The biggest news about the Galaxy 10.1 is its operating system – Android 3.0 (aka Honeycomb), which is the first incarnation of Android that has been specially designed for tablets. Having been offered a ticket to nowhere more exciting than Euston station this morning, I’ve been eagerly catching up with glimpses of everyone else’s hands-on experience with this latest toy, and it appears that the new OS is rather akin to Windows XP in both look and feel, as well as boasting a touch interface.
In face, it relies totally on the touch interface as there are no hardware buttons at all (which may or may not sit well with you) – although semi-permanent navigation buttons sit at the bottom of the screen.
Naturally, the Galaxy Tab 10.1’s closest rival will be the iPad, so can it beat the competition? Well its screen resolution is better (1280 x 800) and the AMOLED screen appears to be stunningly bright, and it has stereo speakers too. However, in terms of build quality, it seems clear that Samsung has done a bit of corner cutting as it is far more plasticky than Apple’s flagship product (although this does in turnmake it lighter).
It has an 8MP camera rear-facing camera (although we suspect that will be rather awkward to use) and it also has a 2MP front-facing camera for video calls. However, its textured back (a feature of Samsung’s phones too) makes it easy to hold in one hand and type with the other, while the dual-core 1GHz Tegra 2 chip under the bonnet makes for a really speedy user experience.
The Samsung Galaxy 10.1 will come in both 16GB and 32 GB versions and should be available in March, although there is no word on pricing as yet.
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