Samsung has taken the wraps off its sexy iPhone and iPad competitor, sporting a 7" screen but also full telephony capabilities.
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The tablet, dubbed Samsung Tab GT-P1000, only weighs 380g, but packs a 7" LCD screen with near-iPad resolution of 1024 x 600, a 1GHz Cortex processor, 512MB memory, 16GB inbuilt flash and a card slot for up to 32GB more, and many features similar to the iPhone such as a 1.3MP front-facing and 3MP rear-facing camera and the ability to make phone calls and send/receive SMS/MMSes.
It will be released before Christmas, Samsung says. It's not clear what networks will carry it, however, it does support an impressive array of frequencies -- though the published specs do not include 850MHz 3G, which counts out Telstra Next G. (On the other hand, Samsung may well make a version that supports 850MHz rather than the 900MHz frequency in the version being unveiled today.)
It runs Android 2.2 "Froyo" with Flash 10.1 support built-in. It'll also come with a Samsung e-reader app called "Readers Hub" which will provide access to a digital bookstore as well as displaying standard eBook formats. Samsung says it will support purchasing from Kobo (books), PressReader (newspapers) and Zinio (magazines).
There's an app called "Social Hub" which will presumably draw together updates from multiple social networks.
The tablet also packs 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0. Samsung says it'll be perfect as a desk speaker phone, or as a video conferencing-device -- though given the paucity of good video chat software on Android, we'll certainly be looking for more detail on what Samsung is bringing to the table here.
You'll also be able to play all your downloaded HD videos, Samsung promises, with support for DivX, XviD, MPEG4, H.264 and more.
It'll also come with Thinkfree Office for working with documents, and Swype -- the text entry method where you slide your finger round the on-screen keyboard, rather than tapping at the screen.
Like Huawei's IDEOS phone announced today, the Tab has full access to Google Mobile Services such as Google Maps turn-by-turn GPS Navigation and Google Goggles -- search by pointing the camera at the thing you want to know about!
It comes with a monster 4,000mAh battery (the iPhone only has a 1420mAh one) which Samsung claims will be good for seven hours of continuous HD movie playback.
Sensors include gyroscope, gravity, accelerometer and light sensor.
Physically, it'll measure 190x120mm, with a 12mm thickness. That's a bit bigger than the 5" Dell Streak, which measures 153x79mm with a 10mm thickness.
Interestingly, the specs say it has a "30 pin connector" which certainly isn't standard USB and sounds awfully similar to Apple's iPod 30 pin connector.