Samsung Unveils Galaxy Tab 2 With Ice Cream Sandwich

 Samsung on Monday revealed the Galaxy Tab 2 (7.0), the follow-up to its original 7-inch tablet and its first tablet to debut with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

The new 7-inch tablet will be packed with a 1-GHz, dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM, and it will feature a 1024-by-600 LCD display. It will also include dual-facing cameras, with a VGA lens on the front and a 3-megapixel setup on the back. Additionally, the device will be Bluetooth 3.0-compatible and have HSPA+ connectivity.

The Galaxy Tab 2 will come in Wi-Fi and 3G version, and it will roll out worldwide in March, starting in the U.K., Samsung said.

In terms of software, the Galaxy Tab 2 will ship with Samsung Hub services, including Samsung Music Hub with a selection of 17 million songs; Readers Hub, which offers 2.3 million e-books and thousands of magazines and newspapers; and Game Hub, which provides instant access to various game titles. Samsung is also debuting Video Hub, which as the name suggests, boasts a selection of more than 1,000 movies to rent, as well as a trailers and reviews of an array of films.

The Galaxy Tab 2 is Samsung's first device to ship with Samsung's AllShare Play service, which allows users to stream content to the tablet from their PC, smartphone, or third-party storage service.

Samsung, of course, is engaged in a worldwide legal battle with Apple over patents pertaining to its Galaxy line of devices. In fact, Apple has contested just about every smartphone and tablet Samsung has released in the past two years, claiming the gadgets violate patents held by the Mac maker. Samsung has fired back at Apple with similar claims.

The latest development in the seemingly never-ending war happened last week when a Dusseldorf court denied Apple's request to have the modified Galaxy Tab 10.1N banned in Germany. The original Galaxy Tab 10.1, however, is temporarily banned in the country.

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Samsung claims Android 4.0 to hit Galaxy Note, Galaxy S II and Galaxy Tab next year

Samsung Italy put an end to doubts after revealing its plans to upgrade the higher-end devices to Android 4.0. Consequently, the Galaxy Note, Galaxy S II, and the Android 3-based tablets from the Tab 7.0 Plus through the Tab 10.1 would be upgraded by the spring of next year. HDBlog.it says that the original Galaxy S as well as other models represented lower priorities. Samsung considered the highest priority as getting the operating system on devices that would support it and only then evaluating its lower-end devices.

Samsung may have revealed a real hardware baseline for the new Android 4.0 operating system when saying that any device had to have at least WVGA at 400×800 to receive an upgrade.

Android 4.0 will help most the Galaxy Note and Galaxy S II, both of them getting major phone interface changes. The changes are subtler on a tablet and mainly include updated core applications and face unlock, as well as others that are not dependent on the size of the screen.

While showing Samsung decided to support its older hardware, it is still clear that the Galaxy Nexus is the only device of Samsung to carry Android 4.0 in the near future. Other devices are likely to appear at the CES expo in January and in February at Mobile World Congress.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab 750 review

Anorexic is in…amongst tablets and the first Samsung tablet that we reviewed – the Galaxy Tab – didn't exactly fit that profile. But Samsung did make an impression with its debutante's quality and prowess.

The second in the series was released almost a year later. Samsung missed out on some opportunities because in the interim, a lot of companies had entered the foray, each of them bringing in more innovation targeted at outdoing competition. Samsung is now striking back with the new Galaxy Tab 750 and Galaxy Tab 730. Both tablets are similar as far as the tech specs are concerned, differing only in the screen sizes they come in. I spent some time with the 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab 750 figuring out how well it fares as my primary media consumption device.

Music and movies

The Samsung tabs have shed the original's girth and gained some tech weight instead. In fact they are marginally thinner than the iPad. The Samsung review unit's 10.1-inch screen with a resolution of 1280x800 pixels reproduced images and videos beautifully. I watched a long-pending BBC documentary ‘The Life and Death of a Mobile Phone' on the tablet. The speaker grilles placed on either side of the bezel tended to get covered when I was holding the tablet by the sides, muffling the output. However, the audio quality on the tablet was definitely above average. It did not match the loud volumes on the Motorola Xoom, but dialogues and music were pretty clear. The display on the tablet too, turned out to be quite brilliant.

Checking out the clicker

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 750 is endowed with a 3MP camera at the rear, surprisingly no better than the original Galaxy Tab. The results were as anticipated – decent shots under sunlight and slightly grainy pics indoors even with most lights on. This camera also lets you capture high-definition videos (in 720p). The video-conferencing camera at the front has been upgraded to a 2MP clicker and the results were marginally better.

