A tale of two tablets: Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9

[Bateluer]

I've played with the 10.1 several times before, and found it to be a solid tablet. Thin, sufficiently zippy, nice screen. Not much of a fan of TouchWiz UX though.

Today was the first day I've had the opportunity to play with the Tab 8.9 though, previous times, the battery was dead on the display model and they didn't have a charger on the table.

Far as I know, both models are powered by the same Tegra 2, 1GB of RAM, and both displays are 1280x800.

Both demo models were running 3.1, the 3.2 update was detected but the install was blocked.

So, then, why is the Tab 8.9 such a laggy mess compared to the 10.1?
Next question, with these devices being essentially the same, would a 10.1 rom work on the 8.9 and vice versa? I'd check RW or XDA, but they're both blacked out in protest of SOPA.


I like the size of the Tab 8.9, if it had an SD card slot, I'd be very interested in it. Has a 399 price tag now, much more palatable then its original 469 price. Wonder if Samsung will do a little refreshing on these devices on MWC, upscale the SoC a little, add an sdcard slot?

 

[xplosiveone]

Typically you'll start to see slow downs as more Widgets/live wall papers and things are added. I'm guessing the 8.9 had more things running in memory.

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[Bateluer]

Typically you'll start to see slow downs as more Widgets/live wall papers and things are added. I'm guessing the 8.9 had more things running in memory.

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No, I blanked the home screens myself. Still lagged.

 

[xplosiveone]

There could always be background processes running. Both tablets have the same/similar internals so performance should be the same.

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[Bateluer]

There could always be background processes running. Both tablets have the same/similar internals so performance should be the same.

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Went through the TW Task Manager on the 8.9 and killed many things as well. Still lagged vs the 10.1.

Found that if I could hit XDA by bypassing their front page and getting to the forums directly. I'm not the only person who noted the lag with the 8.9 too. Looks like there's some development going for it though, and installing ADW nuked the lag entirely according to some there.

 

[Mopetar]

It could be some kind of bizarre firmware issue or related to differences in some component that's not behaving correctly with the version of the software that Samsung has on it.

Given that it's not it's not background tasks, apps, widgets, etc. and that multiple people have reported the problem, it's the only thing I can think of off the top of my head. The only other explanation is a root kit that's chewing up CPU, but that seems even less likely.

 

[swanysto]

It could be some kind of bizarre firmware issue or related to differences in some component that's not behaving correctly with the version of the software that Samsung has on it.

Given that it's not it's not background tasks, apps, widgets, etc. and that multiple people have reported the problem, it's the only thing I can think of off the top of my head. The only other explanation is a root kit that's chewing up CPU, but that seems even less likely.

That is my guess. Best Buy and the like usually just plug them in and that is it. They don't keep up to date with fixes and such. Not to mention, those things are treated like crap. I haven't checked out the 8 cause I don't think I would go smaller than the 10, but like you said the 10 seemed pretty solid, and that is my impression as well.