Tablets are being considered as the Post PC Devices and everyone wants to own a tablet these days. With such trends in the tablet scene, how will the iPad from Apple fare against the Galaxy Tab from Samsung? Though they run on two different operating systems, what the device is meant for is the same purpose and there’s always been a lot more sales of the iPad in the world, and Android tablets getting more and more Apps exclusively for Honeycomb platform and games as well.

Here, we compare two 10 inch devices, the Galaxy Tab 10.1v and the iPad2 from Apple:

Form Factor:

The Galaxy Tab is really thin and has dimensions of 246.2 x 170.4 x 10.9 mm while the iPad 2 is 241.2 x 185.7 x 8.8 mm and much thinner than its predecessor, the iPad. The Galaxy Tab, at 589 g, is much lighter than the iPad 2, which weighs 607 grams. Both the tablets are sleek and can be held in one hand, and come with a 10 inch screen.

Display:
When it comes to the display, the Galaxy Tab 10.1V has a 10.1 inch screen while the iPad 2 is slightly smaller with a 9.7 inch screen. But the real difference between the two is that the Galaxy 10.1V  has a TFT Capacitive while the iPad2 has a LED backlit IPS based TFT screen, which is much superior, considering In-Plane-Switching.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1V’s TFT screen has a resolution of 800 x 1280 pixels while the iPad 2 has a resolution of 768 x 1024 pixels. Also, both the tablets have a three-axis gyroscope sensor and support multi touch input on their screens. Also, the Galaxy Tab 10.1v has a proximity sensor to turn the screen on or off when taken to the ear.

The iPad clearly wins it over the Galaxy Tab, when looked at the display segment alone. With a better screen technology and higher resolution, the iPad’s display will indeed do much better than the Galaxy Tab. And the addition of the proximity sensor on the Galaxy Tab is of no use, making that a pointless feature here.

Camera:

Both the tablets come with cameras and the Galaxy Tab has a massive 8 megapixel camera with a single LED flash with a resolution of 3264×2448 pixels, similar to the camera on the Galaxy SII. On the other hand, the iPad2 comes with a 0.7MP camera, no LED flash and a resolution of upto 960 x 720 pixels.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1V comes with geo-tagging, auto focus, face and smile detection and image stabilization while the iPad 2 has auto focus on its camera. Coming to the video recording capabilities, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 leads again with Full HD 1080p video recording at 30fps, while the iPad’s 0.7MP camera does video recording at HD 720p at 30fps.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 has a secondary front facing camera, a 2MP one and is used for video calling and by various apps on the Android platform. While the iPad 2 also has a secondary front facing camera, it is of VGA resolution, native video calls over 3G cannot be made and is used only for Facetime and other apps like Skype from the Apple App Store.

Operating System and User Interface:

The Galaxy Tab runs on Honeycomb 3.1, a newer version of Android made exclusively for tablets which comes with a lot of improvements over older versions of Android. Honeycomb 3.2 update is available for all the users now. Apps on the HoneyComb platform are very scarce, unlike the Android Market on smartphones. All apps which run on your Android smartphone will run on the tablet too, however, they will be of a smaller resolution and will appear stretched and pixelated on this huge screen. Tablet specific apps are only about 200 in the Android Market and you can check out the Best Apps for Honeycomb Tablets and Best Games for HoneyComb Tablets also.

The iPad 2, runs on Apple’s iOS4 and comes with a lot of tablet specific gestures and features on the whole. Soon, iOS5 will be rolled out by Apple which also brings a huge load of improvements like an all new Notification centre and much more, making the tablet experience much more enjoyable to use. iOS has a variety of apps for the Tablet alone, ranging over 100000 in number. All these apps are made exclusively for the iPad, thus enabling you to enjoy all apps on the large screen and make the best use of the tablet. Also note that all iPhone apps , which are 425000 in number can also be used on the iPad, though they will be stretched to fit, also known as ’2x’ .

Connectivity:

They support GSM bands on 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 and both support HSDPA on  850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100. The Galaxy Tab 10.1V provides you speeds up to 21Mbps on 3G while the iPad 2 supports speeds up to 7.2Mbps.

Both have similar Wi-FI support, with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n on both the tablets. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 also has Wi-Fi hotspot facility, thanks to Android Honeycomb.

A-GPS support for location and navigation are also present and both devices have Bluetooth 2.1 and USB 2.0 connectivity.

Memory:

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1V  comes with either 16/32 GB of internal storage, and no external expansion is available. Similarly, the iPad2 also comes with 16, 32 and 64GB Versions and no expansion slot is provided on it.

While you’re buying your tablet, think and choose the model with sufficient storage. Later, you cannot add more storage via microSD or any other means to it.

Processor and Battery:

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1V has a Dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor with 1 GB RAM while the iPad 2 has a similar 1 GHz Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor with 512MB of RAM.

Though both the processors might look similar on the technical side, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 boasts a NVIDIA® Tegra™ 2 AP20H Tegra 2 T20 chip set with ULP GeForce™ GPU for quick Web browsing and HD Gaming. The iPad 2 on the other side has a PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU, based on the Apple A5 chipset.

Galaxy Tab 10.1V comes with a 6680 mAh battery claiming to have 10 hours of talk-time and upto 1810 hours of standby time while the Apple iPad 2 has a 6930 mAh battery and claims to have 720 h of standby time and upto 10h of talk-time.

Conclusion:

The iPad 2 from Apple is the best selling tablet in the world, shipping millions in numbers and with a lot of satisfied customers. Android Honeycomb tablets are quite new and they’ve made a positive impression already in the market. Only time will decide how the app store for the Android Honeycomb version would come along. At the moment, if you are looking for a nice tablet which can do neat multitasking, provide entertainment and run apps, go for the iPad 2 for the amazing 95,000+ Apps it has. However, if you’re looking at functionality like file sharing over Bluetooth and customization options, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1v is a good buy.