-facing camera, which make it ideal for use with VoIP applications like Skype" in this review. I bought Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 mainly for Skype using. But I have the same problems like many other users. Video calls with Galaxy are very bad quality. I have tried Skype video calling with Galaxy Tab 2, Nexus 7 and notebook Dell Latitude E6520, at the same time on the same WiFi. Nexus-E6520 video calls were O.K., video from Galaxy was bad both on the Nexus and on the E6520.
I don't think Galaxy Tab 2 is ideal for Skype video.
Arnost
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