Samsung Mobile has a Bright Idea

When Samsung Mobile announced their sponsorship with the Blog Her 2011 blogging conference earlier this year—transforming a big chunk of the exposition floor into a swanky lounge for rest, relaxation, and recharging your mind and mobile device—it’s no surprise the public relations team had something worth bragging about.

Asked to review the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 during the conference, I gladly accepted the challenge. While I remind everyone that the Geek Squad isn’t exactly calling for a job interview, what I do know is this: if anyone can find the most meticulous way to use technology its me (if you don’t believe me, go read one of the geocaching GPS reviews).

Weighing just over a pound, space and weight is a precious commodity when traveling by air. Nothing against my laptop, but cutting out dead weight and cables became my pre-conference obsession. I didn’t intend on blogging “during” the conference and I knew I’d be carrying a ton of stuff to-and-fro during the day. Alternately, while the iPhone is fine for checking in on FourSquare, have you ever tried to keep up with Hoot Suite on a 2X3″ screen?

Mailed to me in advance of the trip, I enlisted the help of my four-year-old as we installed Angry Birds and checkers and bookmarking various email accounts and twitter handles in a web browser. After breaking a few iPhone habits, I found the interface to be fairly straightforward.

At  10.1 inches by 6.9 inches (hence the name Galaxy Tab 10.1), the tab is 8.6 mm thick and holds the current record of the world’s thinnest tablet. Using the Android 3.1 Honeycomb OS on a 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor,the tablet is small enough to fit in a handbag (but maybe not an evening clutch). With an LCD resolution of 1280 X 800, the interface really is quite addictive nice (Even still, I can’t get past Level 4 in Angry Birds – stupid pigs!).

Playing a Game while Crossing Lake Michigan

During the conference, I happily tweeted, surfed, and emailed away. I used the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 during the day and the iPhone during the night and was sad to mail it back to Samsung. Pointing out the family travel nature of this site and planning for two weeks on the road with my kids (as in “solo,” 24X7, fourteen days, thirteen nights, and 1500 miles), we put the battery, durability, and 3 megapixel camera to the test. As with air travel, space and weight are also precious when packing into the more fuel-efficient (read: smaller) car, and the same digital connectivity and convenience holds true on a family road trip.

Not accustomed to traveling with digital entertainment, using the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 as we crossed Lake Michigan by car ferry contributed to the current state of my mental health (as in, still enact). A 2.5 hour crossing, choices for keeping kids in their seats (and not overboard) are coloring books, games, puzzles, and gadgets—all of which roll around during the smallest of wave. Playing games on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 saved me the hassle of filling my purse to the brim.

Adding a variety of activities and implementing a system of sharing and time limits throughout the entire two weeks, helped this voyage pass smoother than any other trip this summer. As Samsung already knows, big success is sometimes measured in small victories.

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