Samsung Tab Active Review- Rugged, Runs long

Introduction

After Samsung’s plans to revive its smartphone market started working, it has put back its product development prowess to focus on business oriented products and services. The company recently announced its 8 inch rugged, enterprise-only Android based tablet-Samsung Galaxy Tab Active in India for Rs 52,999.

The 4G enabled tablet is build to withstand shock, water immersion, cold and heat way beyond what a normal tablet swears by. Its resistance to chemicals makes it a contender for use in Hospital or medical facilities.

Its an enterprise-only tablet meaning it won’t be available for sale in the market. It would be delivered by Samsung only to enterprises or the govt. entities with a customised (if needed) pack of applications required to execute a particular task.

Design

Tab Active is a product where Samsung’s traditional design is mated with utility, because this is where it leaves the boundations of looks and gets down to business. The thin handy tablet is framed out of hard plastic and a layer of metal is used in the inner of the top edges of to protect the tablet when it falls faced down or edge first.

It is not a unibody design, as is with most waterproof, rugged devices. But as I said, its the classic Samsung design. There has to be a removable battery with card slots around. Like there has to be home buttons; here all physical, done in plastic with no boundaries;

An 8 inch tablet is the golden size in tablets, like the 4.7-5 inch for smartphones. The Galaxy Tab Active can be easily held in one hand and used with the other.

Its back is designed to look rugged with bolt like patterns on all four corners (as if bolts going through and through but are just thin chips actually) and camera surrounded with metal, fiding itself at the center of an aim-circle.

But you won’t get to see it’s glorious back often. The tablet needs to be kept covered at all times to keep the tablet ‘eligible’ for drops, spills, etc, using the bundled tough cover. Apart from saving it, the cover greatly enhances the grip of the tablet and gives it that ‘tough’ look. It’s a deliberate addition can’t be done away with but this never means any tablet with a cover like this can be this rugged. That’s not just by the virtue of the cover.

The stylus is not upto the mark. I am sure one shouldn’t even call it that. It didn’t really feel like a Samsung tablet stylus. The response on touch screen is pathetic and it needs to be parked inside its allocated area above the cover everytime after use as it can’t be hung from tablet with a sling.

At the left edge is a dock charging port that would free it from cable charging. A batch of tablets can  just be placed on a dock when not in use for easy management during charging. Tab Active has a humungous 4450mAh battery that lasts quite long. It used (without mobile network) for 8 hours a day it can easily last for 4 days!

Limits of Ruggedness

Though we easily say that the cover looks a rather conventional/traditional/unsophisticated arrangement for securing the tablet of dust, drop or cold; it’s difficult to say how rugged the tablet would have been without it. There is evidence that suggests Samsung was working to design it such a way that the cover could be done away with. The battery could also then be made hot swappable.

But a thick – cover is what you get with the tablet as a neccessary accessory that protects the tablet from getting into trouble.

We tested the Tab Active with the cover on, within the conditions specified by Samsung and a notch beyond it in some cases. And the results are as below:

1.2m drop

Though its a heart-stopping test if done on any normal gadget; we threw tab active around as if it was a discus of a discus throw game. Its officially shock proof upto 1.2m(~4ft), but we never stopped at that. The tablet endured drops- back down, face down and edge down from a maximum of 2m (2.5m/8.2ft in back down).

Tweaking this test further, we let the Tab fall face down in such a way that it would hit the edge of a wooden platform 3 inches above the ground. This would mean the force would be linear (edge-to-edge) and not on whole surface. Tab Active successfully passed this test.
Last one would be the point force test vis-a-vis in real life situation, say, the Tab Active’s screen encounters a pointed stone when it falls.

Water resistance

Splashing Tab Active with water was fun. It can stay in 1m(3.t) deep water for 30 minutes. But within 10 minutes we noticed that it started misbehaving. The touchscreen would obviously not respond inside water, but it would shutdown sometimes to prevent damage.

