Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7

Samsung unveiled its Galaxy Tab 7.7 at IFA in Berlin. The 7.7-inch Android tablet is a significant evolution in the company’s tablet lineup, despite the small increase in size over the prior version. With the Galaxy Tab 7.7 Samsung has transitioned from LCD to OLED and from 1024×600 to 1280×800.

The Super AMOLED Plus display technology eschews the PenTile Matrix sub-pixel technology in favor of RGB-stripe (read Samsung Super AMOLED Plus: Dumps Pentile Matrix, Goes Real-Stripe (RGB)). The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 rocks a 1280×800 Super AMOLED Plus display and should be an absolutely fantastic display to look at. I’ve scoured through the internet and gathered comments regarding the 7.7-inch Super AMOLED Plus display coming in from IFA:

Brian Heater, Engadget:

Like so many other devices launched by Samsung this year, the screen is the thing, and indeed, that 7.7-inch 1280 x 800 Super AMOLED Plus display is quite sharp and extremely bright [...]

Chris Davies, SlashGear:

As the name suggests, where the original Tab had a 7-inch panel this new Tab 7.7 scales up to 7.7-inches. More noticeable are the panel type and resolution, however, it now being Super AMOLED Plus – just as with the Galaxy S II smartphone – rather then LCD, and 1280 x 800 resolution instead of 1024 x 600. That means smoother graphics, brighter colors, inkier blacks and great viewing angles, though still all packed into a compact form-factor.

Stuff:

Even in the harsh conference hall glare the screen is still sharp and colourful with minimal reflection.

Luke Westaway, CNET UK:

The display looks absolutely brilliant. This is a Super AMOLED Plus screen, which is the same tech employed in the gorgeous Samsung Galaxy S2 smart phone. It’s eyeball-searingly colourful, and looks extremely striking. The screen has a resolution of 1,280×800 pixels, which we reckon will be sharp enough to keep your photos and hi-res video looking good.

Comparisons to the iPad 2 will inevitably be made, so let’s get going. The iPad 2′s 4:3 IPS LCD is a terrific display. The slightly square-ish form factor makes it more versatile in my opinion when viewing photographs, reading e-books, surfing the net, etc.(read iPad 2.0: A More Perfect iPad) But watching HD video isn’t perfect. Let’s face it: most video that we watch today is HD. For that the 16:10 Super AMOLED Plus in the Galaxy Tab 7.7 is much better suited. Not perfect, but better.

1024×768 versus 1280×800. The 7.7-inch OLED is smaller and has more pixels. And that means considerably higher resolution. The resolution of the iPad is 131.96 ppi. The Galaxy Tab 7.7 sports a much higher 196 ppi. And the same type of pixels with RGB-stripe sub-pixels adorn both making it an apples-to-apples comparison. The Galaxy Tab 7.7 simply spanks the iPad when it comes to the display.

Then there are other benefits of OLED. The main feature is absolute blacks, resulting in fantastic contrast. I don’t consider color popping a feature, and would rather have more accurate colors. Here’s hoping a color professional will develop a color management app in the near future. And OLED is thin, really thin.

The reason the Galaxy Tab 7.7 can be so thin can be attributable to the thinness of the OLED display. Because OLED technology does not require the rather thick backlight unit that comes with every LCD, Samsung was able to reduce the thickness, from 0.47 inches on the Galaxy Tab 7 to an unbelievably svelte 7.89 mm, or 0.31 inches*.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 with its 1280×800 Super AMOLED Plus display catapults to the very top of the Android tablet heap, filled with me-too Android tablets. Samsung has differentiated itself from all the rest, even Apple, with a tablet packing an OLED display. If the company’s tablet future looks like the Galaxy Tab 7.7, I think Samsung’s OLED-centric strategy might pay off.

Update: Later, during the IFA conference all traces of the Galaxy Tab 7.7 disappeared. Now we know why, according to Samsung, via Yonhap News Agency:

But Samsung pulled the tablet computer out of the show after a Dusseldorf court accepted on Friday Apple’s request to ban sales and marketing of the product in Germany, the company said.

* Imagine how thin an iPad would be with an OLED display. The iPad 2, with a 9.7-inch LCD, is already a mere 0.34 inches thick.

Update 2: Droid Life acquired a Verizon Wireless inventory system screenshot showing the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 with 4G. The tantalizing OLED tablet made it into the system on December 7.

Update 3: According to AnandTech the rumor was right. The lone Galaxy Tab equipped with a Super AMOLED Plus (RGB-stripe, not PenTile Matrix) display will be available on Verizon’s LTE network.

