Samsung Galaxy S, the Galaxy Tab’s 5″ little brother
As Allen always says, Android is all about choice. Well, here’s another option to add to the list of choices. The Galaxy S 5.0 is Samsung’s new…eh…Mp3 player? Hard to tell what a device aims to be these days, now that even refrigerators have apps. Convergence devices are nice, but the general idea is to have many features in one device, not many features in just as many devices (or more…a year ago there was no tablet market to speak of). Anyways, the Galaxy S 5.0 is as much a tablet as anything else. It has a 1Ghz CPU (single core), microSD slot, Wifi, Bluetooth, 5mpix camera with flash and a 800×480 5″ screen called Bob. Well, it’s not really called Bob, but I’m so tired of companies making up fancy names for their screens every time they improve on the technology a little bit so I’m not going to humor them by using the name they actually gave it.
The Galaxy S 5.0 will run Android 2.2 (…which is already outdated) and comes with a 2500mAh battery. The latter has me a bit concerned, as that’s only slightly more than 1/3 of the Xoom/iPad (assuming the voltage is the same on both batteries). Even with a substantially smaller, lower res screen and a slower CPU I’m a bit skeptical to whether the power requirements will be that much lower. The battery capacity is of course due to the limited space available in a player that small, but am I really the only one who would gladly have a thicker player if it meant a substantial increase in battery life?
Either way, the Galaxy S 5.0 looks pretty good in my opinion. If the price is right (that is, more similar to a PMP than a tablet) it can be a very good option for those who want to get a media player with some added functionality without losing the pocketability. We definitely need to see more smaller Android tablets, as Archos pretty much dominates that segment at the moment and the quality of their products is….well, you get what you pay for, let’s leave it at that.
[Anything but iPod | Engadget]