The Tab has IP67 certification for water resistance. IP means Ingress Protection, which is further defined in type with first number for solid particles and second for the liquid (only water). ‘6’ means the product is totally protected against dust and ‘7’ corresponds to protection even if water enters the device when kept upto 1m deep. Its back cover has air tight arrangement on the inside to keep water away from the battery. But at times, water does get inside the tablet, somehow. So it would run till the time battery supplies power. Once the connection breaks, the tablet restarts. This could go on to a maximum of 30 minutes.

Extreme temperature

Tab Active is enclosed in sealed body that enables it to withstand freezing temperatures (upto -20 degree celsius) or hot (60 degree celsius) environments. During our test, Tab active passed days in direct sun and nights inside a freezer. Though temperatures weren’t kept to the limit all the time, the exposure remained continuous, lasting more than 10 hours in few cases.

After a night inside the freezer, Tab Active’s buttons would become stiff and the tablet gathered frost all over its display. But it still worked.

For a computer chip, heat is more dangerous than cold. But for the temperature range specified, the tablet sometimes became difficult to hold and gloves would be required to use it. But it would work as it normally does.

Unlike the Panasonic Toughpad  that has a smaller form with landscape layout, doesn’t need a cover but rather has a proper stylus, has hot-swappable battery, smart card reader, USB 3.0 and LAN ports, the Tab Active is designed like a normal tablet that you would use for daily entertainment. It is for use in a variety of environments but, therefore has limited functionality to it.

Windows based Panasonic Toughpad, though, costs more than twice the price of Galaxy Tab Active.

Display and Camera

Tab Active comes with a touch stick, I was still expecting its touchscreen response to be smooth. The very reason for that is the Corning Gorilla glass 4 topping.

For a tablet that can endure face-down drops from good 1m height, the touch response of Tab Active is dead smooth.
And its screen is also fine for a rugged tablet. It is an LCD display having a sober WXGA resolution (1280×800); but 189PPI of pixel density is something not expected of a Samsung tablet display. For people working in field, what would be more important though is the display brightness, which isn’t enough to battle the harsh sun. This goes for Indian summer sun that won’t let the display be legible for considerable part of the day and it is a serious drawback of the device.

The tablet has a 3.15MP rear camera and a 1.2MP front camera. The rear camera has a bright flash to help in low light and the front camera maintains fine quality for video conferencing.

UI, Applications and Performance

Samsung has gone head over heals to improve its TouchWiz interface. Its old design formulation coupled to the interface had nearly cost the Korean giant its long earned reputation in the smartphone market, if it hadn’t improved upon it.

Sadly, the Tab Active still runs the age old TouchWiz software (based on Android KitKat) first seen on Samsung Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Tab 4. In other words, it looks like a repackaged Tab 4. But a new software isn’t that important if all you need to do is run a particular enterprise service application (or ones connecting it). This is also the reason why there isn’t a hefty processor inside it.

Tab Active houses a 1.2 Ghz quadcore Snapdragon 400 processor with 1.5 GB of RAM and Adreno 305 GPU. Its 16GB of internal storage (11.93 user available) can be expanded up to 64GB using a micro SD card. Its benchmark scores are quite low, compared to tablets half its price.

That would have been a negative aspect if Tab Active didn’t perform well with its old interface. But that didn’t happen during the review period. The tablet worked fine, launching apps with same diligence in every environment. Some graphic intensive software would limit its capabilties, but most of the apps it is required to run, it runs pretty smoothly.

For a tablet of this size, features like multi window make good use of its size. The reading mode optimises screen for reading while the smart stay detects on looking eyes and keeps the display On.

Final Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy Tab Active is an 8 inch tablet that looks and provides the functionality of a normal Android tablet, but is bestowed with abilities that allows it to be used in various working conditions where a normal tablet would perish. Available initially for enterprises, the tablet is meant for mass deployment, preinstalled with a particular set of applications. Though it lacks peripheral support and is limited in the applications available, it compensates that with a competitive price tag., that otherwise looks swelled Android based functionalities. As far as the ruggedness goes, it works where it claims it can.