But June 8 release date. I think they'll pre-release these to folks at Google I/O in May (at least the 8.9" model) and we'll see lots of happy developers.
I think pre-announcing tablets at this point in time is a clever thing to do, it makes sure that nearly every article talking about iPads or tablets in general will mention that comparable products from Samsung are coming very soon.
I disagree. I think pre-announcements have their place, but are only really effective if you're already the dominant player (eg. Microsoft in OSes, especially in 199x and 200x, or Apple in the tablet/PMP space) and you're doing it to disrupt releases of upstarts.
If you're going up against the 800 lbs gorilla with a product that is still basically unproven, I think preannouncing months in advance does more harm than good. I'm a big Android booster and self-described "Apple hater" but even I'm growing sick of how all the great new Android tablets have been JUST AROUND THE CORNER for about a year now.
Followup: Engadget writes today "Pocket-Lint has heard that the UK won't actually get the new thin version, although we're guessing that could always change in the future. As for the thicker 8.9-inch model pictured above, Samsung was making it quite clear at its booth that it wasn't planning to release that product to the public." http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/25/samsungs-original-galaxy-...
> The WiFi 10.1 will hit on June 8th -- the 16GB version will cost you $499 and the 32GB $599.
Awesome! The Xoom's pricing is hard for many consumers to swallow (personally I can't wait to buy one myself as soon as they come to Canada). But the Tab 10.1 looks like it will be the first awesome Android tablet that's truly competitively priced with the iPad.
If you look at all the photographs in the gallery relating to the article, you must click back the amount of images you looked at. Plus there is no back-to-article button. Bad navigation, Engadget. Use jQuery, it would make things much easier.
Competition just heated up. Slightly thinner and slighter lighter than the iPad 2, and at the same price. Wow!
Samsung makes so much of the internals of the iPad 2, I think they might be Apple's biggest hardware competition. Too bad Samsung makes only slim margins on the hardware while Google and Apple make lots more off of the apps and browser.
This includes their "TouchWiz" UI customizations, so there's definitely the chance for them to make some money from the software side of things or cross-promote more profitable products. Example: Functionality could be bundled in that pushes content to only Samsung-brand TVs.
I was really looking forward to getting the 10.1, but the addition of TouchWiz onto the stock Android makes me very hesitant. I'm hoping it will feature the same unlockable bootloader found on the Nexus One, Nexus S, and Xoom; if so, then I can just reflash it with a stock image if I don't like TouchWiz. I refuse to be at the mercy of Samsung to get updates for my $500 devices...
I'm inclined to say the TouchWiz may not be all that bad, in fact some of the tweaks they made and features added could be quite welcome, but I cannot say I am a fan of Samsung getting into the OS realm even if they are trying to differentiate their tablets from other Android based tbls.
I would never buy a mobile Apple device for myself. I have a Nexus S, had a Nexus One before that, and won't be buying a tablet until I can compare the Xoom and the Tab 10.1 (or any other wifi competitor) and be sure that whichever I choose, I have the ability to reflash the device with custom firmware.
Stock Android update timing tends to be much, much worse than iOS update timing, especially when custom firmware is involved. I say this as someone who borders on being an Android fanboy. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to prefer Android, but guaranteed on-time updating is not one of them, unless you've got a custom ROM. But if you're going to mention custom device images, aren't there similar options for jailbroken iPhones anyway?
In regards to competing with Apple, I feel like a lot of people forget the advantage that Apple's retail stores give them. The Apple retail stores give people an opportunity to use iPads preloaded with software in a nice shopping environment.
How will Samsung (and others) reach the average consumer with these new tablets? Will Best Buy just stick them in the middle of 4 other tablets with price tags?
I find engadget reviews a bit too quick to praise. While this is actually a problem with most review sites, I notice it an awfully lot with engadget.
I'd like for them to actually use the device, load it with data and let data from regular use accumulate, and THEN make an assessment.
For example: they gave the HTC evo spectacular reviews. And the phone is actually pretty nice. But after a few thousand text messages, a few apps installed, email, etc., the device is very sluggish - not quite what your led to believe from reading their reviews.
Strange that you brought up the Evo, which after almost a year has held up as a top 3 phone for 2010.. I think high praise was deserved, regardless of whether it had a few issues.
HTC Evo owner here. Bought it on the day it came out.
Since then, I've upgrade the battery, and am currently running CyanogenMod 7 (Android 2.3.3).
I just purchased a Samsung Epic 4G for my wife 2 months ago ... and comparing stock Evo with stock Epic, Evo blows the Epic away. The battery life also seems to be much better than the Epic's.
The Evo is the best phone I've ever owned, and I've owned an iPhone 3GS.
Its nice to see well funded competition to the iPad.
