Samsung Galaxy Tab Review Update: Sun shines cruel light on Galaxy

Richard Fieldhouse (14/05/11)

Since I wrote about how my Galaxy Tab was faring last month, it's got sunnier. I suppose that's what you might expect in spring.

And I think it's fair to say that my Galaxy Tab has not liked it - because I've turned up the brightness. That's meant that the battery has started to run down more quickly. Some days it will run down after less than 5 hours of active use. And this in turn means I've been having to do top-up charging.

It's a pain. And it focuses far too much attention onto the Tab's accessories. So here's a little table showing how they are doing. I've put the best first.

3rd party Case "Vierra G-STAND Black Case"	It looks good and it's worn quite well... But, the area of the screen obscured by the case is a bit much. It's usable, but the menu and search buttons in particular are hard to press because the case gets in the way.
Samsung Car Charger	Mostly it does work, but it did fall to pieces about the fourth time I used it as shown in the photo. The best accessories don't leave you scrabbling around in the car foot well. This is also rather over-priced
3rd party UK mains charger Duragadget 3-pin UK Travel Charger	Charges the Tab in about the same as the Samsung one does... but the Tab touchscreen will not work during the charging. With Samsung's own charger, the Tab can be used during charging. [Perhaps this is something to do with the smoothness of the DC voltage delivered by the Duragadget charger?]
3rd party USB cable UltimateAddons 2m Sync and Charge Cable	Sometimes this will not charge the Tab faster than it uses power. Perhaps I was a bit greedy going for the longer cable.
Samsung Desktop HDMI dock.	Words fail me! But earlier, I managed to stay calm enough to make some fairly coherent remarks. With keen eyes, you'll see the high price I paid.

Sadly, the average standard, as you see, has been pretty poor. While in some ways these problems with accessories are often not Samsung's fault, when there are this many difficulties, it will inevitably reflect on the Tab itself.

It would also, of course, be nice if the Tab was able to last the day without needing a top-up, so that I wouldn't have to worry about all the charging paraphernalia.

On a more positive note, the tablet clearly works pretty well as a day-to-day tool - in fact I'm using it to write this. If it didn't do a reasonable job, if my son didn't try to nick it to play ActionSwing or Paper Toss or Slice It, then we would never find that it discharged quite quickly. So in a way it's a victim of its own success.

Another thing I could do to help matters would be to turn down the brightness a bit. Or I could use the auto-brightness setting. It's a pity the light sensor for the auto setting is sometimes blocked by the aforementioned case - leading to the Tab dimming unexpectedly when it slips down in the case.