Why I never bought another Samsung Galaxy Tab

Once was enough

My first foray into the world of tablets was a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (GT-P7500). My initial enthusiasm soon gave way to disillusionment and, ultimately, disappointment. Since then, one thing has been clear to me: I’ll never buy a Galaxy device again.

In 2011, I bought this high-performance tablet so that I wouldn’t have to use an Apple iPad. Android tablets, especially those with a 10-inch touchscreen, were still rare back then. Apple sold the first iPad in 2010 and most people who used a tablet had an iPad. In the same year, Samsung followed suit with the first Galaxy Tab, initially with a 7-inch touchscreen.

That was a little smaller than was ideal, but when Samsung launched a 10-inch model in 2011, I jumped at the chance and bought it from Amazon on 13 October 2011, for €579.

The Galaxy tablet responded quickly enough to my swiping and tapping and ran smoothly. Samsung had equipped the tablet with really good hardware for its time: a 1 GHz dual-core processor, a 25.65 cm screen, Wi-Fi as standard, a 3.2 Mp rear camera, a 2.0 Mp front camera, two stereo speakers and a 7000 mAh battery.

Now I could lounge comfortably on the sofa and surf the web, shop online and watch YouTube videos without the weight (the tablet was only 570g) and heat generated by a laptop. And with a much larger and easier-to-read screen than my smartphone at the time, an HTC Desire – which I considered the only serious competitor to the iPhone – allowed.

I was really impressed with the Galaxy. I soon started taking it everywhere with me. I bought a sturdy plastic case that protected the tablet against knocks and scratches. It made it look a bit clunky and added quite a bit of weight, but at least it was safe. That was more important to me. The tablet was also great for a quick game of Cut the Rope or Fruit Ninja.

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Just a single, measly Android update

So, everything was fine. But I gradually started to wonder whether I would actually get the next Android version. I should do, I thought. After all, I owned a relatively new and powerful tablet from one of the leading hardware manufacturers. Samsung shipped my tablet with Android 3.1.

But in the end, I only received one minor Android update. That was it – no new Android versions reached my tablet. And that was the first disappointment.

Death and the dark side

But things got worse. Shortly after the warranty expired, the screen simply stopped working. There was no warning at all – the tablet had been working perfectly the day before. At first, I thought the battery was flat. So I left it to charge, but even while it was charging, the screen showed no signs of life.

After a while, I tried to start it up again. There was no response – even the forced restart/hard reset using the appropriate key combination was unsuccessful. The Galaxy Tab simply died after barely two years, without having been dropped or damaged. For such an expensive device, it was an absolute travesty.

As I could no longer use my beloved HTC Desire due to a massive lack of storage and missing Android updates, I decided to switch to the dark side of the force. I bought an iPad for the first time. To this day, I’ve never had any problems with this iPad or its successors. Whenever I replaced my iPad with a newer model, my relatives inherited the old device. It served them faithfully for many years – and still does today.

If your tablet needs an upgrade, check out our top recommendations in our round-up of the best tablets we’ve tested.