Gizmodo and Apple don't get along, something about Gizmodo paying for stolen Apple property. The Galaxy Tab is out. Gizmodo has every reason to speak highly of it because it is the first tablet device to give the iPad a real run for its money.
They trashed every part of it. Notably:
There is no way to not feel like a total dorkface while typing on this thing. In portrait, it’s like tapping on a massive, nerdy phone. In landscape, it’s just dumb. You still have to thumb type, only you’re stretching out further, and text entry swallows up the entire screen. Swype might be dandy on a phone, but on a seven-inch screen it doesn’t work so well—you have to travel a lot further to sketch out words. In other words, you get the worst of a phone’s input problems—amplified.
In the places where Samsung tries to make the Tab feel more like a tablet than a big phone, it’s not afraid to borrow liberally from what Apple’s done on the iPad. The music app (a huge improvement over the standard Android player) bears an uncanny resemblance to the iPad’s iPod app, while the faux-realness of the Calendar, Contacts and Memo apps feel like Chinatown knockoffs of Cupertino software.
And the best:
This thing is just a mess. It’s like a tablet drunkenly hooked up with a phone, and then took the fetus swimming in a Superfund cleanup site. The browser is miserable, at least when Flash is enabled. It goes catatonic, scrolling is laggy, and it can get laughably bad. When better browsing is half the reason to go for a larger screen, that’s insanity. Not only does it use a stupid proprietary charging/syncing cable, It won’t charge when you plug it into a laptop. (Update: It’s not a proprietary cable, but good luck borrowing one from a friend.) Neither of the cameras are anything to write home about (sample photos/video here). Costing $599 off-contract is embarrassing when the iPad starts at $499. (Update: Fair point, the iPad 3G starts at $629. But it’s got a bigger screen, and this thing still sucks.)
Sounds great. I'm in line to buy it already.
-B