Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 preview – better than the Xoom?

Posted by Mike Evans in Coming Soon on February 14, 2011

Samsung also chose today to launch the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, an update to last year’s Galaxy Tab that looks much more than just a large smartphone – in fact, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 looks like it could be even better than the Motorola Xoom!

Samsung gave us a few suprises with the Galaxy Tab 10.1. First up the name – everyone expected it to be called the Galaxy Tab 2 (or Galaxy Tab II to go with the Galaxy S II naming conventions), but instead Samsung chose to name it after its screen size.

Secondly, the processor powering this device. Again, everyone was expecting Samsung’s own dual-core Orion processor (now apparently renamed the Exynos) to be the brawn powering the Galaxy Tab 10.1, but instread it’s the same dual-core NVIDIA Tegra2 chip that’s inside the Motorola Xoom tablet.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Overview

In many ways, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is similar to the Motorola Xoom tablet, and presumably to most other tablets that are about to be announced this week (the LG Optimus Pad and HTC Flyer to name just two). The Tegra2 chip coupled with a screen size of 10 or so inches, with the stock Android Honeycomb being the OS of choice, all seem to be the common feature set for all of these tablest, so I do wonder how they’re going to differentiate themselves from each other.

Samsung is hoping to differentiate on weight (at 599g, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a third of the weight of the lardy Motorola Xoom, and half the weight of the iPad), features (an 8 megapixel rear camera and 2 megapixel front facing camera), and – hopefully – price!

I say hopefully, as the Motorola Xoom price is rumoured to be around $800 at launch, which is way too high. If Samsung can beat this substantially, it’ll have a real winner on its hands.

Actually, scratch that – I reckon it’s got a real winner on its hands anyway. over 2 million of the original Galaxy Tabs were sold, that was just a big phone. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a genuine tablet, and with Honeycomb and the horesepower of the Tegra2 chip, combined with its light weight, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 should sell by the bucket load.