When it comes to tablets I have a hard time putting anything with a screen smaller than 10″ in this category. So last year when Samsung introduced the Galaxy Tab I really just saw it as an Android phone for those with really poor vision. I’ve played around with the original Galaxy Tab at a Best Buy one day and it really just felt like an Android phone with a really big screen. To me it really had more of a novelty item feel than a real tablet computing experience. It was pretty much the apps I had on my phone, functioning the same way as they do on my phone, but much more spread out.
Not too long ago Motorola announced the “Xoom” being the first Android tablet to be running Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) which is a version of the Android operating system specifically designed for the larger screens of tablets. After seeing how brilliant Honeycomb’s interface is I decided that any large Android device without Honeycomb is nothing more than a big phone/media player. Then I saw the Xoom’s $799 price tag and I was able to create a third “standard” for an Android tablet that’s worth waiting in line for: Price.
Samsung recently announced the next version of their Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 (the previously rumored “Galaxy Tab 2″). The “10.1″, of course, comes from it’s screen size. They listened when people said they wanted a bigger screen on a tablet. They also put a 1GHz Dual Core Tegra 2 processor in the thing and polished it with Android 3.0 Honeycomb. It will be priced at $499 for the 16GB model and $599 for the 32GB model (basically $100 more for twice the space). Unfortunately it doesn’t look like there will be a slot for an external memory card. I could be wrong but I haven’t seen anything showing one yet. Which is really disappointing because I’m all for buying the lower-capacity model and getting a 32GB memory card. It looks like they would rather keep you from doing that. Which to me is very Apple-ish. There will also be a smaller 8.9″ version priced at $469 for 16GB and $569 for 32GB but as I mentioned above I don’t really acknowledge anything under 10 inches. That’s what she said.
My only concern is that I currently own a Samsung Android phone. I own the Samsung Moment and my wife owns the Samsung Intercept. I have to say these are probably among the worst Android devices in existence in terms of hardware reliability. In fact, my Moment randomly unlocked it’s screen and restarted itself twice today. Our phones constantly freeze when doing very important things like looking something up, trying to get directions because we’re lost or answering a call. You know, all those situations where you need it to work right away. However, if I’m bored and just screwing around with it, it can actually work pretty well. I’m sure I mentioned this in a previous post but my phone once froze while trying to answer my wife’s call, then rebooted itself about four or five times out of nowhere. It literally took about 30 minutes to get the phone to turn back on and boot up to the point where I could call her back. Luckily I was at my laptop and was able to text her through Google Voice to let her know what was going on so she didn’t worry why I didn’t answer and if she calls back it is going straight to voice mail.
So if I were to go ahead and get the upcoming Galaxy Tab 10.1 my biggest concern will be the fact that it is Samsung. I’ve already decided I’ll never buy another Samsung phone again simply because the Moment and the Intercept have ruined that for me. I’ve also heard from a few people who had the Evo, switched to the Epic and after a few months it’s started getting really buggy and they ended up going back to their Evo’s. However, I think with it being a tablet and not something I could really rely on as my primary form of communication, it may be a different story. At the same time if I’m going to spend that much money it better impress me every time I pick it up for at least the next year. My Samsung Moment stopped impressing me after a few months. That was also just before it was discontinued because it was just that bad.
As always I’ll watch many reviews on YouTube shortly after it’s finally released. My advice for those of you who watch videos before making a decision: Don’t watch their commercials or their demonstrations. Find reviews by real customers who paid real money and put it to real use. If I can ever get my hands on one, I’d love to give it my review. Unfortunately that probably won’t happen for a while.
