As you probably know, Chippy is in the trenches at IDF as we speak type. In addition to a solid hands-on with the devices, he’s also doing testing and keeping us up to date with some audio logs. Let’s first have a look at the blazing speed of the Galaxy Tab 7.7 as indicated by the Sunspider benchmark:
This score, which is thanks to a fast dual-core processor and the latest build of Android, puts the Tab 7.7 at the number 1 position on our Sunspider benchmark chart:
Chippy faily notes that Chrome has improved in performance since then so just I ran Sunspider on a fairly modern Atom based netbook (1.6GHz HP Mini 311 with Nvidia ION) and the scores are comparable with the Mini 311 scoring 1336ms, putting the Tab 7.7 only about 8% away from that score.
This is mighty impressive; here we’ve got the Tab 7.7 which is rated for around 10 hours of battery life, not to mention much longer on standby, and it has browser performance similar to a much larger netbook that has considerably less runtime. Intel might be in trouble…
Chippy Chimes In
Chippy was able to make a little time to share with us a quick audio log with some thoughts on the Tab 7.7 and the Galaxy Note. I’ll let you listen for yourself, but I will say that I share many of his sentiments:
As with the HTC Thunderbolt, I’ll be dropping my Xoom testing notes here. This isn’t a full review (though Laptop Mag has a nice thorough one if that’s what you’re looking for). These are just a few thoughts I had while using the device (and waiting and wondering when the 4G upgrade will be come available).
Notes
The Xoom seems to collect dust and fingerprints very well. More so than other devices I’ve used. The Xoom may lack an olephobic coating that is designs to reduce the amount of finger oils that stick to the screen. The dust attraction could be from a slight static charge building on the screen.
Auto-correct is mostly invisible and doesn’t correct very well by default. If you go into the keyboard options, you can enable ‘show suggestions’ and increase the agressiveness of the auto-correct which improved the typing experience for me.
The lock button (on the back of the device) works well when the tablet is in your hands, but it’s a pain when the device is flat on a table or in your lap (which it usually is when you’re typing). People that I give the Xoom too (even those familiar with technology) usually spend at lest 20 seconds looking for the lock button, which easily marks it as being not placed in an intuitive place.
The screen is glossy and highly reflective; a pain to use with bright overhead lights found in office and school environments.
The portrait keyboard is a better size than the iPad’s (ie: easily thumb-typable but the aspect ratio and weight of the devices makes it harder to use than I’d prefer. The option to float the keyboard in the middle of the screen (like the iPad will do with iOS 5) would distribute the weight more evenly and make for a better portrait typing experience. Extended portrait typing with the current keyboard layout will likely cause strain as you have to hold the weight of the device with your palms while typing with your thumbs.
Quick controls on the browser is great for maximizing screen real-estate and making navigation quick and easy. Just swipe onto the browser from the left or right of the screen and you’ve got all of your browser controls quite literally at the tip of your finger. Android Honeycomb 3.1 updated this to offer even more comprehensive controls from quick controls. Be sure to activate quick controls in your browser’s settings menu under Labs.
The familiar four Android buttons have moved into software which is good because they change with the orientation of the device. The ‘menu’ button has been removed in favor of putting things that would otherwise be hidden by the button into the software of the application itself.
Keyboard input can be slow on ‘heavy’ sites like Facebook which makes typing a pain.
Auto-rotation on the screen is was slower than it seems it should be – doesn’t feel responsive.
Lack of portrait support in the Market app is annoying!
Benchmarks
So there you have it! If you’re interested we’ve got some other great coverage on the Xoom:
After our hands-on with the Galaxy Tab we couldn’t resist a few benchmark tests. In the video below you’ll see the Sunspider test which is a single-threaded test. For reference we’ve seen 9000ms on the iPad and just under that on Tegra 2 (with Android 2.1) A netbook comes in at about 2000ms. The Galaxy Tab? About 7500ms showing that the a single CPU core (we’re not 100% on the CPU details yet – we suspect a single Cortex A9 core at the moment.)
Next up you’ll see the Quadrant test that we ran on the Tegra 2 platform this week. On the Toshiba AC100 we saw a very impressive score of 1911 which is one amazing score. Remember the Quadrant test is a CPU, 2D and 3D test so it tests more than just the CPU. On the Galaxy Tab we saw a score of 1064. That might sound a lot less than the Tegra2 platform but it’s more than the impressive Samsung Galaxy S!
I’m running a suite of tests that I’ll report on soon but just look at this. Tegra 2 wipes out every other smartphone platform out there.
This is a screenshot from Quadrant. I’m also seeing great browsing results, a SunSpider result of 9300 and Pi being calculated in 2081ms which is 3x faster than the average score on the BenchmarkPi application. It can handle a 1080p H.264 file at 13mbps and plays Raging Thunder 2 on the 1024×600 screen like a demon! For a smart platform, Tegra2 is taking it to the next level.
Note: These CPU tests may only be single-threaded (Single CPU) tests.
Test your Android phone and let me know how it compares.
Update: ARM were on the line. Apparently they’re sending over some benchmarks with Android 2.2. (2.2 has all the Cortex enhancements in it, 2.1 doesnt so expect a lot more from this platform.)
Update: We’ve got another Tegra 2 result. This time from the Interpad.
Post written on AC100 using WordPress application.
