Samsung Galaxy Tab gets US teardown

Samsung's Galaxy Tab was given an American teardown today by iFixit that contrasted the similarity to Apple on the outside with the difference inside. The design is "definitely mimicking Apple" in its shell and has a proprietary dock connector that's virtually identical to the 30-pin layout. Samsung has also unintentionally duplicated Apple's sealed-in design since users need two separate tools to pry open the plastic frame, although it doesn't have retaining clips that could be broken.

Inside, the processor is also known to be very familiar. Both Apple and Samsung use 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processors. The Galaxy Tab's chief difference is the increase to 512MB of memory, but both put it directly on the chip to streamline speed and production.

Much of the design is different on the inside, however. Samsung's choice of plastic for the entirely plastic back let it escape using special tricks to improve wireless reception. The device's size makes for a major sacrifice in battery life, however. Although large relative to the tablet's seven-inch size, the battery is about 60 percent the capacity of the iPad's battery, hinting that the gap in runtime is larger than the official seven-hour Galaxy Tab and 10-hour iPad claims suggest.

Both companies use Broadcom GPS and wireless chipsets and Infineon's 3G equipment, but Samsung has opted to use SanDisk flash memory instead of its own. The two nonetheless follow the philosophy of adapting smartphone components to a larger screen.

By Electronista Staff