The folks over at iFixit are at it again, but this time the Samsung Galaxy Tab is their victim. The Android tablet is making its way to all four major carriers in the U.S. before the holiday season hits, so we’re all taking a deep dive to see just what this little tablet is made of. There aren’t a whole lot of surprises, but the details of the teardown are listed below.
- The 3.2 MP rear facing camera with an LED flash is a bit sub-par for a device of this caliber, seeing how much smaller devices (like the original Droid) are packed with 5 MP imagers.
- Measuring 190.1 x 120.6 x 12.0 mm, the Galaxy Tab is significantly smaller than its competitor (the iPad measures in at 242.8 x 189.7 x 13.4 mm). This allows the Tab to be held in one hand relatively easily, making it a good device for portable commercial applications.
- Prying off a plastic pad on both sides of the Apple-esque dock connector reveals two tri-wing screws. Tri-wing screws are a pretty low level solution to tamper-proofing a product. We include the bit in our 26 piece and 54 piece bit driver kits.
- The inner face of the rear case has a heavy strip of EMI shielding where it rests against the processor and memory chips on the motherboard.
- The rear case’s plastic construction will no doubt aid in wireless reception. Using plastic allowed Samsung to bypass the creative measures used by Apple’s iPad designers to facilitate signal transmission.
- Nearly half of the Galaxy Tab’s real estate is engulfed by the battery. Weighing in at 81 grams, the battery is about 55% the weight and 60% the capacity of the iPad’s battery. It’s also roughly half the size of the iPad’s battery.
- The digitizer element was produced by Atmel and is bonded to a Corning Gorilla Glass front panel. Unfortunately, a fair amount of heat gun application is required to remove said front panel.
- Although the resolution of the Galaxy Tab’s screen (1024×600) is less than the resolution of the iPad (1024 x 768), the Galaxy Tab has more pixels-per-inch (169 for Galaxy Tab vs 132 for the iPad). 169 ppi is nice, but nowhere near dense enough for us. We vastly prefer the iPhone 4’s 326 ppi retina display.
If you’re thinking of disassembling and fixing or tweaking the Samsung Galaxy Tab yourself, iFixit gives the process a 6 out of 10 given the need for some unconventional tools. For the full rundown of how to take this puppy apart, hit the link below.
[Via: iFixit]