Samsung on Thursday introduced its Galaxy Tab, a 7-inch tablet PC powered by Google's Android 2.2 "Froyo" operating system.
Amazingly, this powerful tablet is also a phone - although it's a huge one. In its press release, Samsung said "the Samsung Galaxy Tab turns out to be a perfect speakerphone on the desk, or a mobile phone on the move via Bluetooth headset." Clearly, you're not supposed to hold this thing up to your head.
The Galaxy Tab has the full complement of Google's Android apps, including access to the 70,000-plus apps in the Android Market. Samsung has added some of its own apps as well. Its Media Hub, which we saw briefly in action on a Samsung Epic 4G phone last month, sells TV episodes and movies for download. The "Readers Hub" appears to be Samsung's own e-book store and e-reader app.
The tablet runs Froyo on a 1-Ghz Samsung Hummingbird processor, and the LCD screen is 1024-by-600 resolution. Since this is Froyo, the Web browser has full Adobe Flash 10.1 support.
To connect to the Internet, the Tab uses 3G HSPA 7.2 (AT&T's technology) as well as Wi-Fi 802.11n. The frequency bands on the model introduced Thursday make it incompatible with U.S. carriers in general, though presumably a U.S.-centric model will fix this.
There's a 3-megapixel camera on the back and a 1.3-megapixel camera on the front, specifically for making video calls. The tablet has either 16 or 32 G-bytes of internal memory, with a MicroSD card slot supporting up to 32GB more. The tablet weighs 13 ounces, and according to Samsung, the 4000 mAh battery will last for seven hours of video playback.
Although Android 2.2 is the latest version, Samsung execs at the product announcement said that the Galaxy Tab will be upgradeable to the next version of Android, 3.0, according to Technologizer.
More tablets will come in the future, too, as Samsung said that "this is the first of the company's tablet devices, representing a new category of mobile products for Samsung."
Samsung said the Galaxy Tab will come to Europe this month and to the U.S. "in coming months." The company didn't announce a price.