The Galaxy Tab is coming… The Galaxy Tab is coming… The Galaxy Tab is coming…
The good guys over at SlashGear got their hands on the international version of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and it looks amazing. The 7″ screen at 1024 x 600 resolution looks amazing, and before you complain that it is not a Super AMOLED display like the Galaxy S line of phones, it still looks amazing.
As it has been widely reported, instead of waiting for Gingerbread or Honeycomb to come out, Samsung decided to start with Froyo (Android 2.2) and optimize it to run on the Tab. The software is more or less a hybrid of Touchwiz 3.0 and Vanilla Android. It comes stock with five homescreens, but you can have up to nine. The dockbar is customizable with two shortcuts on either side of the drawer shortcut. Another interesting thing is that is comes with a 5 x 5 grid instead of the usual 4 x 4 grid option that other Android smartphones come with.
The Tab also comes with the usual offerings of Touchwiz, Buddies Now (let’s the user choose which people that he/she wants to know instant updates about), Feeds and Updates (the social networking widget), a variety of clock options, Daily Briefing (news, weather, calendar, and stocks), and also the Program Manager (Samsung’s built-in task killer).
The Tab comes with Market access, thus the user is going to be able to download all of their favorite apps.
It has two cameras, the main camera at 3 megapixels with LED flash and the ever popular front-facing camera at 1.3 megapixels. The main camera shoots pictures at up to 2048 x 1536 pixels and shoots video at 720 x 480 video at 30 fps.
It also offers a nice array of multimedia options, including the built-in music player, which looks a lot like the Touchwiz music player with a couple added options. For audio codecs it should support all of them that the Galaxy S line of phones support; FLAC, WAV, Vorbis, MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, MID, AC3, XMF. For video codecs, you are looking at MP4, WMV, DivX, Xvid, H.263 and H.264 file. supported at up to 1080p resolution. Useful for those who have a lot of videos already downloaded.
Until we get our hands on one here in the States, the jury is still out on the Tab, but from what has been heard by those that have used it, the Galaxy Tab seems to be the first true competitor to Apple’s iPad.
Another thing that came out about the Tab today is how much the components cost. Before you get all butt hurt that we are going to be paying upwards of $500 for something that the components only cost $205, you have to consider all the hidden costs into this device: labor, research and development, marketing, et al. The Galaxy Tab does cost less then the iPad to make, which for your information costs $264. The guys over at iSuppli have this to say about it:
“Instead of matching up with the iPad on a feature-by-feature basis, the Galaxy Tab really is larger version of Samsung’s Galaxy S smart phone,” said Andrew Rassweiler, director, principal analyst and teardown services manager for iSuppli. “While the design approach makes the Galaxy less expensive to produce than the iPad 3G, it also makes for a product that lacks the same usability. The Galaxy Tab’s screen resolution, size and technology are not at the same level as the iPad. This is a critical difference, given the fact that the display is a key differentiating factor for the iPad.”
I would recommend checking out the complete review over at SlashGear and their review of the Galaxy Tab, but for now enjoy the pictures below and the video. I know for myself, I am going to be trying to get my hands on one of these as soon as I can to be able to give a complete review of it.