Review: Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7

On a number of occasions I’ve found myself referring to tablets as a “living room device”. They are something that you can use to check your email while watching the game, pass around to show off pictures of the family, and the device you grab to play a game during the commercials. For most people, I think the tablet is a great luxury machine that could live in the communal place in your house, without having any higher purpose. Samsung took this concept one step further with the Galaxy Tab 7.7 and added an IR blaster, allowing it to not only be a living room gadget, but the gadget that controls your living room.

The Specs

As the name suggests, the Galaxy Tab 7.7 is just slightly bigger than the original Galaxy Tab, but significantly thinner. In fact, I would go so far as to say this tablet borders on being too thin. The delicate balance of making a device razor thin, ultra light, and still be able to deliver days of battery life is certainly at play here. It’s 7.89mm at the thickest point, and that tapers slightly towards the edges of the tablet making it thinner than just about every other tablet out there. The tablet fits in my back pocket with no problems, and at 0.85 pounds you almost run the risk of sitting on it because you forget it is back there.

The back of the tablet is a confused mixture of plastic and brushed aluminum, made slightly awkward by the machines feel of the Samsung logo, which is not only slightly raised on the back of the case, but is almost scratchy due to the surfacing used. Along the sides of the casing you have your standard power and volume rocker, but you also have a microSD slot and a SIM slot for those LTE users out there.

The thing that draws you in about the Galaxy Tab 7.7 is the screen. While it will be some time before any of the manufacturers out there are ready to push anything out that compares to the Retina display on the new iPad, the Super AmoLED Plus screen on the Galaxy Tab is nothing to scoff at. The 1280×800 resolution display is every bit as brilliant as I’ve come to expect from Samsung displays, though this is one of the first times I’ve been able to enjoy it out of the smartphone experience.

The quality of the screen was matched only by the battery life. Being an LTE device, I feared the worst. When using the device on a WiFi network, it was no problem to get eight or nine hours out of constant use out of the tablet, and LTE only managed to shave about an hour of the battery life away.

Using the Tab

I can’t help but feel like there was some sort of horrible communications gas between the people manufacturing this tablet at Samsung, and the people designing the UI. There was clearly some sort of disconnect. In many places, the OS wants to encourage you to use the tablet in landscape mode — something we’re all to familiar with seeing on Android. This experience feels counter-intuitive, since the logos and all of the text on the outside of the device are oriented for the portrait experience. Even the IR transmitter is on the side of the device, so you need to hold the device in landscape in order to use it. Like most Honeycomb devices the camera app is forced landscape, though the camera itself is the top corner of the device when you hold it portrait as if to suggest that it would work to take pictures in either orientation.

Speaking of Honeycomb, the Galaxy Tab 7.7 arrives on the scene some three months after the release of the first ICS device by Samsung and yet Android 4.0 is nowhere to be found on this tablet. Instead, the device is optimized by Samsung’s TouchWiz for tablets. I wish I had something, anything nice at all to say about Samsung’s UI over Honeycomb. I find the colors used, especially the bright green in the stock clock and the quick settings in the action bar to be flat out offensive to the eye. It is my deepest wish that Samsung just release stock ICS to the Galaxy Tab 7.7 and allow their users to enjoy the experience unfettered by their attempts at improving the experience.

Despite all of the above, the tablet is truly enjoyable based solely on its size and portability. I can either carry it around with me anywhere I go, or leave it in my living room to use as I pass through. The inclusion of the IR transmitter encouraged me to leave it in the living room to see if I could enjoy using the Peel app that was included on the tablet to control my home entertainment center. In a world where our televisions and set top boxes are getting smarter, most people still have plenty of things in the living room and bedroom that require an IR transmitter.

The Peel app has a remarkable significant database of devices, and setting up multiple rooms in my house to all be controlled by the Peel remote was incredibly easy. In about five minutes, the Galaxy Tab 7.7 not only became my go-to remote, but is also became my TV Guide. Since the Tablet also has access to things like Air Play, Google TV, and Roku, the tablet can even be used to control the fancy new set-top boxes as well as the “old school” IR controlled devices.

Final Thoughts

I’m not totally pleased with the Galaxy Tab 7.7. I really like the hardware, especially when used as a “living room device” but the Samsung overlay and the outdated version of Android really take away from the experience. The Galaxy Tab 7.7 is only available at Verizon Wireless in the US, although the WiFi version is available internationally and can be ordered online for about $500.

Verizon is selling the Galaxy Tab 7.7 at the laughable price of $699 without a contract, and $499 with a two year LTE contract. Basically, while the Galaxy Tab 7.7 has some amazing potential, the US exclusivity agreement with Verizon has priced itself out of the market.

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