It irked you that he realized that his blackberry was subpar? Or did the individual irk you?

What types of things did they gush over? Was it swype again, or did you show them something neat with Maps? Something else?

I know I would have received the same response had I had my tab at this years new year party! For some reason, people really like those BBs, but I haven't really seem a compelling reason to chose one over any other device. They actually look kinda 5#!77y...

After playing with my Tab for a a few things would like to give my mini review of a sort. Quite busy at the moment and want it as detailed as possible so will do it in 3 parts. Part 1 will contain screenshots of my desktops and a few comments. Part 2 sometime in thenext few days will set out my dislikes (which are very strong), Part 3 shortly after that will set out my likes.

So on to Part 1.

Have to say that even at this early stage I already love the device. With limited time with the device it has already sailed past my N900 as my most loved handheld ever. Will explain why in Part 3 and Part 2 will set out the short comings which prevent it from being the absolute perfect device. Some of the dislikes may possibly be things I would eventually find solutions for in the android market though.

By the way I am on my second Tab now. Had to return the first one because the screen stopped rotating after two days.

Have not yet had time to root the device. Been spending most of my time sorting out my contacts which I had to pull in from different sources. Now that I have switched fully to google contacts this should thankfully be a much less painful experience in the future. Will definitely need to do so and disable adverts though because I am using Rockplayer as my video player. Prefer the Samsung one but it has an annoying issue (see Part 2).

One really cool thing about the Tab is how easy it is to take screenshots. Went to google to find out how to take screen shots on android and discovered it was a painful process is you did not have a rooted device or Evo 4. But then went back to google search a second time and one of the results this time was taking screenshots on Galaxy Tab. Discovered it was as easy as going to desktop, holding back and pressing power button. Of course this method would not work to take pictures outside the desktop as pressing back would just take you back.

I am using the Go Launcher custom launcher. I was using Launcher Pro which I think popular concensus says is the best custom launcher. I was just about to pay $3 for the full version of Launcher Pro so I could resize widgets when I stumbled on Go Launcher.

For me Go Launcher is a far better launcher. Has everything the free version of Launcher Pro has and much more. And only thing missing from the paid version of Launcher Pro is the Launcher Pro widgets.

So what is so great about Go Launcher. It allows you to easily organise your apps into your own custom folders (see screenshot 4 below) and has some other neat customisations . Also has ability to set up and down gestures as short cuts. I have set swipe down to go to previews and swipe up to launch application launcher. Which means I do not need application launcher in the dockbar which has given me one extra space.

Go Launcher also has ability to have unlimited desktops (it seems - went up to 15 and was still able to add more). Launcher Pro only allows 7 desktops. However, I am sort of limited to 7 because:

1. Can't seem to find many great android widgets so only even filled up about 4 screens;
2. You cannot have different pictures for each wallpapar on Android. Need to download Multi Picture Live wallpaper but that only allows 7 different pictures (hence the black screen below).

Both of these will be discussed in the dislikes part of my review.

So on to screenshots.

Screenshot 1 is my homescreen. Dockbar has shortcuts to phone, conversation, email, dolphin hd browser (will check out the normal version as recommended by danramos but using hd version for now) and shortcut to the wife's contacts (great option which was horribly missing from N900 - see more on that in Part 3).

On the main part of the screen is a short cut to think office which is basically a free version of word, excel and powerpoint (fantastic). Also a short cut to the youversion Bible app, the android market, a folder with my favourite contacts (again something I desparately wanted on N900). Another cool thing about Go Launcher is that the folders created with it are transparent and so you can see little clip arts of the first four items in the folder. Love it.

Also have two photo frame widgets. These are both fixed frame. Tried some of the slide show widhets in the market and did not find any that worked well.

Finally there is a winamp widget. I think danramos speaks very highly of winamp and my nephew has loved it for several years. However, I am not a fan because it is a bit to dark, grey and dull for me. Like something bright and cheerful. The Samsung media player has this in abundance and I absolutely love the look. However, I cannot use it due to an issue with it (will be very very critical of Samsung about this in Part 2). Also the Samsung widget does not even have album art which I definitely want on my screen so still not even sure I would have used it anyway as I want album art on desktop widget. Tried double twist which is not as nice looking as the Samsung player but far better looking than winamp. However, after I moved my music to a different folder it no longer picks up my album details (including album art) so is now totally unusable.

