Android Galaxy Tab

Hi, Duncan here.

I’ve bought the previous Samsung Galaxy Tab 7” model from 2011 and am using it with an OS X platform.

I’ve so far had it 1 day.

My initial impression on Samsung,

I’m very pleased with the responsivess of the touch screen, the resolution and technicical capabilites however concerning the software;

I updated my Android Tablet to Gingerbread 2.3 through the official update that samsung supplied but however I found afterwards that the Samsung Kies software suit did not recognize my Tablet anymore!  This meant that I cannot use any of the Samsung pre-installed apps as they all require to sync media (photos/music) through the Samsung Kies suite. I think this is really bad on samungs part as this tablet is 1.5 years old and already totally not supported anymore!

On another note I found that the pre-installed samsung apps such as Movies usually just take me to a website and that was it.  The pre-installed samsung ebook app was an exact copy of iBook, not necessarily bad but again very limited.

Another annoyance on Samsung’s part was the fact you can’t remove any of these pre-installed apps, unless you “Root” your Android device.  But having worked with Samsung laptops before, that’s exactly what I expected. Shortcoming preinstalled software.

Luckily the community site of Android compensates for Samsung’s shortcoming

Apps I can recommend:

Defintely install the Dolphin browser (for Android & iOS)

It’s a tabbed browser such as Google Chrome, really userfriendly and also offers the option to sync it with Google Account (bookmarks) http://www.dolphin-browser.com/

For Android tablet users, defintely install Swiftkey Tablet X , it’s an optimized keyboard for Tablet users, it’s makes typing fast so much easier https://market.android.com/details?id=com.touchtype.swiftkey.tablet.full&hl=en

For news, I found Pulse extremely pleasant, I usually don’t like RSS readers but this newsfeed gave a “magazine” touch,N You can input different news sources and it displays it very pleasantly. https://market.android.com/details?id=com.alphonso.pulse&hl=en

Despite the initial hick-up on Samsungs part I am thoroughly enjoying the massive android community concerning the tablet

I have not installed a productivity office suite yet but will do it this weekend and test it next week in class, I’m also planning to test several movie/ebook/music apps.

Duncan.