As with most technologies, we can describe the 'killer' product which would cut off the iPad at the knees:
* Tegra 3 [1] quad core mobile processor
* 2400 x 1800 10.1" screen (300 ppi) with 'real' pixels (which is to say every pixel can be every color)
* Combined capacitive touch and wacom equivalent stylus control.
* 2 GB low power DDR3 ram, 64GB flash
* Wifi, LTE, Bluetooth wireless stacks
* Micro SD, Sim, micro hdmi, usb2 (or 3) port
* Android OS with FOSS drivers for all peripherals.
* $400 / $600 / $800 price points
* 10 - 12 hr Battery life
If one started shipping that device today, I would bet my 401k that it would outsell the iPad2 by the end of the year.
Of course you can't ship it today, nVidia won't commit to a ship date on Tegra3, No one will commit to the 'high def' glass for the LCD (ideally OLED so no backlight to add thickness), Android isn't yet good enough at managing the battery to get that sort of efficiency, and the Wacom equivalent near field stylus interface will need a new driver and API to integrate with the rest of the stack.
Which is why Steve Jobs can make an iPad and most people can't. Steve would say (as legend has it) "Don't tell me what you can't do, tell me when you'll have it done or I'll find someone else who can." (and since really there isn't any new physics here, just engineering work, he'd be right) So far none of the players in the field seem to have shown that sort of attitude, which is unfortunate.
I'm also on record saying that Android is too heavy weight for this type of thing. I suspect that hiring 150 smart people who were told that after every checkin the total number of lines of code in the android build had to be less than it was prior to their checkin, and that the feature set had to remain the same. Let those folks run for a year and it might get close.
I don't dispute that user experience is a factor, but I did not include it in the above based on the following reasoning; If Apple's UX was sufficient to keep an equivalent product running Android with equal or better technical performance off the market, then Android phones would not currently outnumber Apple phones.
Manufacturing a technically competitive tablet form factor device is not something that can be taken on by a small start up. Creating a better UX is well within the reach of a wide variety of shops from small to large.
The G1->N1->N2 evolution is a nice empirical example of the presence of competitive hardware allowing for a rapidly developed competitive UX.
Android based phones aren't playing 'catch up' any more, once we have a reasonable execution of Android in a tablet form factor I reason that they will catch and surpass iPad volume and sales. If a technically superior platform was released ahead of an iPad refresh then I reason that platform would take substantial share from current and future iPad sales.
I won't argue that Android tablets will never overtake the iPad, but I disagree with the reasoning you cite in paragraph 1. I don't think the comparison with smartphones holds up because the tablet and smartphone markets are so different. A few big reasons:
-phones are a "necessary" device whereas a tablet is a luxury device
-consumers don't want another carrier contract so most tablets are sold without subsidies or contracts, whereas nearly all phones here are sold with subsidies and 2-year contracts.
-with phones, the carriers have influence/control over what devices are available to their customers. would Android be where it is today in the US if Verizon hadn't pushed it so hard before they got the iPhone? Carriers don't have nearly the same influence over tablets, and most people don't and won't buy tablets from their carriers anyway.
And I'm sure others can come up with many more. Again I'm not saying that Android tablets will never catch the iPad. I'm just saying that the smartphone market is sufficiently different from the tablet market that arguing for Android tablets vs iPad by citing Android phones vs iPhone isn't very convincing.
"phones are a "necessary" device whereas a tablet is a luxury device"
Ok, but are smart phones a necessary device? What if your phone reverts back to just a dial and talk unit while the "smart" part migrates into the tablet you are carrying with you? [not that I think that will save Nokia :-)]
"consumers don't want another carrier contract so most tablets are sold without subsidies or contracts, whereas nearly all phones here are sold with subsidies and 2-year contracts."
Except the Android Revolution as envisioned by Google is that nobody wants contracts at all. So perhaps a single contract? How about a Wifi tablet connected via tether to a single contract phone? Or both your phone and tablet using SIP over a Metro-Fi scale white spaces network? I believe auction priced spectrum at the consumer level without contract will become a key business in the next 10 years.
"with phones, the carriers have influence/control over what devices are available to their customers. would Android be where it is today in the US if Verizon hadn't pushed it so hard before they got the iPhone? Carriers don't have nearly the same influence over tablets, and most people don't and won't buy tablets from their carriers anyway."
I agree that this is the current state, do you have reason to believe it won't change? Certainly it seems that people are pushing to change it. Can you talk more about your reasoning that leads you to the conclusion that carriers will also control an individual's communications infrastructure?
You make this claim "I'm just saying that the smartphone market is sufficiently different from the tablet market that arguing for Android tablets vs iPad by citing Android phones vs iPhone isn't very convincing."
I certainly agree that "the smartphone market is different from the tablet market" today but back in the last century I witnessed a similar transformation in the computer market. I don't know if it will resonate with you but allow me to share it.
