>> Two key reviews ...
And a 3rd:
<http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/11/html5_on_android_samsung_galaxy_tab_disappointing_vs_apple_ipad.html>
> The real world web
>
> One real world performance test Sencha created compares the rendering of sample ads created in both Flash and CSS3. Unlike the iPad and other iOS devices, which can only render the web standard CSS versions, Sencha reports that the Galaxy Tab can draw both.
>
> "Sadly the performance of both Flash and CSS3 Ads are sub-par," Sencha said of the Tab's rendering. "Unlike the iPad, the Galaxy Tab does not use GPU acceleration for animation, so CSS3 Animations are quite choppy. What's more surprising is the sub-par Flash experience. Flash font rendering is pixelated to the point of being unreadable. And when the page is scrolled, the Flash Ads jiggle up and down as the browser tries to re-position Flash content to catch up to the page movement."
>
> A second test, created by Sencha Animator and focusing on advanced CSS3 animations, didn't render correctly on the Galaxy Tab. That was expected because the Modernizr test indicated its browser couldn't handle CSS3 transforms. However, the Tab also had problems loading WebFonts, another HTML5 feature it was expected to support.
>
> Sencha skipped its SVG tests, given that Android doesn't include support at all, and proceeded to test real world applications using Canvas. One example worked, while another didn't. "No dynamic Canvas on the Galaxy," Sencha reported.
>
> Next, in a test of embedded HTML5 web audio and videos, the Galaxy Tab again failed. "Neither [audio nor video] seems to work as embedded content, although it does seem that an HTML5 video will play via the native video player in full-screen view," Sencha wrote.
>
> In a final "Sencha Touch Kitchen Sink" test, the firm observed that while most of of the interface components work on the Galaxy Tab, "the smoothness of both animations and scrolling isn't as accomplished as the iPad. GPU acceleration for CSS3 transforms is a significant area of catch-up for the Android team."
>
> Oversized phone rather than a real tablet
>
> Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs has openly criticized the current and coming crop of 7 inch tablets (which includes the Galaxy Tab) as not offering enough screen real estate to build real tablet interfaces. It appears Samsung agrees.
>
> "One of the oddest aspects of the Galaxy Tab browser," Sencha reports, "is its CSS pixel to device pixel ratio. When queried in landscape mode, the Galaxy reports a screen.width of 683px and screen.height of 334px. Since the actual device resolution offers 1024×600, it's giving us a 1.5× ratio of device to CSS pixels. This is a little bit of an odd choice since there shouldn't be any reason why it can't offer a 1:1 device-to-CSS-pixel ratio (or even just match the iPhone/Nexus One convention of a 320 pixel device.width — which would give it a 1.875 ratio). This makes the Galaxy slightly bigger than a regular phone screen in CSS pixels, but not really big enough to handle what people want to put in a tablet screen."
>
> The firm concluded, "the practical effect of this decision is that the Galaxy Tab is effectively an 'over-sized phone' for the purposes of web content. For example, an iPad-style side-navigation section just won't fit on the screen. We think it's probably best to treat it as a phone with big pixels rather than a true tablet."
>
> One problem with using Android 2.2 for tablets, Sencha explained, was that "when the Android browser gets ready to animate anything — whether it's a CSS animation or a plain old page scroll — it shifts from high-quality to low-quality display mode. In low-quality mode, it turns off anti-aliasing (presumably on the theory that since things are moving, you won't notice the quality degradation.) This would be less noticeable on a smaller device. But on the 7″ Galaxy Tab, the resulting pixelation is striking, particularly since it switches to low-quality mode as soon as it detects a touch start event (but before anything moves)."
>
> "We're still waiting for the first awesome Android tablet," the report observed.
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Jim Saklad mailto:jimdoc@me.com
