That was then, this is then now

Today I got notified that “On the amazon treasure truck” there was the new Samsung Tab A 8 inch tablet on sale for $150. This is Samsung’s latest low-cost tablet and $149 sounded like a pretty good price. I thought I’d take a look.

As a preface, I want to say I love the small form-factor tablet concept. It just really works. More screen space than a phone, more portable than a full sized tablet. One of the first of these I saw was the 2012 Nexus 7. It was a 7-inch, dual-core tablet. This 1st Generatio of the Nexus 7 was mediocre at best, and hence not particularly successful. The following year Google and Asus teamed up again to make the 2nd Generation Nexus 7 (2013) which, for its time, turned out to be a extraordinary piece of technology. It too was a 7-inch screen, but this time it had a quad-core 1.5Ghz Qualcom Snapdragon CPU and 2 gigs of RAM. I can’t express just how ahead of its time this tablet was. Well, actually, I can express it, so read on.

I’ve had a great number of Samsung devices and generally loved them all. I was definitely intrigued when I saw the brand new Galaxy Tab A (2019) selling for $149 so I took a look at the device to see what was under the hood. First, the 8-inch screen. One one great aspect of smaller screens is efficiency. Smaller screens use less power and take up less space, of course, but it also requires the designer to be more compact and efficient. For this reason I’ve always recommended smaller screens on all portable devices, especially tablets and laptops. Screen size dictates device size, so when the designer has more space to work with, they have less motivation to make things small, efficient and light. This often results in big, heavy, hot power hungry devices, all of which are awful when you are on the go.

However, there is a notable downside to the Samsung Tab A screen. And, for me, its a biggie. The screen resolution is just awful. The resolution is 800X1280, which is barely more than an SD television. Also the ppi (pixels per inch) is 189ppi, which is very low by 2019 standards. This means very low image quality. It may actually help you get a bit more battery life, but, in this case, quality outweighs quantity for me.

By comparison, the 2013 Google Asus Nexus 7 has a 7-inch screen and an impressive 1200X1920 Full HD screen with a brilliant 323 pixels per inch. This makes for a bright, sharp image in a very tidy small form factor.

Both the Samsung and Nexus 7 have a quad-core snapdragon processors, and the Samsung is a good 30-40% faster than the Nexus’ 2013 CPU (the Nexus having a 1.5Ghz and Samsung having a 2.0Ghz), but Gigahertz is not the only consideration. The Qualcom snapdragon used in the Nexus (2013) was a top of the line for its time, whereas the one used in the Tab A (2019) is mid-range at best. Both have Adreno graphics processors and the 2019 version probably does out-perform the 2013 one, but I’m not sure if the ifaster mage speed makes up for the lower image quality.

The Samsung does have the latest Android version 9 (pie) and will likely, eventually, get the version 10 update when Samsung gets around to providing that, but I wouldn’t expect upgrades beyond that. The Nexus started out with Android 4.x (Jelly Bean) and got upgrades to Kit-Kat, Lolipop and Marshmallow, which is to this day, a very nice Operating system. If you are feeling adventurous, you could probably even upgrade the Nexus to an unofficial Android 9 Pie version, but I am not a fan of hacked ROM’s. I consider it the same as “jail-breaking” an iphone, which, in my opinion, is just “breaking” an expensive iphone. If you want to Jail-break, maybe its time to get an Android.

All this said, I should point out that I have not gotten my hands on the Tab A 2019 yet, so I am only evaluating the specifications. I do suspect though, that it is a very good tablet for the price. For $149 you can get a small device to stream, surf, game or read books on and most people will enjoy the small size. The comparisons to the Google Nexus 7 are a bit unfair because the Nexus line of products was really far ahead of its time. Also, Google wanted to use the Nexus to showcase Android back when iOS had a clear dominance of the mobile market. Google didn’t mind producing a top of the line product and selling it at cost as long as it blew away Apple. Considering many people today think that Android has won the mobile device platform war, maybe google had a pretty good strategy.