The first decent Android tablet has been officially announced by Samsung today. The Samsung Galaxy Tab, which we were very impressed by when we got some hands-on action with, will be available for all four major U.S. carriers, as well as Rogers in Canada.
As you’ve likely heard before, the Galaxy Tab sports a 7-inch, enhanced TFT display, and not the Super AMOLED display that we’ve seen from the Galaxy S smartphones that have saturated the four major U.S. carriers already. The Tab also ships with Android 2.2 Froyo, Bluetooth, WiFi, and GPS on board.
Unlike many upcoming Android tablets, the Galaxy Tab will have the Android Market and we’re very happy to see its presence. Samsung got the go-ahead from Google since the Tab is basically just a big phone and we’re not complaining. What we are complaining about is because it’s a large phone it will likely be tied to a carrier for the time being, and no WiFi-only option will be available upon first launch (although one will be coming later, Samsung said).
The new Android tablet should be a killer device that gives the Apple iPad some serious competition. The Android tablet comes with a front (1.3 MP) and back (3.0 MP) facing camera, something that the iPad lacks. Also looks for a 1 GHz Hummingbird processor, 16 GB of internal memory and about 7 hours of battery life with the 4,000 mAh battery.
The Tab also supports Flash playback, something that the iPad will never support – depending on how you look at it, Flash support can be considered a great win, or a hindrance. But then again, the Flash player is an application that you can uninstall yourself, so it likely won’t be an issue.
If the Tab has similar success as the Galaxy S smartphones, which Samsung predicts to ship 5 million Galaxy S phone by the end of the year, the Galaxy Tab may be quite the hit. We’re happy to hear that Rogers customers will be able to grab one as well in the coming months. Now that we finally have word that T-Mobile will carry the tablet, we know that Samsung is doing something right with launching their devices on all carriers in the US. Maybe some of their competitors will follow suit?