With the recent news that Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 danced through the FCC touting AT&T 3G bands, it was only a matter of time before we heard an announcement. Well, we got one, just not for AT&T. Sprint has officially announce the availability of the powerful Honeycomb tablet that’s set to launch later this week on the 24th for $499.
Sprint will essentially be offering up the WiFi-only version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and suggest you grab a MiFi or Overdrive to give you network data. Doing this allows Sprint to get the tablet out before any carrier but when you can grab the thing at your local Best Buy, what’s the point of going to Sprint for it? The press release says nothing about a discount when you purchase the Tab 10.1 when you grab a mobile hotspot so we’re having trouble seeing the appeal to buy the device from the carrier.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab is definitely the Android Honeycomb tablet to beat right now, and even with the truck loads of competitors on the way Samsung will likely remain the king of Honeycomb tablets for some time. However, if we do end up seeing a LTE-enabled Tab 10.1 coming from Verizon next month, some of you may want to sit out Sprint’s offering out.
Now with Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T on board the Tab 10.1 bandwagon, we’re patiently awaiting an announcement from T-Mobile. The US’ fourth largest carrier was notably absent from the Galaxy S 2 accessory leak some time back, and whether or not this mean Magenta will get a modified version of the device or if they are just waiting to get swallowed up by AT&T. Nonetheless, three out of four US carriers sounds good to us, and that’s if the AT&T version we saw yesterday actually does land here in the US and not somewhere in Canada.
Any of you out there have the desire to grab the Tab 10.1 and a MiFi at Sprint, or will you be waiting for the device to ship with data connectivity of the gate?
[Via: Sprint]