One of the best uses I could put the Galaxy Tab 750 to was using it as an e-reader. On the massive screen, books were not only perfectly legible by default (no pinching and zooming to get it to the right size) but it also felt like an original book in my hands owing to the tablet's dimensions.

Power specs

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 750 runs on a 1GHz dual-core NVIDIA Tegra-2 processor – the same as LG Optimus Pad, Motorola Atrix and Asus EeePad Transformer. The tab never froze during use but there were a handful of times when there was a visible lag during functions. At times, the homescreen's orientation stuttered while I was changing it from landscape to portrait. I also noticed the same problem while swiping through homepages once in a while.

The tablet supports Bluetooth 3.0 connectivity letting you transfer media at a speed ten times faster than on a USB 2.0. The tablet has a mini-HDMI port so you can hook it up to a larger display to watch high definition videos. The 7000mAh battery keeps the Samsung Galaxy Tab 750 powered on for almost 8-9 hours with the Wi-fi connected, occasional downloads, gaming, and streaming music videos on YouTube. You have the option of choosing between 16GB and 32GB of internal storage on this tablet.

App talk

The apps bundled with the tablet include Polaris – to create and edit power-point presentations, Word documents and spreadsheets. Social Hub lets you have your entire list of contacts, emails and status updates integrated from various platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail etc., in one screen. You can choose from more than 15 social networking sites that are available within the Social Hub.

The 3G SIM card slot is at the top ridge of the tab, where the 3.5mm headphone jack, volume rocker and the power button are also lodged. With a glass fascia and pristine white rear panel, the Galaxy Tab 750 looks really elegant. Weighing in at about 565 grams, the device is probably one of the lightest in the genre, as of now.

The verdict

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 750 has a couple of factors that tip the scales in its favour. The lightweight construction, elegant design, high-res screen make for a device that takes care of most of your multimedia needs. As far as claims of this being an iPad killer are concerned, I'll have to say this tablet has its moments but in its entirety doesn't really give you the kind of experience that the iPad 2 delivers. Nevertheless, Galaxy Tab 750 turns out to be a nice sequel to the original Galaxy Tab and remains one of the top buys in the market. How long it'll be able to retain that position is something that remains to be seen.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 Review

Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 Review

Reviewed by: William Harrel Review Date: October 2011

Uncle! We certainly can’t complain about a lack of selection in the tablet market anymore. In the year and a half since the introduction of the original Apple iPad, handheld slates—an ever-increasing assortment of them—have popped up like digital daffodils. Every week, it seems, we see slicker, faster, and lighter machines that cost less and do more. We’ve gone from slim pickings to, quite frankly, too many tough choices. Samsung has made more than its share of impressive contributions to this market. Its 10-inch Galaxy Tab 10.1 ranks among our favorite tablets. Hence, we weren’t surprised by how much we liked the company’s newest, and slightly smaller, offering, the $469 Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9. The Galaxy Tab 8.9 comes in two configurations: a $469 model with 16GB of RAM (that's one we reviewed), and a 32GB version for $100 more. This new slate doesn’t offer any groundbreaking new features versus the 10.1-inch model. Instead, it combines several proven options and brings them together in a small, light, thin, and stylish device. Nothing is perfect, though, and we weren’t thrilled with all of Samsung’s configuration choices. For example, rather than providing an HDMI port for viewing the tablet’s media content on a high-definition (HD) monitor or television, the Galaxy Tab 8.9 relies on Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) to achieve that. Relying solely on DLNA significantly limits users' viewing options. (We'll talk more about DLNA later in this review.) In addition, the Galaxy Tab 8.9’s only data port is a proprietary USB 2.0 jack, which doubles as the power connection for charging the battery. It has no onboard SD-card slot or other flash-card readers. Instead, it relies on adapters that, as you'll see, are clumsy and far from an ideal solution. Overall, though, we liked the Galaxy Tab 8.9's ultra-slim and light design. We found it very responsive and comfortable to hold and use, and as with its predecessors, the screen is nothing short of gorgeous...     Design Taking the Galaxy Tab 8.9 out of its box, we were surprised and delighted by its ultra-thin (0.34-inch) and light (1-pound) chassis. In addition, the unconventional 8.9-inch screen makes for a slightly smaller tablet than the biggest ones on the market, without compromising much on the overall screen size. At 9.1 inches wide and 6.2 inches high, this model is easier to hold for long periods than the full-size 10-inch tablets. As comfortable as the Galaxy Tab 8.9 is to hold, though, the 9.4-inch Sony Tablet S, with its wedge design, feels even better in the hand. Still, the Galaxy Tab 8.9's narrower width makes typing in landscape orientation easier, since you don't have to stretch your thumbs so far to reach the center keys. This slate feels light in your hands, while at the same time exuding sturdy, durable construction. The simplicity of its design—the lack of buttons on the front, an understated front camera lens, and an otherwise empty, uncluttered bezel—gives it an overall appearance of modest elegance. In fact, the Galaxy Tab 8.9 has very few buttons and ports anywhere on the body. Across the top (if you're holding it in landscape orientation), you'll find only a power button, the volume controls, an audio jack, and the pinhole microphone inlet...     On the bottom are the combination USB 2.0/power port (it's a proprietary design) and the openings for the tablet's two speakers...      That's all there is around the edges. You’ll find a 2-megapixel camera on the front face, centered in the top bezel. There is also a 3-megapixel camera, equipped with an autofocus feature and its own flash, on the back...       We tried the front camera in a couple of Voice over IP (VoIP) and video calls, and we were impressed with the smooth frame rate and overall picture clarity. The rear camera, though, is the one that's loaded with options. Similar to a good digital camera, it tries to find the face of the subject in the shot, centers on it, and automatically focuses itself. You can set the flash to Auto Flash so that the camera decides when to use it, or you can tell it to flash on every shot. In addition, a host of of settings control picture quality (such as Scene Mode, White Balance, and Metering), and you can even apply a few special effects to your shots (Sepia, Grayscale, and Negative). The pictures and short movie clips we shot with the rear camera were quite good, at least compared with the ho-hum results we've seen from most tablet and smartphone cameras. The pictures and videos were clear, and the color reproduction was accurate. Granted, the Galaxy Tab 8.9 is not an 8-megapixel high-definition powerhouse, but it more than gets the job done for a tablet. While the cameras are overachievers, the physical connectivity is not quite as adept. The Galaxy Tab 8.9 lacks a few ports and slots that are important (perhaps even critical) to some users, such a flash-card reader, a miniature or standard USB port, and HDMI ports. To compensate, Samsung offers several accessories. To expand storage, for instance, you can purchase a $29.99 SD-card adapter or a $19.99 USB flash-memory adapter. A drawback to this approach is that these devices plug into the charging port, which means you have to disconnect them to charge the tablet. We can envision several inconvenient situations that would result from this, such as the inability to play movies from the adapters while the Galaxy Tab 8.9 is charging. You might find yourself juggling content on and off of the memory adapters—not exactly the seamless experience we were hoping for. We consider the lack of an HDMI port on the device a semi-serious exclusion. Relying on DLNA to push and pull content from TVs and other devices assumes that the user has the latest networkable, DLNA-ready electronics. (If you're one to always have the latest