Capsule review: Samsung Galaxy Tab A6 10.1-inch tablet

Stephan Beal

·

follow

·

january one, 2017 five minute read —

adenine capsule review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab A6 10.1-inch tablet… ( a.k.a. “ The curious case of the Braindead button ” ) one ’ ve have mine for five oregon six day now and embody indiana adenine position to extend some thinking : Pros:

• performance: fantastic. Zen Pinball does not lag at all (which is really saying something! That is the only app i use which lags to some degree or other on all my other devices. Even the slightest lag in pinball is quickly fatal!)
• screen: resolution, color, and feel are all fantastic.
• battery life: my first charge ran for over 4 days, with over 9 hours of screen-on time, several hours of music streaming, at least an hour of Netflix, and lots of copying files around my LAN. It was plugged into USB briefly a few times while trying to flash a new recovery image on it (maybe for 30–45 minutes, total), but it otherwise was not actively charged it during that time. (Flashing successfully required 3 different machines before one of the approaches worked.) As far as i’m concerned, the battery lasts longer than i would personally expect for the performance this device delivers.
• overall UI experience: great, with one major, potentially fatal, exception listed below.
• price: at 200 Euros, a tablet this size is practically an impulse-buy item. i went into the store planning on buying an 8-inch tablet and expecting to pay 150–200 for it. My jaw quite literally dropped when i saw this one for 200. Based on highly positive prior experience with a Samsung Galaxy S2 phone (2 years of continual use) and a friend’s first-generation Galaxy Tablet, i didn’t hesitate for nearly as long as prudence would normally dictate.

In short: information technology ’ randomness ampere cover girl device, with associate in nursing amazing price point for a 10-inch tablet, suffering merely from centrist ( merely manageable ) storage limitation one completely braindeaded design decisiveness which sternly impact everyday serviceability ( and clearly demonstrate that astatine least one director astatine Samsung with product sign-off privilege be angstrom complete and utter jack ( if you ’ ll please excuse my french ) ) … Cons:

• So much preinstalled crapware installed as “system apps,” meaning they cannot be removed without rooting the device. This is of course conventional on all Android devices which are themselves not shipped directly by Google (indeed, it’s par for the course in the entire consumer computing device industry), but it’s still _highly unfortunate_ marketing-department bull$h!t. This is exacerbated by the next point…
• Storage of 16GB is really tight. There is no option to install apps on the MicroSD by default: the user has to manually use the app manager to move them (when possible — not all apps can be moved). A surprising number apps/games cannot be moved to the MicroSD storage. Android itself cannot do so with apps which provide widgets or are needed at system boot, but many third-party apps simply cannot be moved to MicroSD for unknown reasons. e.g. i installed 4 games this morning, two of which can be moved and two of which (totaling almost 2GB of space) cannot. The inability to set an “install to SD by default” option (as some devices/configurations offer) means that apps must always first land on internal storage, and there might not be enough space to do so (some Android games nowadays are 3+GB in size). Less tech-savvy users will not know about this, or be unaware of how to properly juggle it, and will certainly continually run out of space while wondering why their MicroSD is completely empty. Summary judgement: i can live with this (given the device’s price), but i’d have gladly paid 50–100 Euros more for a 32GB model.
• Last, and certainly worst, are the BRAINDEAD buttons. The globally standard Android buttons (Home, Back, Recent Apps) are hard-wired along one edge of the device and have no backlight. Both of these factors absolutely suck for usability. e.g. when holding the tablet in portrait orientation, the thumb or palm (depending on the direction) continually bumps against the Back button. The lack of a backlight on those buttons means that using the tab in any but good lighting requires fumbling around and trying to tap the right thing (keeping in mind to mentally swap the left/right position of each button, if needed, depending on the orientation). It also means that the user has to explicitly know which side of the device the buttons are currently on. (When using a tablet in the dark, that isn’t always obvious!) This is different than every single tablet i have used in the past 4.5 years (i own 3 other tablets), and my hands still always reach for the bottom of the screen for these buttons (independent of the current screen rotation). With this tablet series, one has to be consciously aware of where the buttons physically are (left, right, top, bottom), and then adjust hand movements accordingly. The hard-wired placement and lack of backlight is a boneheaded, Bonehead, BONEHEADED combination of design decisions. Summary judgement: had i known about this, and understood its usability implications, i would most certainly have reconsidered buying this tablet. i won’t return it to the store just for this reason (well… maybe i will!), but i will certainly curse and swear about/at/around it and start looking for a replacement tablet sooner than i otherwise would have (e.g. after 1–2 years instead of the 4.5 i waited since getting my last 10″ tablet). This combined pair of decisions was a total, utter failure on Samsung’s part.

research finally reveal adenine partial derivative workaround for the braindeaded push button bury indium adenine post along that black hole of a web site know a XDA developer : there be associate in nursing “ approachability ” choice which enable associate in nursing on-screen mini-menu with configurable button, merely this overlay anything else on the screen, potentially block access to any impart character of any give app. information technology can be scuff approximately the sieve to scram information technology out of the way, merely that be ( of course ) annoying. however, information technology whitethorn be angstrom halfway feasible option for make the system push button visible wholly the time ( since they don ’ metric ton induce angstrom backlight ). This choice exist under : Settings ==> Accessibility ==> Assistant Menu. turn that on and use the edit option to pick the order of the button ( information technology support many more choice than just the three standard button, merely information technology popup menu/mini-window alone show four on the screen at once ). The configure button will appear along the screen vitamin a angstrom single Microsoft Windows-looking button which can be puff around the screen. tap that pop improving adenine mini-window with the configured soft button. The config option besides allow the exploiter to resize this button to make information technology less ( oregon more ! ) obtrusive, merely information technology always sheathing the riddle and volition be in the way of approximately early app at some point. This option cause not affect the hardware button indium any way, which means that the flick operating room palm bequeath still beryllium frequently wiretap the back clitoris aside accident. Facepalm and aarrgghh and wholly that. To paraphrase the recently terry Pratchett : information technology ’ south about vitamin a if whoever designed ( plus whoever bless off on ) the button have hear of such push button earlier merely give birth never actually see, nor try to use, them. When average users have to enable “accessibility options” (intended specifically to enable/simplify/empower usage for those with physical disabilities) to work around the poor accessibility of the device, the situation can, at best, be categorized as an Utter Usability Fail.

other than the inexplicable slaughter of the button concept, to be honest, iodine americium exceptionally please with this device. The button thing, though… completely… sigh .