Three week's with a Samsung Galaxy 8.9 tablet

Im_Sirius

Member
Sep 30, 2011
7
0
Well it has been several weeks now since I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9, and thought it would be helpfull to others considering the 8.9 to post my thoughts on the 8.9 .
Let me first say I like the tablet. My wife bought an IPad at the same time, so we have an interesting time talking over the merits of both units. When we first opened the box's and looked at the display screens. The Sam 8.9 won out on screen clarity , it just looked sharper than the IPad. Holding both in the hand was another wow moment, the 8.9 was able to be handled by one hand, and was clearly lighter, meaning a lot less fatigue and longer reading sessions, nod goes to the Sam 8.9 here. I started looking for accessories right away for the Sam, here the 8.9 lost, the IPad has the accessory field working overtime, both with Apple products and non-Apple items, there is just a zillion of them out there. I bought a cool Zagg folio with a keyboard for the wife's IPad. These are by far the best case/keyboards on the market but as of this writhing Zagg doesn't make them for the 8.9 , I'll wait in hopes that the folks at Zagg will get around to it. So IPad wins here. Now onto apps, the both have a number of apps, I won't dive into who has more as both have plenty, in fact many show up on both Android and Apple OS, makes this a moot point as well. I will say that one App I downloaded on my Samsung has impressed my IPad using wife and a dozen or so friends that use IPads, that is flexT9 voice keyboard, much much better then the stock on screen keyboard by far, wow! , I would give this app the highest rating of any I have tried on either system. Another app that started out to be a problem was the Netflix app for watching on line movies. This didn't work for the first two weeks, this motivated me to read every posting on "fixes" for running Netflix on a Samsung Honeycomb tablet. There is a lot out there on the subject. I tried several,none worked.Then I downloaded the latest version,or what seemed like it, and it worked, and quite well. Battery run time on the 8.9 seems fine, but Samsung you got to include a longer charge cable, believe it or not the two foot thing included is way to short , come on, a 6 foot cable can't cost that much more! Idid get the adapter for using a USB drive, it bulky sticking out there from the courner, side , top, bottom depending on tablet orientation. I would like to see Samsung include a real USB input on tablets in the future, but ONLY if they can keep the tablet skinny, as it is. Well as I stated at the beginning, I like this tablet and get a kick out of showing it off to IPad owners. The unit has worked flawlessly in the three weeks I had it, all in all a good tablet.

Ira Sirius





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Last edited:

Tom T

Senior Member
Feb 18, 2011
1,632
191
This is good to hear, and a question for you. I have an original 7" Galaxy Tab (have loved it ) but I am in the mood to replace it. I was thinking of either the 7 plus or the 8.9. Is the 8.9 compact enough to comfortably carry or would there be a noticeable difference in size? I suppose you could only answer this if you had some time with the 7", but maybe you have? As a side note I obviously have a Transformer and the rason I ask is this tablet is a little too large to carry consistently.

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Im_Sirius

Member
Sep 30, 2011
7
0
I think the 8.9 is a good compromise in size, with the .3 inch height (about the thicknesses of cardboard) being an advantage while holding it in one hand during long periods of reading. I was thrilled with the Acer A 100 when it first came out, with all its ports and features, until I held one in my hand in a store and compared it with the Galaxy. The new Galaxy 7 inch due out any day should be a winner in terms of portability, I would take a close look at that. Good luck.


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Tom T

Senior Member
Feb 18, 2011
1,632
191
With any luck I can get a chance to compare them side by side at BestBuy.

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