and greatest gizmos, this is a non-issue for you, but many folks don't keep up.) For those who don't have a networkable TV, Samsung offers a $34.99 dock for the Galaxy Tab 8.9 that has an HDMI pass-through on it. Using this dock allows you to connect the Galaxy Tab 8.9 to your TV, but it would have been nicer to have the port right on the tablet, say, for use when you're away from home. Features In touch interfaces, we're seeing a fairly new trend, started by Microsoft on smartphones with Windows Phone 7, and continuing, it appears, in the upcoming Windows 8. (See our impressions of the Windows 8 Developer Preview edition.) Rather than providing just the icons for specific apps, these interfaces display live content in "tiles." In other words, your weather-app tile displays up-to-date weather information, your Twitter-app tile displays the most current tweets, your Facebook tile displays recent newsfeed data, and so on. As long as your tablet is connected to the Internet, these tiles update regularly, displaying the most current information associated with a particular app. Samsung has adopted these in the Galaxy Tab 8.9, calling them "Live Panels." You can create Live Panels for nearly all of your apps, and you can create multiple pages of panels. You can also mix-and-match Live Panels with the usual, static app icons and widgets. When you use Live Panels in conjunction with Samsung's TouchWiz (a user interface that allows you to resize, drag, and drop icons, widgets, and Live Panels with your fingers), you can create highly customized home screens. These screens not only provide quick access to your apps and data, but they also keep you informed without having to open specific apps to get the most current information...        As we mentioned, the Galaxy Tab 8.9 supports DLNA, which allows you to push and pull content to and from other networked DLNA devices (such as Windows PCs, Macs, TVs, and DVD and Blu-ray players) through Samsung's AllShare app and platform. Although AllShare works with any DLNA-compliant device, the AllShare platform provides additional functionality when used with Samsung appliances that also support AllShare. (These include certain Samsung networkable Smart TVs.) For example, you can stream just about anything on the tablet, including a Web browser, straight to a Samsung Smart TV. We didn't have such a Samsung TV (or any other DLNA-capable HDTV, for that matter) to test this. But in this screenshot of the interface, you can see the TV icon above the photo, allowing you to output the content to another display...       If you don't have a Samsung Smart TV, AllShare works just like any other DLNA client, allowing you to share content to and from other networked DLNA-compliant devices. When we fired up AllShare, it automatically found all of the DLNA devices on our wireless network, including the PCs, Macs, and several other tablets and smartphones. Within a few seconds, we were playing media from these devices on the Galaxy Tab 8.9, as well as streaming content to them from the tablet. DLNA is not new technology, but Samsung's AllShare app sure makes it a lot easier to use. Speaking of easy, the Galaxy Tab 8.9's Social Hub app brings your e-mail and social-media accounts together in one app, providing a list of all new activity in one easy-to-use screen. It supports e-mail, including Microsoft Exchange servers, as well as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Once you've got it configured, you can put the Social Hub widget, which displays a current list of all new e-mails, Facebook updates, tweets and LinkedIn comments, on your home screen...      Using Social Hub, you can view activity in all these locations without having to open their respective apps—unless, of course, you see something you want to respond to or examine more closely. Then, you simply touch the item in question and fire off your response. The ability to sync with Exchange servers is just one of enterprise-level functions supported by the Galaxy Tab 8.9. The tablet can encrypt Exchange data during the sync operation, keeping it secure. The tablet also comes with Cisco's WebEx conferencing app, allowing you to attend electronic meetings right from your tablet. In addition, if you lose your Galaxy Tab 8.9, the FindMyMobile app tracks it and displays its whereabouts on a map. You can also use FindMyMobile to lock the device from afar, which will prevent unauthorized access while your tablet is out of your possession. You can also delete information stored on the tablet remotely—yet another way to keep critical personal or business information safe from prying eyes. Several other apps on the tablet are worth mentioning. One, Samsung's Media Hub, provides access to thousands of popular movies, while the parallel Music Hub lets you download music from a catalog consisting of millions of songs. Likewise, the Readers Hub lets you purchase and read electronic books, newspapers, and magazines from Samsung's online library. You can share this content with other devices without paying additional download fees, so long as the other device is made by Samsung. On the getting-things-done side, Samsung pre-installs Polaris Office on the Galaxy Tab 8.9. This "app suite" allows you to view, edit, and create Microsoft Office Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations in Office 97, 2003, or 2007 formats. This is a full version—you don't have to pay to make it fully functional. Samsung also includes many other apps and utilities to get you started, such as an Amazon Kindle reader, a YouTube app, and a nifty Photo Editor app. The last comes in very handy in concert with the good onboard cameras. It lets you make image corrections, such as adjusting color saturation, brightness, and contrast, as well as crop and resize images. You can also apply special-effect filters, such as Blur, Motion, and Frames. Photo Editor is no Photoshop, but we think the ability to make these kinds of edits