New toy on the desk: Galaxy tab A6

At least I gave up and decided for buying myself a tablet. I've always been more favorable towards netbooks instead of tablets mostly because real computers, even under-powered, better suits the way I use them: mostly writing documents and programming. I didn't entirely changed my mind but I have to reckon a tablet can have many uses where it perform superbly like browsing the Internet or keeping in contact with e-mail or the many social media applications. Last but not least I needed a modern device for studying and testing Android development, so here I am ...

First impressions

When I unpackage a new Android device I feel, I must say, more like I had bought a new appliance instead of a new, powerful computing device. Galaxy Tab A6 is not an exception. Apart from this is a great piece of hardware: in everyday usage like browsing the Internet, reading e-mails or watching videos it behaves flawlessly. Screen resolution is as good as my eyes can resolve. Interaction with apps is smooth and the only visible delay is because of the Internet connection speed.

Producing contents on tablets is not the same than consuming it. The Galaxy Tab A6 comes with Microsoft Office Mobile installed, I tried Word and I must say it's a quite honest application even I don't like being reminded every time to subscribe their services and, when used off-line, it's limited to saving documents in “.docx” format. Since I'm a Libre Office user I went looking for an Android port. I installed AndroOpen Office, I only really tested Writer, it works fine but it suffers a little being a PC port instead of an application designed for tablet devices from the beginning.

I also bought a universal cover with included keyboard but it revealed being less practical than I thought if you don't have a firm work surface available. On the other hand the floating software keyboard revealed to be easier to use than I'd expected, even when in portrait orientation.

By the way I managed to write this post entirety on the tablet using AndroOpen Office.

A last word on battery: The tablet arrived three days ago, at the time I'm writing this, I've been using it quite intensely, at least during free time and the battery is still at 59% of its capacity.