Again, if you followed our live blog of Samsung’s “Unpacked: Part I” event, you may have noticed that the Galaxy S II got the lion’s share of attention. We literally got bombarded with an hour and twenty minutes of the Gally II and a ten minute how-do-you-do on the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Regardless, we went ahead and put our greasy, little, jet-lagged fingers all over one the the new Tab demo units that was available and are ready to report back to you.
The device looks extremely slick. High gloss front, textured black backing, and svelte dimensions. It looks just as nice as , if not a little nicer than, the Motorla XOOM. The device has a 10.1-inch screen with 1280 x 800 pixel resolution, 8 megapixel rear-facing camera capable of HD recording, 2 megapixel front-facing camera, and beefy Tegra 2 processor. We do have to admit, it was pretty hard to get a gauge on just how fast the device was, as Android 3.0 just doesn’t seem like it’s quite done yet. The refresh rate of the screen when panning and zooming were superb, but when you shifted the device from portrait to landscape — or vice versa — the screen would kind of blink and take a second to properly orient and size itself. Again, we’re sure this is because Honeycomb isn’t exactly street legal yet, but it is hard to call this one a winner without some final software to hammer on. For us, the 10-inch form factor really is the right size for a tablet — we know some of you like the 7-inch blueprint, but the 10-inch screen feels right for the web — so we’re glad to see the Android tablet makers jumping into this space. No word on when you can get yourself one of these little monsters or how much it will set you back. Until then, hit up our gallery and let us know what you think!
