Samsung announces Galaxy Tab 2
The original Galaxy Tab was Samsung’s first tablet, and the fall 2011 Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus was the true update to that tablet. Right? Wrong, apparently. Samsung has just announced the Galaxy Tab 2, a tablet that seems to not fit in anywhere in the company’s product range. Physically, it has the exact same length and width as the 7.0 Plus, but is 0.6mm thicker and 4 grams lighter. The screen size is the same, and the 600 x 1024 resolution display also seems to be the same. The front camera is down to VGA resolution, while the back camera has “only” lost its LED light. Both RAM and memory (including expandability) is the same, but the CPU is listed as dual core 1GHz. The 7.0 Plus has a 1.2GHz dual core Exynos chip which also has the Mali-400 GPU on board, and since there hasn’t been a 1GHz version of the Exynos yet I can only assume that it is in fact a Tegra 2 that is powering this thing, which has implications far beyond 0.2GHz since the Tegra 2’s GPU power is nothing compared to Exynos.
The Galaxy Tab 2 will ship with ICS (the 7.0 Plus will get it as an update) in Europe in March, and Scandinavian prices suggests that this is a budget tablet. If I were to venture a guess, I would say $249-$299 when it hits the US, which would put it right between the Kindle Fire and the 7.0 Plus. It might not even make it to the US, as this being a European budget model to tap the same markets that the Fire has tapped in the US is the only sane explanation I can think of for this making it to market at all.It not being shown off at CES supports that theory. Definitely a peculiar product launch by Samsung, and it will be interesting to see what its plans are with it.
[Sammy Hub]