In the 70's a "Computer" was a big machine that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, had a large staff to maintain it, and was so costly to run that keeping it 100% utilized the was goal of every owner to maximize the value.
Computers were controlled by a few big names which can be stand ins for "carriers" in your smartphone argument. Along came companies could build you a computer for a few tens of thousands of dollars, that were expensive for individuals but cheap for departments. They were typically called "mini-computers" and there were some upstarts named Digital Equipment Corporation, Prime, and Data General Corporation who were disruptive forces.
Then microcomputers came out, they were toys. It was a completely different market, you played games on them or used them like oversized adding machines, sufficiently different from the "real" computer market that they were in a space all by themselves.
The microcomputers eventually displaced 99% of the computing needs of individuals and businesses. Because computation and data handling, were the fundamental "product" that people used, not "computers", "mini-computers", or "microcomputers".
I see the players in the smartphone market, attacking the big players the same way the mini-computers attacked mainframes. A smartphone is just like a feature phone, except it also can do internet things and run applications. Now we have tablets and they are more like laptops than phones (although you can make phone calls on them too) and they are coming at the market from the other side. But what all of these pieces of gear have in common is that they are the communication tools we use in our day to day lives to keep up to date, and communicate with our friends, colleagues, and family. Its not difficult to see that one could build a tablet that easily included phone calling features, accessed via a hands free headset that were both more robust and more useful than today's 'smartphone'.
Because I see analogies in the computer revolution with the current phone/smar...
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[ 19.7 ms ] story [ 673 ms ] threadStopped reading.
If you're going up against the 800 lbs gorilla with a product that is still basically unproven, I think preannouncing months in advance does more harm than good. I'm a big Android booster and self-described "Apple hater" but even I'm growing sick of how all the great new Android tablets have been JUST AROUND THE CORNER for about a year now.
This isn't Duke Nukem Forever -- doesn't Samsung have a pretty good reputation for shipping?
If they did, surely they would have been delivered to the reviewer in a usable form?
Awesome! The Xoom's pricing is hard for many consumers to swallow (personally I can't wait to buy one myself as soon as they come to Canada). But the Tab 10.1 looks like it will be the first awesome Android tablet that's truly competitively priced with the iPad.
Samsung makes so much of the internals of the iPad 2, I think they might be Apple's biggest hardware competition. Too bad Samsung makes only slim margins on the hardware while Google and Apple make lots more off of the apps and browser.
Software written for a specific piece of hardware can be a very good thing.
How will Samsung (and others) reach the average consumer with these new tablets? Will Best Buy just stick them in the middle of 4 other tablets with price tags?
Not an easy problem, though: people will just browse and evaluate at your store, and then order online.
Solution: aggressively charge for shelf space, just like grocery stores do for end cap placement.
I'd like for them to actually use the device, load it with data and let data from regular use accumulate, and THEN make an assessment.
For example: they gave the HTC evo spectacular reviews. And the phone is actually pretty nice. But after a few thousand text messages, a few apps installed, email, etc., the device is very sluggish - not quite what your led to believe from reading their reviews.
If you actually have one, It would be interesting to know how it's held up after heavy use.
Personally, my experience with it, and those of people I know that have it has been less than stellar, though by no means awful.
Since then, I've upgrade the battery, and am currently running CyanogenMod 7 (Android 2.3.3).
I just purchased a Samsung Epic 4G for my wife 2 months ago ... and comparing stock Evo with stock Epic, Evo blows the Epic away. The battery life also seems to be much better than the Epic's.
The Evo is the best phone I've ever owned, and I've owned an iPhone 3GS.
As with most technologies, we can describe the 'killer' product which would cut off the iPad at the knees:
* Tegra 3 [1] quad core mobile processor
* 2400 x 1800 10.1" screen (300 ppi) with 'real' pixels (which is to say every pixel can be every color)
* Combined capacitive touch and wacom equivalent stylus control.
* 2 GB low power DDR3 ram, 64GB flash
* Wifi, LTE, Bluetooth wireless stacks
* Micro SD, Sim, micro hdmi, usb2 (or 3) port
* Android OS with FOSS drivers for all peripherals.
* $400 / $600 / $800 price points
* 10 - 12 hr Battery life
If one started shipping that device today, I would bet my 401k that it would outsell the iPad2 by the end of the year.
Of course you can't ship it today, nVidia won't commit to a ship date on Tegra3, No one will commit to the 'high def' glass for the LCD (ideally OLED so no backlight to add thickness), Android isn't yet good enough at managing the battery to get that sort of efficiency, and the Wacom equivalent near field stylus interface will need a new driver and API to integrate with the rest of the stack.
Which is why Steve Jobs can make an iPad and most people can't. Steve would say (as legend has it) "Don't tell me what you can't do, tell me when you'll have it done or I'll find someone else who can." (and since really there isn't any new physics here, just engineering work, he'd be right) So far none of the players in the field seem to have shown that sort of attitude, which is unfortunate.
