Adventures with the Galaxy Tab – Social Media
Into the second week of the Edinburgh Fringe, which also means into my second week of adventures with Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 7. You might recall from last week that this has been supplied by O2, for me to evaluate in the always on the go environment of the Fringe. After the “getting to know you” moments of last week, there’s less chance of the Tab being forgiven for any errors.
Let’s talk about social media, because when you are on the move, and trying to stay connected, getting access to Twitter, Facebook, and other similar networks is a pretty important part of my schedule, and it’s here that the Tab does shine, probably better than any other area. But only if you are using the applications supplied by said social networks. Using the web browser to update Foursquare, to follow Facebook threads… well you can do it, but it’s not fun.
So a quick scoot to the Android marketplace to grab software clients for Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter and WordPress. That should cover the bases, and I suspect with web and Gmail thrown into the mix will cover 90% of the use case of the Tab.
To be honest, the client I used the least was Foursquare. That;s partly down to not having any feedback to the check-in process. At an event like SXSW, I’m always checking in, and part of the reason for that is the “reward” of my friends being able to find me, being in a central hub of connected people, and that proves very useful. It’s less so at the Edinburgh Fringe. The people attending the Fringe probably make up the same volume of SXSW, but they’re less connected than the geekerati in Austin. So Foursquare looses something, I check in less, and Foursquare becomes even less useful. That’s not because the client doesn’t work on the Tab (although I do have to remember to switch the GPS on in the power management task bar – a quick but vital chore because I want to keep some battery power in reserve).
The Foursquare client (and the Facebook client) look and act pretty much identically to the iPhone and iPad versions which is vital for customers who have switched to this new platform. In operation and stability I’ve no complaints.
Neither are there problems with the Twitter client. To be honest the Android build is far better than the iPad version. That might be because the iPad’s 10″screen has more space for sliding columns and whooshy features, whereas the Tab 7″ goes for a simple one page layout you can change views on, but I can get far more done (and better understand what’s going on) with the Android version. It’s a win.
For those social media applications, there’s an element of “push” for notifications of new messages, friend requests and incoming mail that appear in the Android status bar. It’s probably one of the nicest things, a quick swipe down from almost anywhere and you can see what’s new and be taken straight to the application. Fast access to data, in four presses or less. How very Palm OS! It worked for Palm and it works here.
But it’s WordPress that’s proving to be the little jewel in the Tab software line-up. If there’s one app I’m using more than any other, it’s this one. WordPress have clients on the main smartphones (Symbian, Android, Windows Phone 7 and iOS) but this is the one that works. Local drafts are the big winner, but everything around it, from multiple blog support to stats, posts, pages and comment moderation… I’m just wondering if they’ll make the other clients feel and work like this one.
Which leads to an issue with the Galaxy Tab 7 that’s a little bit harder to get over. Text input. The default Samsung keyboard isn’t as slick or accurate as that on an iPad, and even with the extra size and spacing on the 7″ screen the inaccuracy, compared to other touchscreen smartphones and tablets, isn’t what I was expecting. Error correction is there, but it keeps popping up an extra row of text, moving elements on the screen and making everything jump around in a demented fashion.
For the record, the best Qwerty keyboards I’ve found (ignoring physical keyboards such as the Nokia E7) are on the Windows Phone 7 devices. Those are sweet!
Thankfully there is another option in the form of Swype. My advice to any Galaxy Tab user is get Swype running as quick as you can. Just slide your finger over the keys, one sweep per word, an then confirm the word if needed, is the best method on the Tab. It’s not as fast as T9 input, or the WP7 devices, but it gets the job done. The unfortunate problem is that you can;t just type without looking on the Tab, and that slows down any creative process beyond a tweet or text.
The Tab is a great consumer of social media, and can easily talk to the main networks with bespoke clients. If you have to use the browser for newer services, then the HTML5 compliance comes in useful, but frankly at this point in time I think most networks will have something Android flavoured as they launch. Browsing and reading is a joy, and while there are limitations, you can get your ideas and leave comments for others to read at a fair pace. That’s a thumbs up in my book.
Is there any strength to a Tab over say the 4″ screened Galaxy smartphones? That’s a bit trickier to answer, but the larger screen on the Tab 7 makes me want to explore more, and it is easier to reply on the larger sized devices. Bing book sized the Tab feels like you should be doing stuff like that, where the smaller smartphone feels more toy-like, for playing gams and just doing quick glances to check in. The 7″ form factr of course is slap bang between a smartphone and the perception of a tablet. It tends mroe to the phone side of things, and I think I like that – but the strength is not that it’s a bigger phone, but a device that screams “use the internet on me while you are out and about!” The iPad always sstrikes me as a sofa machine, the Tab 7 is more for the outdoors.
But we’re straying into a holistic look at the device, and I want to experiment and play a bit more before we get to that. Next week, more on the applications, what else is lurking on the screen, and some general thoughts on using the Tab 7 in the wild.