Update 4: Dana Wollman, Engadget:

Remember how we said 7.0 Plus owners shouldn’t feel too resentful of the 7.7′s build quality? Yeah, well, that statement didn’t include the 7.7′s 1280 x 800, 197 pixel-per-inch screen. As it happens, this is the first Galaxy Tab to rock a non-pentile, Super AMOLED Plus display, and man, is it a winner. We could tell you it’s vibrant, stunning and breathtaking, but even that wouldn’t quite do it justice. The contrast here is so deep, and the viewing angles so wide, that other tablets’ screens look washed-out in comparison.

Update 2012.03.21: Brad Molen, Engadget:

What hasn’t changed is the Super AMOLED Plus display, which boasts a resolution of 1280 x 800 and a pixel density of 196ppi. When we first reviewed the Tab 7.7, this was one of the best tablet screens we had laid eyes on; it’s still as brilliant as it was before, but it’s no longer the bar-raiser. No, not even two months later the competition already looks up to a new contender, which happens to sport a 264ppi Retina display. This doesn’t downplay the beautiful color saturation found on Samsung’s panel, of course; it’s just no longer the absolute best.

Time flies.

“High DPI screens are coming.”

Jensen Harris, Director of Program Management for the Windows User Experience Team, introduced the Metro UI in great detail during Build. At around 41 minutes, Harris puts up a slide titled “Scaling across form factors”. And on that slide the third bullet states:

HD (~200DPI) and Ultra HD (>250DPI) screens a reality soon

Does Harris know something that we don’t? Here’s what he claims during the presentation:

High DPI screens are coming. I’ve seen them. They’re beautiful. The screen manufacturers are doing an amazing job of creating these.

And then he puts up a slide comparing an image on a 10-inch display with a 1366×768 pixel format with one that has 1920×1080. Think about that: a 10-inch LCD with 1920×1080. That calculates to a resolution of a little over 218 ppi. (I prefer to use ppi.) Microsoft will be using SVG, CSS Primitives, and XAML to scale up to 300 ppi class displays. And Metro will have a minimum pixel format requirement of 1024×768.

I reported in late July regarding HiDPI modes in OS X Lion. It would be amazing to have a 3840×2400 pixel format on my 17-inch MacBook Pro. Because of the extra screen real estate? Heck no. Because fonts and icons will be super sharp like they are on the iPhone 4. But are these larger Retina Displays coming?

According to the latest rumors the Retina Display equipped iPad I dub the iPad Pro won’t be making it this year because of difficulties in manufacturing a 9.7-inch LCD with 2048×1536 pixels. Cramming a lot of pixels while maintaining high yields isn’t easy and that means whoever makes the first batch of large Retina Displays will have to pay a lot for them. Remember the spat of news earlier on this year about Apple investing in LCD manufacturers? Maybe Apple has already paid. I still think the Retina Display equipped iPad Pro will be announced soon, but maybe that’s just hopeful thinking. But Harris has already seen large “high DPI” screens…

A Very Typical Time

Technology From Another Planet

Excerpt from Just My Type by Simon Garfield, via NPR:

You can’t easily find Jobs’s original typefaces these days, which may be just as well: they are coarsely pixelated and cumbersome to manipulate. But the ability to change fonts at all seemed like technology from another planet. Before the Macintosh of 1984, primitive computers offered up one dull typeface, and good luck trying to italicize it. But now there was a choice of alphabets that did their best to re-create something we were used to from the real world. Chief among them was Chicago, which Apple used for all its menus and dialogs on screen, right through to the early iPods. But you could also opt for old black letters that resembled the work of Chaucerian scribes (London), clean Swiss letters that reflected corporate modernism (Geneva), or tall and airy letters that could have graced the menus of ocean liners (New York). There was even San Francisco, a font that looked as if it had been torn from newspapers — useful for tedious school projects and ransom notes.

Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook

The Acer Aspire S3 is a rather nice looking 13.3-inch ultrabook. The chassis is made of an aluminum magnesium alloy and it’s thin, at 13 mm, and light, at 1.4 kg.

Comparison to the 13.3-inch MacBook Air is inevitable, so I’ll get right to it. At its thickest point the MBA is 17 mm and weighs 1.35 kg. So the S3 is thinner, by 4 mm, but heavier, by 0.05 kg.

CPU choices are Intel Core i3, i5, and i7; the MBA does not have an i3 option. A 240GB SSD is optional, but with it battery life goes up to seven hours, matching the MBA.

Now the bad part: the 13.3-inch LCD on the S3 sports a 1366×768 pixel format. Right here, the S3 fails to meet the standard set by the 13.3-inch MacBook Air, which packs 1440×900 pixels.

Official pricing has not been determined, but Acer wants to price it between €799 and €1,199. The MBA with an i5 CPU and a 128GB SSD starts at US$1299, or about €920 as of this writing. At any price near the MBA the S3 will be a tough sell considering the starting price will likely include an i3 CPU, a 320GB hard drive, and a pixel-starved 13.3-inch LCD.