If you didn't know there is a huge conference going on this week called Mobile World Congress. This is typically where some of the years biggest phones and tablets are announced. Last year Samsung made the biggest splash as they announced the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Samsung Galaxy S II. Needless to say these devices not only stole the show last year, but stole most of the sales as being one of the best tablets of last year and the best rated phone of last year. This year however Samsung said they would not be having major announcements because they would have their own press conference to launch their higher end products in the months following MWC.
Taking that into account Samsung has just announced two new tablets that have two different purposes. The means to take market share and while the other means to take a niche market. The first tablet is name the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1. Now while most of you may get excited by the name, this tablet is not meant to be a flagship, but rather a market share grabber. This tablet as can be seen in these pictures, is almost identical to the original Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 with few exceptions. It has lost it's led flash in the back and now only has a VGA front camera. It has gained larger stereo speakers that are now place on the front of the tablet instead of the sides and has also added the much desired micro sd card slot. Lastly of course it will come stock with Android 4.0. Now if you're confused by this tablet so far you might not be aware of Samsung's strategy. They plan to release this tablet, as well as the Galaxy Tab 2 7", at lower price points than their current tablets are. This is smart considering they essentially have the same specs that the current models do but will come in at $100 to $150 less than the current models do at normal price. It's a similar strategy to what Apple does with their older models to gain some sort of market share, but Samsung is just doing it right with a redesign.
Now the second tablet is a more notable one, yes pun intended. The second tablet is the Galaxy Note 10.1. This again is not meant to be a flagship model but more to attract a specific niche market, business people, students, and artist. This model is similar to the original Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, but adds a few hardware changes such as a dual core 1.4GHz processor, again bigger front stereo speakers, a micro sd card slot, will now also come in a 64GB (16GB and 32GB as well of course) and of course the Samsung S Pen. This is not really the selling point of this tablet however, no the selling point is the huge amount of software bundled into it.
First I will start with my personal favorite, Multiple Screens At The Same Time on a Tablet. Last year Samsung was the only tablet that allowed you to use "mini apps" while being on any screen or app on your tablet. This year they are bringing multiple screens entirely. If it will be a limited amount of apps that can be used at the same time remains to be seen, but so far Samsung is the only company that has brought multitasking to tablets. The second is their note taking app. Now this app has A LOT of templates, just to name a few, Notes, Cards, Diary, Recipes, Meeting Notes, Sketchbook etc. Like others before it you can also insert voice recordings, pictures and even videos. However the biggest part of this note taking app is that it will transcribe notes into text. Something which other manufacturers such as Lenovo have tried and failed at doing a good job at. This transcribing software does not only do words, but also math equations and shapes. The third piece comes from Adobe which is bundling in Adobe Photoshop Touch (by far the best photo editor on tablets) and Adobe Ideas (the best drawing app on tablets) and is making the two softwares to be optimized for the S Pen. Another upside is, besides all the Media Hubs that come with Samsung Tablets this will launch with it's new "Learning Hub" which will have access to purchasing over 6000 interactive textbooks for students to utilize. Lastly it will have a lot of apps made for the S Pen from cloud note taking, basic photo editing, beauty photo editing and crayon drawing. Here are some pictures from my favorite review site, Phone Arena.
On a closing note for those of you still wanting that insane phone or tablet from Samsung just wait. You have to realize that one of the keys to their fame last year was coming out after the iPad 2 and beating it at ever specification possible. With the iPad 2S/3 launch coming within the next two weeks it won't be too long before that one is outdone by Samsung's new flagship tablet.
Once Again, This is R-I-C-K-Y, The Android Guy.
