Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 - finally here

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garvani

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#534286 17-Oct-2011 13:45

Have been a little bit out of the loop lately with tablets. Just briefly got all excited about the 8.9" for my hopes to be squashed.. The Tegra2 chip in the 8.9 is really off putting (not so good at playing high profile mp4s).. Guess ill be holding out a bit longer for the Galaxy tab 7.7.

timmmay

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#534296 17-Oct-2011 14:33

I haven't had problems with Tegra2 on the Asus Transformer playing mp4's... but I haven't tried many of them. I use moboplayer, and I got the right codec for my hardware.

ronw

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#534572 18-Oct-2011 09:32

An update on my Samsung 8.9 Tablet
I took the tabley away for a weekend and was using it throughout the day.
Battery was not too good. I found that using it for short bursts over a period of 8 hours it pretty much killed the battery. I was reduced to charging in early evening if I wanted to go out at night and use tablet. Not the best but I do like the tablet.
One downer is that it is awkward to hold and use without a cover (nothing to hold the tablet at a reading angle while eating) so I ahve ordered a leather case from the states.

Nokia 7 Plus
Nexus 6P 32Gb
Nexus 6 Phone
Nexus 5 Phone
Nexus 7 2013 Tablet
Samsung TAB A 8"
Samsung TAB A 10"

& many Windows laptops, Desktops etc

lofreq

334 posts

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#534660 18-Oct-2011 12:33

an update on my tablet: a mini "review" and thoughts on optimising its operation:

things are going great. given my background with custom GalaxyS roms, i couldnt leave the 8.9 as is for long - i replaced the news widget with a bunch of Pulse widgets (Pulse is amazing!), and installed some controls so i can manage my power and data more effectively.

the main help has come from Widgetsoid toggles - to control wifi, 3g, sync on and off, brightness and silent mode.

- i set wifi to "only when screen on" so it doesnt sit there keeping its wifi on constantly overnight which is a pointless waste of battery, and for the most part i leave wifi toggled on. 3g is off due to no sim card yet.

- i cant stand auto brightness so i now toggle it between 10% (night time), 30% (normal everyday brightness) and 80% (if it needs a boost) with it usually sitting on 30% all day.

- ive added all my email accounts (hotmail, gmail and work exchange mail) and set them to push update only during 8am-5pm, and manual sync after hours. then i use Widgetsoid to turn autosync off anyway when im not concerned about emails coming in. so usually sync is off all day, i only turn it on in the mornings to allow the latest to come in (turn it off after 30min or so) - despite autosync being off, push updates still seem to come thru so nothing is compromised there

- i battled with the stock browser for ages but felt it was odd how it rendered webpages, the text sometimes seemed blurry or misshapen, as it tried to zoom to fit pages to the screen. scrolling was also slow and unresponsive. i thought this was just the tegra2 chipset, until i decided to try Opera Mobile, which i use on my phone. night and day difference, opera mobile scrolls SO much better, text renders clearer, the web pages are formatted better, everything just works. its not the chipset at all! ive binned the stock browser now, setting opera as default. plus by enabling Opera Link, ive synced up all my bookmarks from my phone to the tablet effortlessly - nice.

- i also set up facebook using the SNS account and social hub widget, but turned updates down to only once a day - prefering to manual sync, im not 16 anymore and needing to know what my other mates are doing every 9 seconds lol. works well.

- i have disabled "Samsung Apps" updates completely, via the Settings>Applications>Samsung menu - to stop it using up wifi/keeping device awake.

as its currently set up, the battery depletes about 10% for every 1 hour of screen time on. including all standby time in between. i have not been able to run it flat in one day of use - so far i have charged it up twice (first when i got it on thurs, second was on sunday arvo?) it went for about 24hours with 6.5 hours screen on and was at 30%, so i charged it to full, and its at 2 days (48hours uptime), 4hrs25min screen on, 55% battery left, rightnow. ill screenshot this now and upload.

so at this rate with my usage i can get about 2 to 2.5 days normal use out of it before needing to charge, maybe more. very happy with that. im sure if i turned everything back on to full sync wifi on permanently then it would drop of course, but i dont see that as necessary or sensible use?? :) remember i still leave "background data" enabled so all other apps needing data still work as expected. its the syncing that sucks juice, same as it does on phones.

heres my main screen, slightly modified with the widgetsoid toggles, pulse widgets, stock clock and weather for now because they do look good:

heres my email/calendar page with Calwidget replaceing the stock calendar because this one reads further into the future and is simple and customisable... also another Widgetsoid toggle so i can instantly sync on and off, or force sync when i need a quick update

finally my slightly modified social/web page, with browser bookmarks widget, and the stock Social Hub

Galaxy Note 3 SM-N9005, on Telecom 4G LTE. ROM: Stock Touchwiz, Android 4.3, XUDMJ6 MODEM: MJ4 Kernel: Stock (for now...:)

timmmay

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#534662 18-Oct-2011 12:39

If you keep getting stuff in when WiFi is meant to be off try the app "auto airplane".

ronw

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#534683 18-Oct-2011 13:20

I dont think so there is no phone featues not sure how you would address the phone sim to dial the number.
My Tab 7 is a phone and has full dial features

Kelem: Just to clarify, could you also use it to make phone calls with an appropriate headset or the like?

Nokia 7 Plus
Nexus 6P 32Gb
Nexus 6 Phone
Nexus 5 Phone
Nexus 7 2013 Tablet
Samsung TAB A 8"
Samsung TAB A 10"

& many Windows laptops, Desktops etc

networkn

Networkn
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#537006 24-Oct-2011 20:22

I saw on pricespy these were 559 or something, but I missed being able to order it, was I imagining it, because today they are $719 on a 20% off special which has been running for 3 days.

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lofreq

334 posts

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#537013 24-Oct-2011 20:32

The 559 is the wifi only model, 719 is the 3g model, both are from bond & bond/ Noel lemming, who have never had stock since day 1. Why they have been listed on pricespy for so long I have no idea, its pointless to everyone really.

Galaxy Note 3 SM-N9005, on Telecom 4G LTE. ROM: Stock Touchwiz, Android 4.3, XUDMJ6 MODEM: MJ4 Kernel: Stock (for now...:)

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