Samsung goal is to offer a tablet in every size possible. They’ve done 7”, 10.1” and now they have in between with the Galaxy Tab 8.9. When we first saw the Galaxy Tab 8.9 back at CTIA Sprint 2011 it had a much different design that the one we have now for our review. Radiris Diaz from Cutegeek.com did our unboxing, hands-on and first impressions. you can see its a much thinner tablet and incorporates the same design as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 we reviewed. Not much is different from its bigger brother other than the 8.9” display. It comes with the same 2 megapixel front facing camera and 3 megapixel rear facing camera with LED flash and 720p HD video capture. The quality is exactly the same as the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and I’ll include the test photos and video at the bottom of this review.
Internally you have 16 GB of storage with no expandable memory option but there is a 32 GB model. Wireless connections include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and everything is running on a nVidia Tegra 2 dual core processor. Samsung made something that you want to hold in your hands and didn’t skim to heavily on ports with a mini or micro USB port, full USB port, HDMI out and expandable storage. Even with them not on board there will be accessories available to solve all of those issues except on-board expandable storage.
For software it comes with android 3.1 honeycomb and ships with Touch Wiz UX. We did a extensive review on Touch Wiz UX so we’ll keep it short here in the review. Touch Wiz does a great job of making Android tablets more user friend for the non tech savvy consumer. The Samsung hubs such as Media hub gives you access to a ton of movies and TV shows to watch. Social hub will group all of your Facebook, Twitter and Linked In updates. Desktop widgets allow you to get quick access to information and resized anyway you want them to. The useful mini apps tray lets you do things like control music, take notes and manage apps through the task manager. There is a bit of lag when using the Touch Wiz which is more noticeable on Galaxy Tab 8.9. Battery life runs about the same as most Android Honeycomb tablets. Heavy users will get through the day while light users can possible pull off two days.
At its price range it’s a bit hard to recommend the Tab 8.9. It’s so much like its older brother and with just a few dollars more you can get with a bigger screen and same thin profile. If you watching video content and web browsing you will want those extra couple of inches but if you are all about size and portability the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 will be the right fit for you.
Rear Facing Camera
Front Facing Camera
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