• Samsung Galaxy Tab A 9.7 Full in-depth Review

    My full review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab A 9.7 tablet

    They have this available at Best Buy which is where I got it or online for $299 dollars for the 16GB WiFi only model. Though Samsung is releasing a Galaxy Tab A later this year with LTE and also a version with a stylus pen as well so that’s something to forward to if you’re interested. But anyways this is the Smoky Titanium variant but they do also offer Smoky Blue and White for additional color options.

     

    Need a free unlock code to unlock your phone or device?

     

    Samsung Galaxy Tab A 9.7

    They have this available at Best Buy which is where I got it or online for $299 dollars for the 16GB WiFi only model. Though Samsung is releasing a Galaxy Tab A later this year with LTE and also a version with a stylus pen as well so that’s something to forward to if you’re interested. But anyways this is the Smoky Titanium variant but they do also offer Smoky Blue and White for additional color options. So let’s start with hardware aspect of the tablet. It’s a 9.7 inch tablet and it weighs in at 99 hundredths of a pound. It’s not too heavy but it does feel substantial in the hand. The tablet was not build with premium materials. It’s mainly a plastic construction except for the display panel on the front. The back I think has a polycarbonate plastic material which is surprisingly useful at deterring fingerprints. The 5 megapixel camera is located on the back with no flash included and these two holes here I assume are for accessories. We have our ambient light sensor with the 2 megapixel front facing shooter next to the Samsung logo. As usual for Samsung products, we have the multitasking capacitive button, physical home button, and also the back capacitive button. Nothing on the left spine, but on the right spine we have the power button, volume controls, and also a microSD card slot for expandable storage up 128 GB which is also the reason why this tablet is only gonna come in 16GB configurations with about 8GB available to the user because you already have an ample amount expandable storage. This is running the greatest and latest version of Android Android 5.0.2 Lollipop. But of course it’s got Samsung’s own TouchWiz user interface on top. But truthfully, the newest version of TouchWiz on this is not bad at all. Samsung has kept their promise in reducing the amount bloatware that come pre-installed which IS fantastic because the number apps on here pre-loaded did not even exceed one page. So minus the Flipboard magazine, and a few widgets there, the tablet is essentially bloat-free leaving it with only essential applications. Which is also why I think this version of TouchWiz is noticeably faster compared to years past thank to the bloatware reduction. And by the if you’re buying this for business or school you’ll be delighted to hear that as a result of Samsung’s cooperation with Microsoft, we have Microsoft Office pre-installed out of the box with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Skype, and with the purchase of this tablet, you’ll also get 100GB of OneDrive cloud storage free for two years and this is the OneDrive app which also comes pre-installed. This interface is pretty familiar if you’ve been a Samsung user. The notifications and the settings still has the good old Samsung graphics and the gimmicks like the Motions and gesture. But the multitasking capability of this tablet is solid. So now in Android Lollipop we have new these cards now that you scroll through instead of the list view on KitKat. It works extremely well but what makes it even better is Samsung’s Multi Window feature. So what Multi Window allows you to do is Apps that support Multi window will display together on a split screen. You can switch between the apps, adjust the size of their display on the screen, and also copy information from one app to the other. So let me demonstrate how it works. So let’s say you want to take notes from a web page. What you do is hold down the multitasking button and this screen will appear. So we’re going to tap on chrome and that opens on the left half of the screen. Then we’re going tap on memo and that opens up on the right half of the screen. And this is actual multitasking since you can use both apps at the same time. I like it a lot and it perhaps is my favorite feature of TouchWiz. If you’re thinking about getting this tablet for the family and kids, Samsung did provide a very good kids app where you can set parental controls, and restrict certain applications. Another thing I really like about the tablet, is its phenomenal battery life. The tablet’s 6000 mAh battery has lasted me well over a day under normal to moderate usage with video playback and web browsing so the battery life is pretty solid and it lives up to Samsung’s promise of 11 hours. The camera quality of this tablet is pretty mediocre at best which is normal for most tablet cameras and you get some decent shots when the conditions are right, but just don’t expect it to impress you. The performance on this is pretty good it’s got a 1.2GHz qualcomm APQ 8016 quad-core processor with 1.5 GBs so it’s going to breeze through most of the daily tasks like gaming, and watching videos, or browsing. But I wouldn’t recommend this for gaming because of its midrange specs. So overall the Galaxy Tab A is a decent tablet that’ll get the job done. My only complaint is the low screen resolution, other than that it’s performs well. But personally I would go for the Galaxy Tab 4 which has the same price tag but it has a HD screen. So that’s all for my review, links and more information are down in the description.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *