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Samsung Galaxy Tab - Galactic Adventure!

By Aloysius Low - 12 Nov 2010

Battery Life Performance

Battery Life Performance

Hopefully, the Samsung Galaxy Tab will do as well as the Apple iPad, which lasted for over 11 hours in our battery test. For the Galaxy Tab however, since we couldn't get our hands on the same iTunes clip, we've decided to go with a 720p clip instead. Of course, this will drain the battery faster as opposed to a 480p clip, but from our unofficial tests, the differences aren't that notable. However, moving forward, we'll be using the same clip for all other tablets coming into the lab and we'll have a better comparison set soon enough. Lastly, we left Wi-Fi on but turned off the 3G service since we last tested the basic iPad that didn't have 3G support. Additionally, we can never be sure if all future tablets would come with 3G capabilities by default and we don't want to end up being unable to compare other tablets across the board. Now that you know how our testing is done, let's find out how the tablet performs.

Lasting for 5 hours 41 minutes, the Samsung Galaxy Tab seems prepared for a near full day of use, despite running a more grueling 720p clip. We do have to mention though, while the power consumption scores are near, bear in mind that the screen size is also smaller at half the size of the iPad. The iPad on the other hand sports two batteries compared to the single one on the Galaxy Tab. Other factors to consider are the power efficiency optimization at the firmware level and the different OS used by both devices. With these aspects in mind, it seems like the power consumption figure is a bit on the high side for the Galaxy Tab, thus resulting in quite a big difference in battery uptime.

Finally for our Portability Index test, a simple benchmark test based on a formula where we obtain a ratio derived from a device's battery uptime divided by the product of its weight and volume. If it sounds complicated, don't worry about it, as the final numbers are pretty easy to look at. The bigger the number, the more portable the device is. And looking the graph below, the Galaxy Tab is almost two time more portable than the Apple device despite the fact the battery uptime figures swing the other way around. This is a direct result in the size/weight differences which ranks the Galaxy Tab as a more handy device and it certainly is from actual usage.

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9.0
The Good
Small compact form factor
Decent battery life
The Bad
Expensive without contract
Bad camera
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