A few weeks ago, I purchased Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 3G edition from Vodafone Egypt for a relatively good price, the device is shipped with Android 3.1 Honeycomb with 16GB of storage and a very attractive white back.

There are many reviews on how the device looks and feels, so, I decided to wrap my opinion in a short note to everybody:

Pros:

1. Lightweight, lighter and thinner than iPad2
2. Very good battery life
3. Vivid bright screen with superb resolution, far better than iPad2
4. Smooth Operating system, much more attractive and flexible than iOS
5. Supports Arabic (not sure if it’s a Samsung mod or stock feature)

Cons:

1. Battery recharging issue through USB: You basically cannot charge the device through PC-connected USB, the travel adapter is needed to charge the device. Some claim that it charged through the USB but very slowly. Solved by replacing the kernel with Pershoot’s kerneland then do the following command from your computer[code lang=”bash”]adb shell echo 1 > /sys/class/power_supply/battery/force_usb_charging[/code]
2. File transfer (MTP problem on Mac): File transfer is not smooth from PC/Mac to Android because the device doesn’t appear as a flash-disk as you might have expected. You need a special software that uses MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) to communicate with the tab’s internal storage and in my case I tried using (Android File Transfer) which never worked!
3. Applications Quality on the android market: Well, that’s the main differentiation for Android, many applications exist for phones but only a few optimized for Honeycomb+, which makes it great for those interested in developing applications for Honeycomb, a lot of space still exist.
4. Accessories availability in the market: I’ve been searching for any accessories for the tablet in the Egyptian market and in Dubai with complete failure, even the promised gifts (cover and USB adapter) from Vodafone never arrived
5. A little bit slow sometimes: Solved by rooting and replacing the kernel with Pershoot’s kernel, Overclocked to 1.4GHz on-demand.

Conclusion

All in all, a great device and will definitely shine even more when more “useful” applications come up in the market. my 2 cents is that Google should allow non-free apps to be distributed in Egypt, it’s such a shame that a big company like Google is lagging years in respect to Apple in that particular area. Apple app store has been open in Egypt for years now for paid and free apps. Google, do you need an advice from Apple on how did they do that? ;)

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