T-Mobile G-Slate Review
T-Mobile G-Slate 9.6 inch
The T-Mobile G-Slate tablet wars are building, petty disputes that will soon lead to bloodshed. Products will be launched into battle only to be gunned down straight out of their boxes, crying for their fabricators as bigger, faster, better slates step over the stricken chassis of their predecessors, running on to their own brief bits of glory. A high level it’s obviously Android vs. Apple.
Battle lines are forming as we consumers, caught in the middle, try to decide just what the right size is for a this tablet.
Two camps seem to be getting the most supporters, 7 inchers, like the Streak 7 and , and 10-inchers, like the Motorola Xoom and the Apple iPad.
Sometimes weapon systems need to be a little more specialized. Sometimes the templates don’t fit, and the $530 (after rebate, on-contract) T-Mobile G-Slate by LG isn’t fitting into those categories, slotting somewhere in between with its 8.9-inch display backed with Tegra 2 graphics, 4G HSPA+ wireless, and all the oomph you want in a modern Android device.
T-Mobile G-Slate Internals
G-Slate’s 8.9-inch, glossy, 1,280 x 768 display is a bit shorter and skinnier than the Xoom’s 10.1-inch, 1,280 x 800 display. This gives it a slightly higher pixel density and, indeed, you can tell the difference. With the Xoom, the pitch on the pixels seemed a bit broad – jagged edges appear on text and in high-contrast areas. The G-Slate’s screen definitely has a sharper, crisper look.Pushing the pixels, is a dual-core, 1GHz Tegra 2 processor, which continues to be super trendy. Running at 1GHz here and keeps things moving smoothly. That’s backed by 32GB of internal storage that is not user-expandable – you can keep hating on Motorola all you like for not enabling the microSD slot by default, but at least the Xoom has one.
Software
G-Slate is running stock Honeycomb, Android 3.0, so there isn’t much to talk about here. You quite naturally get the official suite of apps from Google, along with a few others to boot. Looking nor playing any differently than it does anywhere else. The QuickOffice HD is installed for viewing officey-type documents, and there are two apps for working with 3D video.
First, 3DCamcorder, is for recording content in 3D, while 3DPlayer is quite naturally for playing that content back. You won’t be working with any active-shutter glasses here, and the screen lacks the parallax barrier wizardry of something like the EVO 3D. Good thing there’s a pair of red and blue glasses in the box.
G-Slate have installed T-Mobile TV, which allows for the viewing of limited television content, pushed straight to the tablet, including live footage and replays of some shows. The quality is poor and selection is extremely limited, with only nine channels available live.
G-Slate – Battery life and Performance
We browsing and general tableting to be a very responsive experience on the G-Slate. Thw pages are rendered quickly and respond handily to swipes, drags, pinches, and whatever other caresses you want to throw their way.
With Quadrant benchmark test we scored an 1,879, which puts it ever so slightly ahead of our Xoom, which clocked in at 1,801, but that’s close enough to call it even. Unsurprisingly, the SunSpider browser test likewise had them neck-and-neck: 2,135 for the G-Slate to 2,042 for the Xoom.
Thw Battery life tests were nearly identical as well. We had no problem making it through a full day of solid usage, surfing and gaming and generally loving life. But, when we sat down to our video loop test, with WiFi on and display brightness at about 63%, we scored eight hours and 19 minutes…