Screen 2 I am still messing around with. Has some system controls (still working on these - especially the bottom one which I have not figured what the icons do other than the first two which are to switch on blue tooth and to make device visible. Assume the other two are some WinSCP type transfer tool. Also on this screen are short cuts to most used folders and a short cut to most used file.

Screenshot 3 is a course for frustration. On N900 was using sticky note applet which allowed me to have a transparent sticky note widget with option to add an unlimited number of pages. I put several of my favourite Bible passages on the widget and could read them from desktop. Have only found EZ Note widget as a sticky note that allows transparency. However, it does not have pages so can only take a limited number of passages. Also the widget is very small (phone size). Have resized with Go Launcher but most of the text keeps disappearing. So will have to just get rid of the widget. Still looking for a solution. Have a shortcut to the file with all the passages but much prefer a widget.

Screenshot 4 has all my apps arranged in folders thanks to Go Launcher. Think this is much needed given that there are so many apps in the android market. Having them well organised means you do not have to spend ages going through the app drawer searching for your apps. One thing I really did not like about Launcher Pro was that it disabled the Touch WIz setting which has apps in pages. Instead you just get one scrolling list which is far from ideal. Makes it more difficult to find apps that way. IOS, Samsung Touch Wiz and Meego all use pages and I think that is far far better. Go Launcher on ups on all these by not only having pages but allowing you to drop the apps into custom folders in the app drawer, making them even easier to find. You can then drop the folders on to the desktop.

Screenshot 5 has my calendar widget. Prefer the one on N900 because rather than writing birthday it had a cake icon which made the widget look much cleaner than this one.

Screenshot 6 (in post below due to Talk Maemo 5 file attachment limit) is my 8th desktop. Just uploaded here to highlight the annoyance of being limited to 7 custom wallpapers.

Will add a facebook widget to one of my desktops. The stock one only shows one persons update at a time (and you scroll right to see more) so is a bit too minimalist for me. There is a Samsung one which pulls in updates from different social websites but it seems to have completely disappeared from mine.

Screenshot 6. By the way if you look at the screenshots there is a call forwarding icon at the top. I have set the tab to forward calls to my blackberry so I can use a proper phone for receiving calls. For outgoing calls I would just use the speaker phone (if at home) or the headset if out. Have not tried using the headset onmy new tab though. On my old tab I just couldn't seem to get rid of speaker calls. When I spoke to Samsung they suggested this was a software fault with the device, just like the screen not rotating. Have to try it out on new tab to see if it works okay.

Thanks etuoyo.

Looking forward to part 2.

On a side note, how did you find samsung customer services?
Always good to know!

woke up this morning to find im stuck in portrait mode, orientation lock highlights and un-highlights but im still stuck in portrait mode?
ive not touched any system files either
installed and removed launcher pro and goto and they were the last things i installed but ive still got the issue, cant find any help from google, ironically i prefer it to be in portrait mode but im really disappointed its not working properly, has anyone heard of this problem before?

looks like there is a problem with them then

who did you send it back to?

did it happen to you after installing launcher pro?

did you try reflashing it before sending it back?

anyone know how i can hard reset the device?

yippee!
fixed my rotation problem with a hard reset of all things...
menu-settings-privacy
(if anyone else gets the problem)
im sure its launcher pro that caused it for me

When I had the problem I did a quick Google search and discovered a few people had also had the same issue after 2 days. One fixed the issue by flashing. I did not want that solution because there was always the risk it would happen again (and possibly again and again). If it meant be constantly losing settings and data it would just really annoy me.

I called Samsung and told them the issue. They said since I bought the device within the last 28 days I could take it back to where I bought it from. Even said if the shop refused to give me a new one I could call them back from the shop and they would.speak to them for me. Have to say I was totally impressed with this. On top of that the customer services number was a local number so was free, unlike almost all other companies that make you pay to call them when there is an issue which is their fault.

Got to the store (Currys) and they were trying to force me to flash the device to see if that fixed the issue but I refused point blank.

Tried making calls with the Samsung wired head set that came with the Tab and once again the device just stayed in speaker mode.

Did a Google search and found this thread in link below. Not sure what is going on here. Why would Samsung include a headset if it does not work for calls for some Tabs? Could they have put a tweak in so you are forced to buy a Bluetooth headset (hopefully a Samsung one) and cannot use the device with a wired headset?

http://www.mygalaxytab.net/samsung-g...msung-headset/

This is awesome news, and a swift [potential] diagnosis of the problem.

Perhaps its worth posting a bug report somewhere?