Unboxing the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus is considered to be the new entry level tablet of Samsung. It’s an upgraded version of the first Galaxy Tab which came out a several months after the original iPad. This 7-inch tablet is thin, lightweight, runs on good specs, and packed with a lot of features, making it a serious contender especially in the 7-inch category. Add to that the competitive pricing… it’s no wonder a lot of people are asking us to do a review on this! The awesome news is that We were finally able to secure a unit to put through the paces in the next week. Expect a full review by then but for now though we’d like to share with you the unboxing as well as our initial impressions!

Packaging and Unboxing

When I first saw the box I was surprised to see how small it was. It felt more like a box for a smartphone than a tablet! Even the BlackBerry PlayBook, which is also 7-inches, had a much bigger box. I asked a friend who does packaging for a living about this and she told me that smaller packaging means lower costs especially when you consider how many boxes can fit in crates for shipping. Kinda makes sense if you think about it that way.

Unboxing it is easy and straightforward. Just remove the tape on the sides and pull the front carton cover upwards. Removing the lid will reveal the gorgeous Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, complete with the customary Samsung stickers at the front and at the back.

What else is in the box? If you take the Tab out you’ll find the charger, cable, manuals, and the earphones inside. There are no carrying cases or pouches with this one (awww).

Initial Impressions

One of our first reactions upon taking the Tab out of the box was to be amazed at how light (345 g) and thin (193.7 x 122.4 x 9.9 mm) this device was. It felt significantly lighter than the iPad 2 and that’s probably due to the plastic back cover and smaller form factor.

You won’t find any physical buttons at the front. The only things you’ll see at the display panel is the Samsung logo is at the bottom while you have a receiver at the top. I can’t imagine taking phone calls with this though. The Galaxy Note was actually decent went held to the ear. You’ll probably need a bluetooth headset if you want to take and make calls with the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus.

At the sides you’ll find the volume rocker, wake/sleep button, micro-SD card port, and the SIM card tray. At the bottom is the Samsung proprietary pin charging port. Note that you can also send and receive text messages with this device. Oh and you can get decent browsing speeds as long as you’re in an area covered by HSPA+. Connectivity to at least HSPA+ is very important these days since basic 3G is almost always sluggish for both networks.

The back of the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus is made from hard white plastic. There’s actually a graphite colored limited edition model but that’s not being sold readily in stores (you have to go to Samsung mall tours to get ’em).

You’ll find a 3.15 MP camera at the back as well together with the LED flash. Don’t expect to take stellar photos with this tablet. It’s really meant more for emergency picture taking as well as recording important video. This camera can record 720p (30fps) video to make sure the quality of the clips are decent.

Okay now that we have most of the hardware out of the way, let’s turn this baby on! The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus has an LCD capacitive touchscreen with 600×1024 pixels resolution. That’s around ~170 ppi pixel density. It’s obviously not the best in the world but it will only be an issue if your eyes are already spoiled with Super AMOLED or Retina displays. 🙂

The Tab 7.0 Plus runs on Android Honeycomb 3.2 (with Samsung Touchwiz). It doesn’t come with Android Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box but from what I’ve heard that update shouldn’t be too far down the road.

The dual-core 1.2GHz processor and 1GB RAM is more than enough to power the various applications you want to use or when you want to watch HD video. What I find intriguing is that the actual Android Honeycomb user interface is still a bit laggy. When you try flipping through the different pages in the home screen there’s a noticeable delay. Hopefully this will get addressed with ICS.

With regards to the applications, the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus comes with several pre-installed. This includes the popular RSS reader, Pulse. There’s also the Peel Reel Smart Remote Control which we’ll talk more about in our full review.

Full Review coming soon

We’ll be spending a lot of time with this tablet in the next few days so hopefully we can give you guys a comprehensive take on it by middle of next week.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus is now available in Samsung stores. Current SRP is Php 23,990.