The market for 10″ tablets is set to get brutal with Samsung today throwing down the gauntlet to several competitors in particular Apple with their iPad and Motorola with their Xoom by introducing a sleek looking 10.1 Galaxy Tab.
The device which I was able to get a firsthand look at, at a Sydney event is slick and comes with a textured back which is a big improvement on the Apple iPad which has a tendency to slide off one’s lap.
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Running Android Honeycomb (also known as Android 3.0), the new Tab sports a 10.1-inch LCD display with a resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels. No buttons are present on the front of the device instead users have to use the touch screen to scroll through pages.
The first thing you notice is that the device is much lighter than the iPad and even lighter than the 0.708 kilogram Motorola Xoom which I saw at CES. The big improvement is the operating system with Honeycomb capable of delivering a lot more functionality than the prior Android operating system.
The device has an 8-megapixel back-facing camera and a front-facing 2-megapixel camera for video calls which I suspect is going to prove popular.
The device is powered is powered by an Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor which was very noticeable when scrolling, accessing applications and the Internet. Unlike the iPad users can run two applications at once shrinking one application so one can easily access the other.
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Missing is the TouchWiz which is already on the Galaxy S and the 7-inch Galaxy Tab. No explanation has been given for the removal of this UI.
Samsung won’t say how much this device will sell for in Australia but I suspect due to competition that they will not get away with a premium price like they did with the Galaxy Tab late last year.
