Recently joining the sea of Android Honeycomb tablets, is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9. Samsung and its Galaxy brand has been doing quite well on the smartphone side of things as the company seeks out to do the same on the tablet side as well. About a week ago, Samsung made its Galaxy Tab 8.9 available for purchase for consumers. We’ve been thoroughly enjoying our review unit for two weeks now as we have gone through the ins and outs of the tablet. With Apple’s iPad 2 reigning on top of tablet sales, others barely scratch the surface as other manufacturers try to offer more within the same price point. Is the Galaxy Tab 8.9 worth your attention, time, and money? Keep reading past the break.
Upon looking at the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9, you can easily notice the similarities between this and the Tab 10.1. It’s more or less the carbon copy of the Tab 10.1 but that’s not necessarily a bad thing though. With the Galaxy Tab 8.9 they decided to maintain the same slim build as the Tab 10.1. The Tab 8.9 weighs in at under one pound (the Tab 10.1 weighs at 1.25lbs) while both Tabs measures at 8.6mm thick. Samsung knows how to preserve its Tab sexy.
While the screen size on the Tab 8.9 is obviously smaller than the Tab 10.1, the screen resolution is still the same. The smaller Tab retains the 1280 x 800 resolution but on the Tab 8.9, the images are more crisp than on the Tab 10.1. Definitely offering a more sharper display with a less pixel density on a smaller landscape. The Tab 8.9 visual experience is indubitably better than on the Tab 10.1. This is as good as its gonna get before moving into the Super AMOLED or Retina Display displays.
The Tab 8.9 is armed dual cameras w/ auto-focus + LED flash for your video-conferencing & on-the-go photography needs. The 2MP front-facing camera still makes you appear grainy for all of your self-portraits and for video-calling. It works as good as you can expect a 2MP shooter to work. The rear-facing 3MP pictures come out a little bit better than the front but not as much. It does however take a little long for the rear-facing shooter to process a photo. But who buys tablets to take photos, right? The video camcorder of the Tab 8.9 does allows you to record in 720p HD which works pretty good with the LED flash but no option zoom in while recording video though. So all in all, the cameras work but don’t expect the stellar results.
 |
| Galaxy Tab 8.9 sample pics |
 |
| More Galaxy Tab 8.9 sample pics |
Performance/Battery Life
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 is packed with a 1GHz dual-core processor (not a NVIDIA) overseeing all of your tasks. The Tab 8.9 still suffered from the same occasional hiccups/freezes with apps that I encountered with the Galaxy Tab 10.1 but it doesn’t take away from it being a great Android tablet. The 1GB of RAM makes up for the slight oversights by keeping them minimal. It also runs Android 3.1 w/ TouchWiz UX, Samsung’s custom apps/widgets on top of Honeycomb. The TouchWiz UX offers a more uniqueness to other Android tablets like Pen Memo, Calculator, Task Manager, Calendar, or Music Player apps which you can pull up anywhere throughout the OS. Very nice, Samsung. The Tab 8.9’s 6100 mAh battery life offers a great battery for an Android tablet. During my experiences, I got a little over 8 hours of juice within a single charge. Definitely can’t complain about that. There are several tablets that can’t keep up with even half of that out there.
 |
| A close-up of the TouchWiz UX apps |
As the battle for consumers money heats up with the arrival of the Amazon Kindle Fire looming in about a month. Choices for a decent sized portable tablet seem to be multiplying monthly. Samsung is keeping their Tabs similar design-wise, in maintaining the formula of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The Galaxy Tab 8.9 matches the Tab 10.1 while being more ideal Android tablet at more of a portable size. I can definitely see more people gravitating towards this rather than the Tab 10.1 but with the price point being so close (The 8.9 starts at $469 & the 10.1 starts at $499) it will be hard to tell. I personally prefer the smaller size as I think the 7inch size tablet is a perfect size for most consumers. I can easily recommend consumers to pick this tablet up – flaws and all. The Tab 8.9 offers a buyers bundle of apps, design, and battery life at a somewhat respectable price point of currently one of the best of the Android tablets available.