I'm also on record saying that Android is too heavy weight for this type of thing. I suspect that hiring 150 smart people who were told that after every checkin the total number of lines of code in the android build had to be less than it was prior to their checkin, and that the feature set had to remain the same. Let those folks run for a year and it might get close.
[1] http://blogs.nvidia.com/2011/02/tegra-roadmap-revealed-next-...
This is why competitors are playing catch-up.
Manufacturing a technically competitive tablet form factor device is not something that can be taken on by a small start up. Creating a better UX is well within the reach of a wide variety of shops from small to large.
The G1->N1->N2 evolution is a nice empirical example of the presence of competitive hardware allowing for a rapidly developed competitive UX.
Android based phones aren't playing 'catch up' any more, once we have a reasonable execution of Android in a tablet form factor I reason that they will catch and surpass iPad volume and sales. If a technically superior platform was released ahead of an iPad refresh then I reason that platform would take substantial share from current and future iPad sales.
-phones are a "necessary" device whereas a tablet is a luxury device
-consumers don't want another carrier contract so most tablets are sold without subsidies or contracts, whereas nearly all phones here are sold with subsidies and 2-year contracts.
-with phones, the carriers have influence/control over what devices are available to their customers. would Android be where it is today in the US if Verizon hadn't pushed it so hard before they got the iPhone? Carriers don't have nearly the same influence over tablets, and most people don't and won't buy tablets from their carriers anyway.
And I'm sure others can come up with many more. Again I'm not saying that Android tablets will never catch the iPad. I'm just saying that the smartphone market is sufficiently different from the tablet market that arguing for Android tablets vs iPad by citing Android phones vs iPhone isn't very convincing.
"phones are a "necessary" device whereas a tablet is a luxury device"
Ok, but are smart phones a necessary device? What if your phone reverts back to just a dial and talk unit while the "smart" part migrates into the tablet you are carrying with you? [not that I think that will save Nokia :-)]
"consumers don't want another carrier contract so most tablets are sold without subsidies or contracts, whereas nearly all phones here are sold with subsidies and 2-year contracts."
Except the Android Revolution as envisioned by Google is that nobody wants contracts at all. So perhaps a single contract? How about a Wifi tablet connected via tether to a single contract phone? Or both your phone and tablet using SIP over a Metro-Fi scale white spaces network? I believe auction priced spectrum at the consumer level without contract will become a key business in the next 10 years.
"with phones, the carriers have influence/control over what devices are available to their customers. would Android be where it is today in the US if Verizon hadn't pushed it so hard before they got the iPhone? Carriers don't have nearly the same influence over tablets, and most people don't and won't buy tablets from their carriers anyway."
I agree that this is the current state, do you have reason to believe it won't change? Certainly it seems that people are pushing to change it. Can you talk more about your reasoning that leads you to the conclusion that carriers will also control an individual's communications infrastructure?
You make this claim "I'm just saying that the smartphone market is sufficiently different from the tablet market that arguing for Android tablets vs iPad by citing Android phones vs iPhone isn't very convincing."
I certainly agree that "the smartphone market is different from the tablet market" today but back in the last century I witnessed a similar transformation in the computer market. I don't know if it will resonate with you but allow me to share it.
In the 70's a "Computer" was a big machine that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, had a large staff to maintain it, and was so costly to run that keeping it 100% utilized the was goal of every owner to maximize the value.
Computers were controlled by a few big names which can be stand ins for "carriers" in your smartphone argument. Along came companies could build you a computer for a few tens of thousands of dollars, that were expensive for individuals but cheap for departments. They were typically called "mini-computers" and there were some upstarts named Digital Equipment Corporation, Prime, and Data General Corporation who were disruptive forces.
Then microcomputers came out, they were toys. It was a completely different market, you played games on them or used them like oversized adding machines, sufficiently different from the "real" computer market that they were in a space all by themselves.
The microcomputers eventually displaced 99% of the computing needs of individuals and businesses. Because computation and data handling, were the fundamental "product" that people used, not "computers", "mini-computers", or "microcomputers".
I see the players in the smartphone market, attacking the big players the same way the mini-computers attacked mainframes. A smartphone is just like a feature phone, except it also can do internet things and run applications. Now we have tablets and they are more like laptops than phones (although you can make phone calls on them too) and they are coming at the market from the other side. But what all of these pieces of gear have in common is that they are the communication tools we use in our day to day lives to keep up to date, and communicate with our friends, colleagues, and family. Its not difficult to see that one could build a tablet that easily included phone calling features, accessed via a hands free headset that were both more robust and more useful than today's 'smartphone'.
Because I see analogies in the computer revolution with the current phone/smar...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4225/the-ipad-2-review/5