It’s really surprising how many people actually ended up using the Tab 2 7.0 as their primary phone. What sounded (and still does) like a ridiculous idea a year ago is soon changing as Sony’s Z Ultra blurred the line between tablets and phones even further. With the surge of budget tablets with calling functions hitting its peak towards the beginning of this year, the big boys had no choice but to follow this trend. Today, we have the third iteration of the Galaxy Tab 7-inch with a few nips and tucks to give it a younger look. Launched at the same price as the older Tab 2, which has been phased out, let’s see if the facelift is just cosmetic or something more. Design and Build The variant launched in India is the T211 which differs slightly from the P3200 sold internationally in that the IR remote function seems to be missing. The Tab 3 borrows similar design elements form the Galaxy Note 10.1 with its rounded edges and slightly concave sides. The bezel is a lot thinner thereby reducing the overall width and height of the tablet. It’s slightly thinner as well at 9.9mm and a tad lighter at 306g. This is barely distinguishable, however, and still feels heavy and chunky for a tablet. Dominating the front is a 7-inch TFT display with a 1024 x 600 resolution without any sort of scratch-resistant protection. The customary array of sensors, earpiece and buttons take their usual place around the display. Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Looks better than the old model On the sides, we have a flap-covered microSIM and mciroSD card slot and the volume rocker and power button. There are stereo speakers at the bottom along with the microUSB port. The glossy back is quite uninteresting and tends to gather a lot of fingerprints. Up on the top, we have a 3MP fixed-focus camera and a 1.3MP on the front. Overall, the Tab 3 looks fresh thanks to the white paint job and slimmer bezel but it’s remained unchanged for the most part. Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Not much going on here Feature The Tab 3 comes with Jelly Bean out-of-the-box (4.1.2) and Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface. The usual suite of apps is present as well right from Samsung Link, S Voice, Samsung Apps, Group Play to their awesome video player which supports all popular formats. The display is fairly bright but the low resolution causes text and icons to appear choppy. The sensitivity is not very good either as it tends to skip some inputs intermittently. Despite having Jelly Bean and 1GB RAM, the UI can get really laggy to a point where everything just freezes up for seconds before you can resume what you were doing. Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Familiar UI We found this a bit strange since the tablet is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core Marvell chipset. It manages 1080p videos just fine but sadly Project Butter has some hiccups. The Tab 3 is available in two storage options and the 8GB variant had 5.1GB of usable space. Media The music and video player is the same as the ones we’ve seen on previous Galaxy devices, only it’s re-designed a bit to take advantage of the extra screen real estate. You can sort your music via albums, artists, folders or Music square, which groups your library according to your mood – "Exciting", "Joyful", "Calm" and "Passionate". This works well, provided you have all your songs categorised under the right genre. Audio is decently loud from the speakers and the quality gets better with a good pair of IEMs. Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Good options to sort your music The video player supports MP4, MKV and everything in between. However, the only exceptions were MOV and FLV files, which refused to play. Full HD 1080p videos play back smoothly and there’s even the new Pop up play feature. FM radio is absent however, which could be a let-down for some.
Posted on: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 17:02:44 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015