Posted by The Blogging Desk on Wed, Oct 20, 2010
Press Release:
Verizon Wireless and Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile) today announced the highly anticipated Samsung Galaxy Tab™ will be available Nov. 11 for $599.99. Running on Android™ 2.2, the Samsung Galaxy Tab features a brilliant 7-inch touch screen; robust HTML Web browsing experience with full support for Adobe® Flash® 10.1 for video and mobile gaming; and a 1GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird Application processor.
“This is an incredible time in mobile technology, and as a company we’re excited to add the Samsung Galaxy Tab to our portfolio,” said Marni Walden, vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless. “The Samsung Galaxy Tab brings together the reliability of Verizon Wireless’ 3G network and the power of Android 2.2 to deliver on our promise of providing consumers and business customers with a host of options to help manage their lives.”
Well, that's the end of that experiment. I look forward to Samsung concentrating more on cell phones in the near future.
$600 for a 3G, 16GB model, unsubsidized from Verizon? You can get an iPad for that same amount of money, but you get an OS that is actually approved by the company, and apps that are built for the device. You could also get a non-3G 16GB iPad for just $499.
With the Tab you get smaller real estate, and operating system that Google even says isn't designed for tablets, and zero Day 1 apps built for the actual device. It's silliness to think you can compete with a product that defined a market where there was none for a higher price, with no cheaper alternative. Silliness!
Hopefully for Samsung, there will be many other models for purchase, aside from those offered at Verizon.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Fri, Oct 15, 2010
Google's Tim Bray:
This is an excellent product. It’s fast, beautiful, useful, responsive, and convenient. If Samsung picks the right price point and channels, they’ll sell a ton.
It has one really irritating design flaw: the four standard Android “buttons” are touch-sensitive areas on glass which, in dim light, you can’t see unless they’re back-lit, which too often they’re not. A month in, my fingers know where they are, but it shouldn’t take multiple days to learn to use basic controls when there are only four of them.
A secondary flaw is intrinsic: It’s kind of big, compared to a phone. Deal with it — or not — as you choose.
Ok, that last one is an odd one. Tim Bray is a Google Developer Evangelist. What's that mean? Imagine me getting a job telling people how great cheezy poofs in order to get them to eat a ton. Side note: what an amazing job that would be.
Still not word on pricing for the Galaxy Tab, but thanks to Tim Bray, we have a pretty exhaustive review to go on and make rash assumptions. I was taken aback by his comments on the browser usage. When loading a website, more often than not, the Tab will load the mobile version of the site. That can be thanks to the "Android" User-Agent string of the device. To the regular website, it looks as if you're using a phone to load the site. That would annoy me. A lot. I've also heard varying degrees of slow-down and stutter while scrolling, but Tim doesn't mention that in his review.
The Network options are very confusing as well. It seems like Samsung will be selling these subsidized at Verizon and other places. The price is rumored to be $199 with a 2 year contract, so one would have to think that a 3G-less model would run around $499 or higher. That could be a tough sell considering that there are no real Tab-specific apps ready yet, and the screen real estate is significantly smaller than that of an iPad.
What say you, internet?
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