to images right from your tablet is a handy feature. If you need additional apps, you can always download them from Google's Android Market, which contains hundreds of thousands of free and low-cost ones. You can also find apps at the Samsung Apps market site. According to Samsung, Samsung Apps is “a marketplace designed to provide a variety of mobile applications especially developed and carefully selected for Samsung mobile devices." As of this writing (early October 2011), this service was fairly new and not yet fully developed. All the apps were free when we looked, but Samsung says it will be adding paid apps soon. Performance The Galaxy Tab 8.9 runs version 3.1 of the Android operating system (a.k.a. Honeycomb) on a 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor (a dual-core ARM Cortex chip). Graphics are handled by an 8.9-inch capacitive-touch screen, with a native resolution of 1,280x800. Our test unit performed on a par with other Android devices we've tested with similar configurations. Interestingly, it outperformed the Galaxy Tab 10.1 (which has the same resolution) on many of our tests. For example, on our An3DBench test, which measures 3D-graphics capabilities, the Galaxy Tab 8.9 scored 7,740, while the Galaxy Tab 10.1 scored slightly lower (7,585). Both tablets beat the Android-tablet average on this test (7,120) handily. The Galaxy Tab 8.9's score of 31.3 on the CPU-intensive single-thread Linpack for Android test was also above the Android average of 28.3, but well behind the Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101's score of 42.8, and the Acer Iconia Tab A500's 42.6. Both of those tablets use the same processor that the Galaxy Tab 8.9 does. On the other hand, we often see tablets with this processor drop below 30, as well, such as the Sony Tablet S, which scored 29.4. On the multi-threaded version of the Linpack for Android test, which taxes multiple cores of a processor, our test unit scored 54.6—again, middle of the road. The Galaxy Tab 8.9 also ran with the pack on our SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, which measures JavaScript processing speed inside the tablet's native browser. Its score of 2,039 was slightly ahead of most other Android tablets, but not by much. (On this test, a lower score is better.) By comparison, the Sony Tablet S scored 2,202 on this test. We also ran our game-simulation test, GUIMark 2. Here, the Galaxy Tab 8.9 scored 32 frames per second (fps), which was 2fps to 5fps faster than most Android tablets running the same processor and OS. (Among all of the tablets we've tested, only the Acer Iconia Tab A500 and its score of 39.1fps was faster.) Our test unit also performed well on our SpeedTest.net test, which measures Wi-Fi download and upload speeds. It consistently downloaded at over 20,000Kbps and uploaded at over 5,000Kbps. Very few tablets we've tested performed this well, especially Android-based ones. We then ran our Boot Time Test, which measures the time from when we push the power button to when the tablet becomes usable. Our test unit's score of 31 seconds placed it roughly smack-dab in the middle of the tablets-we've-tested pack. TheToshiba Thrive 10 Tablet's 24-second time was the best we've seen on this test. The Galaxy Tab 8.9's score was indeed better than the Android-tablet average (36 seconds), but most Android tablets we've tested haven't come close to the Apple iPad 2's field-leading boot time of 22 seconds. The iPad 2 also consistently lasts nearly twice as long (14 hours and 22 minutes) as Android slates do on our Battery Rundown Test. (In this test, we play a movie on repeat until the tablet dies.) The Galaxy Tab 8.9 lasted 7:32 on this trial, a quarter-hour longer than the Android-tablet average (7:17). Interestingly, Android tablets based on the same processor and OS score all over the board on this test. The Galaxy Tab 10.1's 9:26 beat out its smaller sibling by nearly two hours, and Motorola's Xoom lasted 9:40. All of these numbers aside, the bottom line is that the Galaxy Tab 8.9 performs as expected for a tablet running its hardware and operating system. More important than small differences in benchmark-test scores is the overall user experience, such as how fast pages load and how responsive the screen is to touch gestures—the things that make a tablet pleasant to use. From that perspective, the Galaxy Tab 8.9 is winner on all accounts. We liked using this slate. Conclusion As we noted at the start of this review, we're drowning in a sea of new Android tablets, with new models often topping each other in features in rapid succession. Plus, Amazon's upcoming tablet, the Kindle Fire, could be a market disruptor at the low end when it debuts later this fall. (See our preview of the Amazon Kindle Fire.) The fact that the Galaxy Tab 8.9 still manages to stand out is to Samsung's credit. This tablet is attractive, powerful, and portable, and its slightly smaller form makes it easier to carry around and more comfortable to use than most 10-inch tablets. Since it has the same 1,200x800 native resolution as the larger slates, you don’t really give up much by going with its slightly smaller screen. We're not thrilled with some of Samsung's connectivity compromises, however. Leaving out the HDMI port, for example, prohibits many users from displaying content on HDTVs (without the optional multimedia dock, that is). And the lack of a flash-card slot makes getting high-quality images onto the tablet a bit cumbersome. However, without these design choices, this tablet might not have been as thin, attractive, or comfortable to use as it is. On the flip side, you get plenty of versatility with this device, thanks to its support for both the Android Market and Samsung’s App Store, not to mention the very useful apps that Samsung includes for free. Overall, the Galaxy Tab 8.9 is another tablet winner from Samsung, delivering a fine balance of size, aesthetics, features, and performance.

