ITG Investment Research tracked point-of-sale data from nearly 6,000 wireless stores in the U.S. from the Galaxy Tab’s November debut through Jan. 15 and found the device to have an unusually high return rate. According to its estimates, cumulative return rates for the Galaxy Tab through December of 2010 were about 13 percent. Worse, that percentage is growing as holiday purchases are returned. ITG figures cumulative Galaxy Tab return rates through January 15 were 16 percent. Ugly, considering the return rate for the iPad at Verizon since its debut on the carrier is just 2 percent.
Not good. Google need to get a decent tablet OS out. They are letting Samsung down.
And perhaps the size of the Tab is simply wrong for a tablet. In which case a lot of other tablet hopefuls are in trouble too…
Let’s get to the most obvious thing — size! Apple’s CEO — who will remain nameless — publicly stated that a 7-inch screen was too small for a tablet, and after using the Tab, we tend to agree.
And yet I still think Apple would be willing to push out a smaller iPad if the Tab gains traction in the market. Something that is looking less likely at the moment, certainly in the “iPad killer” number department.
It’s a very weird in-between feeling; we can’t decide it feels like a smartphone that is too big or a tablet that is too small. We still can’t figure out the best way to use the keyboard in portrait mode. Hold it with both hands and try and thumb type? Hold the tablet in one hand and only use one hand to type? Use Swype?
I think the lesson we can learn here is basically that if it won’t go into your pocket then there really is no advantage to building tablets smaller than the iPad’s magazine style form factor. Unless you want an expensive dashboard mounted GPS.
On Flash, and the browser…
Browsing the web with Flash on (enabled by default) proved to be a pretty frustrating experience. Scrolling was jittery, slow, and sometimes pages just wouldn’t even finish loading. However, once we changed the browser’s plug-ins setting to on demand (think Click2Flash), the browser popped to life. Pages loaded very quick, scrolling was almost fluid, and using multi-touch gestures to pinch zoom in and out worked like a charm. The browsing experience on the device is exactly where you want it to be.
The device gets extremely hot after watching videos or browsing the web for an hour. This will be a major drain on battery life and indicates that either the Coretex 1Ghz processor isn’t efficient enough, or the Galaxy Tab doesn’t do a good enough job of harnessing its power in an efficient manor.
Either way, it’s a drain on power and it’s a problem the iPad just doesn’t have. With screen brightness on max, you can actually see the battery life falling away in front of your eyes. This is despite Samsung claiming 7-hours’ continuous movie play.
Oh dear. It’s all gone pear shaped.
Perhaps Apple needn’t rush out the next iPad after all…
The Tab seems to have a very robust, feature filled OS, well implemented. Sure a lot of it is influenced by iOS. But at least Samsung get what mobile tablet computing is about.
Designed using Samsung’s 45 nanometer low-power process technology, Orion features a pair of 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 cores, each comes with a 32KB data cache and a 32KB instruction cache. Samsung also included a 1MB L2 cache to optimize CPU processing performance and provide fast context switching in a multi-tasking environment. In addition, the memory interface and bus architecture of Orion supports data intensive multimedia applications including full HD video playback and high speed 3D action games.
With a little bit of tweaking by “PA Semi” and “Intrinsity” this is going to be the Apple A5.
Using an enhanced graphics processing unit (GPU), the new processors are capable of delivering 5 times the 3D graphics performance over the previous processor generation from Samsung.
Orion features an onboard native triple display controller architecture that compliments multi-tasking operations in a multiple display environment. A mobile device using the Orion processor can simultaneously support two on-device display screens, while driving a third external display such as a TV or a monitor, via an on-chip HDMI 1.3a interface.
The iPad 2 & iPhone 5 are going to be rather special.
**It is worth noting that it is possible that Apple are planning an interim speed bump to the Apple A4, which may or may not be called the A5. Pushing a dual core mobile GPU to the moniker A6. In that case the A5 may well be single core and sport the PowerVR GPU.
Samsung Mobile Display (SMD) is developing a flexible AMOLED display, and plan to reach this goal by switching to plastic panels. Samsung’s aim is to mass produce this kind of panel within two years.
SMD plans to create a TFT (thin film transistor) layer on the plastic panel, and replace the existing vinyl protection sheet with PI (polyimide) film to avoid residue upon light emission.
What they need to do before all that, in my opinion, is improve colour distribution and resolution in the technology. But flexible display panels are certainly something I look forward to in the future.
One day soon I will pull a single sheet full colour AMOLED newspaper out of my jeans back pocket, which is touch sensitive, internet enabled and disposable! If only they could get all the driver technology, power source, touch panel and antennas into that flexible sheet too.
Samsung, the world’s No. 1 display maker, hit back at Apple on Tuesday, saying the much-hyped Retina display consumes around 30 percent more battery power than the “super AM-OLED” display first used in Galaxy S.
The iPhone 4G has a resolution of 960×640, four times higher than its predecessor iPhone 3GS, while the Galaxy S’s resolution is 800×480. Samsung launched Galaxy S in Seoul on Tuesday, eight hours after Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the new iPhone at its developers’ conference in San Francisco.
AM-OLED is certainly the future. I am sure we’ll see them in future iPhones.
But if you can’t make enough of them…
The spokesperson said Apple may have not used the OLED because of a supply shortage, and its partnership with LG Display, which does not produce AM-OLED displays. He also said Apple did not approach the company for the possible supply of AM OLED displays.
Right now, can Samsung manufacture tens of millions of those screens for Apple, as well as support the volume they require for their own devices? I doubt it.
They are also not producing them in as high a resolution as Apple’s iPhone 4 panel requires. An important factor when you consider maintaining a practical workable resolution ratio between old and new iPhone displays.
What you need to remember is that Apple never uses cutting edge technology for the sake of it. Rather they refine and polish what is currently stable, so that it is the best possible implementation of existing technology. Often times pushing the envelope of that tried and tested technology, where there is room to tweak the specification, rather than struggling with bleeding edge components that are more expensive to manufacture and not quite ready for prime time.
The only area where Apple takes anything which can be considered being close to a risk with manufacture is when they are cornered, or when they actually manufacture the components themselves.
