SAMSUNG'S GALAXY TAB 8.9 AND 10.1 FULL SPECS

You know who took the iPad 2 launch pretty seriously? Samsung, that's who. Just as we had heard, the company's executives were impressed by Apple's ability to slim down its tablet and, well, it turns out that it took it as a challenge to come up with some thinner tablets of its own. That's right, in addition to theSamsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 that we have seen repeatedly teased over the last few weeks the company's announcing a totally revamped Galaxy Tab 10.1, and both slates are incredibly thin yet very well spec'd. On top of that, both will be the first Honeycomb tablets to stray from the pure Android 3.0 experience and add what Samsung's taken to calling its TouchWiz UX or TouchWiz 4.0. We've got all the details and some hands-on impressions waiting below, so hit the break!

Updated: Samsung came clean with the pricing at its press conference this morning. The WiFi 10.1 will hit on June 8th -- the 16GB version will cost you $499 and the 32GB $599. The 8.9 is $469 and $569 for 16GB and 32GB, respectively.

As you can see from the gallery, both the 10.1 and the 8.9 look extremely similar, and boy are they thin. They measure just .33-inches thick, and as you can glean from this picture, they absolutely give the .34-inch iPad some real competition in terms of dimensions. The models we saw weren't final -- in fact, they didn't even power on -- but Samsung says the 10.1 will weigh 1.31 pounds and the 8.9 just 1.03 pounds. Both tablets have microSD slots, 3.5mm headphone jacks, and SIM slots, although there will be WiFi versions of both of them. The two tablets have the same array of cameras, which includes a 3 megapixel shooter with an LED flash on the back and a 2 megapixel lens on the front.

Internally, the Tabs will pack 1GHz dual-core processors. We're assuming it will be Tegra 2 since all the Honeycomb tablets thus far have used NVIDIA's silicon, but that's unconfirmed at this point. The 8.9 will be available with 16GB of storage and a 6000mAH battery, and the 10.1 will come in both 16GB and 32GB varieties and with a 6860mAH cell. Both are said to provide 10 hours of video playback. There are full specs of both of these in the press release below.

As we said, the two 10.1 and 8.9 models we saw prior to the launch weren't working units, but the hardware certainly seemed solid and way more polished than the original 10.1 that Samsung introduced back at MWC. Speaking of which, Samsung says it has no plans to bring that original version out in the US, but it will still hit Vodafone overseas. 

As you can see from the gallery, both the 10.1 and the 8.9 look extremely similar, and boy are they thin. They measure just .33-inches thick, and as you can glean from this picture, they absolutely give the .34-inch iPad some real competition in terms of dimensions. The models we saw weren't final -- in fact, they didn't even power on -- but Samsung says the 10.1 will weigh 1.31 pounds and the 8.9 just 1.03 pounds. Both tablets have microSD slots, 3.5mm headphone jacks, and SIM slots, although there will be WiFi versions of both of them. The two tablets have the same array of cameras, which includes a 3 megapixel shooter with an LED flash on the back and a 2 megapixel lens on the front.

Internally, the Tabs will pack 1GHz dual-core processors. We're assuming it will be Tegra 2 since all the Honeycomb tablets thus far have used NVIDIA's silicon, but that's unconfirmed at this point. The 8.9 will be available with 16GB of storage and a 6000mAH battery, and the 10.1 will come in both 16GB and 32GB varieties and with a 6860mAH cell. Both are said to provide 10 hours of video playback. There are full specs of both of these in the press release below.

As we said, the two 10.1 and 8.9 models we saw prior to the launch weren't working units, but the hardware certainly seemed solid and way more polished than the original 10.1 that Samsung introduced back at MWC. Speaking of which, Samsung says it has no plans to bring that original version out in the US, but it will still hit Vodafone overseas. 

As you can see from the gallery, both the 10.1 and the 8.9 look extremely similar, and boy are they thin. They measure just .33-inches thick, and as you can glean from this picture, they absolutely give the .34-inch iPad some real competition in terms of dimensions. The models we saw weren't final -- in fact, they didn't even power on -- but Samsung says the 10.1 will weigh 1.31 pounds and the 8.9 just 1.03 pounds. Both tablets have microSD slots, 3.5mm headphone jacks, and SIM slots, although there will be WiFi versions of both of them. The two tablets have the same array of cameras, which includes a 3 megapixel shooter with an LED flash on the back and a 2 megapixel lens on the front.

Internally, the Tabs will pack 1GHz dual-core processors. We're assuming it will be Tegra 2 since all the Honeycomb tablets thus far have used NVIDIA's silicon, but that's unconfirmed at this point. The 8.9 will be available with 16GB of storage and a 6000mAH battery, and the 10.1 will come in both 16GB and 32GB varieties and with a 6860mAH cell. Both are said to provide 10 hours of video playback. There are full specs of both of these in the press release below.

As we said, the two 10.1 and 8.9 models we saw prior to the launch weren't working units, but the hardware certainly seemed solid and way more polished than the original 10.1 that Samsung introduced back at MWC. Speaking of which, Samsung says it has no plans to bring that original version out in the US, but it will still hit Vodafone overseas. 


SOURCE: ENGADGET.COM