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Galaxy Tab 10.1 Review: The best Android has to offer

 

The Samsung Galaxy Tab tops the list of Android tablets, but still falls short of the iPad 2. (Courtesy of Samsung)The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is available in stores across the country today, and it seems the company has offered the best Android tablet on the market.

The hardware on the tablet is great; it’s sleek and light with a great screen and is easily the best Android tablet I’ve played with so far. But what I — and non-Apple manufacturers, apparently — keep running up against is the iPad question. With the number of applications designed for tablets on Android, there’s just no comparison.

Through no fault of Samsung’s, head-to-head, this tablet isn’t the iPad 2’s equal — though it comes closer than anything else I’ve seen out there.

Price: The 32 GB version of the WiFi tablet will be $599; the 16 GB version will be $499. Samsung provided a 16GB version for this review. Verizon is already taking pre-orders for a 3G version of the tablet, due out sometime this summer. The LTE version will be $529.99 for 16GB and $629.99 for 32GB.

Specs: The Galaxy Tab has a 10.1 inch-screen, an NVDIA Tegra 2 dual-core 1 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, weighs 1.3 pounds and is .33 inches thick. It has a 2MP front-facing camera, a 3MP rear-facing camera with an LED flash. The tablet runs Honeycomb, Google’s Android 3.1 tablet-optimized OS with more Samsung TouchWiz features planned in the future.

Speed: No complaints here. The boot-up time on the tablet is great, The dual-core processor does its job, loading Web pages, playing video, and I never had a problem running multiple apps at once. Even graphics-intensive games ran well and looked great with no noticeable lag.

Ease of Use: The Honeycomb interface has fixed a ton of bugs with its latest update, making the Galaxy Tab 10.1 more stable than its nearest competitor, the Motorola Xoom. Samsung is going to add some more elements of its TouchWiz user interface to the tablet at a later date, but right now the Tab is running a pretty pure version of Honeycomb.

The speakers on the Galaxy Tab were fine, if a bit tinny. I wouldn’t make it my primary way to listen to music, but it at least managed to keep from being annoying when watching YouTube videos. And the tablet has a great screen that, while a tad oversaturated at times, makes it a very watchable device.

Video did seem to give the battery life a hit — I got about 6 hours of battery life out of the tablet when I watched a lot of video, compared to about 8 hours when I used it for lighter fare.

I tend to like smaller tablets that fit well in a purse or pocket, but even with the larger screen size, the tablet was light enough that I almost forgot that I was carrying it around in my briefcase. Its slim profile made it easy to slip into larger bags and it survived some quality time thrown in with my keys without a scratch.

Versatility: As with every Android tablet, this is the weak point for the Galaxy Tab. There just simply aren’t enough apps that look great on the tablet in the ever-growing Android Market. Until the Android Market catches up to the Apple App Store, Android tablets just aren’t competitive with the iPad.

The Tab does have pretty good cameras, however, setting it apart from most tablets I’ve tried. Your pictures still aren’t going to be stellar, but at least they won’t be grainy. As for the camera software, the Tab offers some good editing options. The video is nothing to write home about and suffers from the lack of a zoom option.

The Galaxy Tab also has a problem when it comes to ports — it just doesn’t have any. Okay, that’s not entirely true, since the tablet comes with its own proprietary 30-pin dock connector and a headphone jack, but that’s all it’s got to offer. No USB, no HDMI and no SD card slot, as Ipointed out in my first impressions, means that Samsung missed an opportunity to get one over on the iPad.

Bottom Line: If you’re looking for the best Android tablet, this is the device for you. But if you’re looking for the best overall tablet, the iPad 2 is still king.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 details leak

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 details leak

A video purporting to be a teaser trailer for Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Tab 2 has leaked out, offering a glimpse at what the company may be planning for its follow up Android tablet.

The original Galaxy Tab was well-received, if somewhat expensive, offering a powerful alternative to Apple's popular iPad in a 7in form factor. Its successor keeps the same size, but looks to improve on the original in almost every way.

Although Samsung has yet to confirm details of the device, it is rumoured to feature a high-resolution display - with claims that it will feature the Super AMOLED promised for the original Galaxy Tab but swapped out for a more readily available LCD panel at the last moment - along with a dual-core ARM-based processor, thought to be either one of Samsung's own models or the increasingly popular Tegra 2 platform from graphics specialist Nvidia.

The display will be protected by Corning's tough Gorilla Glass, and the device is also thought to include integrated 3G connectivity alongside 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and the latest version of the Bluetooth standard. 1GB of RAM, up to 64GB of storage, and a raft of sensors - including accelerometer, gyroscope, electronic compass, and even a barometer.

The leaked details include the claim that the rear camera will feature an 8 megapixel sensor with dual LED flash and feature 1080p high-definition video recording capabilities, along with a front-mounted 3 megapixel camera for video calls.

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