1000 Words written on a mobile PC setup weighing less than 1KG, costing less than €1000
I’ll be taking four rigs on the road over the weekend (Starting Saturday) and testing them to see what works best. We’ve got four sets of kit lined up for the test:
Exclusive! Tega V2 Tablet PC arrives in Europe on Friday
Toshiba AC100 ‘Smart Book’
Viliv X70 7 inch Windows Tablet Winner of our 2009 awards.
TBA
Call for help
As you can see, I’ve got one position open at the moment. I’m aiming for a lightweight 7 inch Android Tablet although the options aren’t too good at the moment. The Viewpad 7 and Camangi FM600 and Archos 70 aren’t available. The SmartQ T7 3G is here but the OTG option for attaching a keyboard isn’t working. I’m also looking at the ultra low cost Archos 7 HT, the Smartbook Surfer, WITS A81 and a few others includiong the Galaxy Tab which is available in Germany now. If anyone in Germany has got a 7 inch Android tablet they can loan me for the weekend (one that works with a USB keyboard) I’d be interested to hear from you.
Or should I just order a Galaxy Tab from Amazon? Anyone care to sponsor that ;-)
If I don’t manage to get a 7 inch Android tablet I have the Viliv S7 ready for action it’s still one of the best mini laptops around.
Interesting news from Samsung Germany as they issued a press release yesterday stating that the Samsung Galaxy Tab [specifications] is available ‘from now.’ (Via Netbooknews)
We hadn”t heard of any immediate availability and the price is still a recommended 799 although street prices, as predicted have hit 650 Euro.
Checking the blogs though shows that our local friends at AndroidPIT managing to get hold of a Tab. Lucky boys! The first impressions are: ‘Geil’ which is somewhere between ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ – both in a very positive way!
We’re wondering whether to drop in on them at the weekend and buy them a beer!
JKK, Sascha and Chippy live from IFA with a round-up of the mobile tech news. Tablet and Netbooks feature heavility in this episode. Galaxy Tab, Viewsonic, Samsung N350 and more…
Netbooks
Over to New York for a $99 netbook.
Acer D255
Why No News!
Windows tablets, UMPCs.
Eking M5 Slide/tilt. 1,2Ghz
Rumor that UMID have closed down.
WeTab nearly ready to launch.
Windpad 100.
Libretto W100/W105. Unboxing Wow-Pow.
Smart Devices.
HP WebOS Tablet 2011
Toshiba Android in Sept-Oct
Droid Pro (vs Epic 4G?)
Motorola Tablet?
Verizon Chrome OS Tablet – Why Chrome / What is Chrome OS?
Pile of china tablets.. some with hacked market
Samsug Galaxy Tab to be unveiled in Berlin. Vodafone in UK. Full Android+Google solution? Price?
Smartbook Surfer. 179 Euro. = Augen GenTouch78. Problems with Market.
BlackPad – $499? November? OS Custom layer.
HTC Slider for Verizon in 2011. (Looks like N9.) linky?
No. I’m not talking about carrier ‘discounts’ I’m talking about retail discounts. Real, no-strings attached, cash on the (internet) counter deals. My favorite pricing search engine is coming up with some interesting prices across the EU.
In Germany we’re obviously starting at 799 Euros. Amazon set the bar and everyone else has followed suit so far. (Geizhals link) My guess is that no-one has actually negotiated a price with Samsung Germany yet (Samsung won’t fix a price until after meeting all of their potential customers at IFA obviously) but have put the RRP up to catch out some early fans. Tip: I saw MediaMarkt (THE big electronic chain store in Germany) in the Samsung customer lounge at IFA. They were huddled with Samsung suits and a lot of spreadsheets. Wait until the MediaMarkt price is announced before making a move in Germany.
Update: Just a few hours after we posted this, a German mobile phone retailer is offering the Galaxy Tab for 649 Euros. A 579 price was posted earlier but the sales page appears to have been removed.
In the UK things are different. They have already hit 599 pounds which is 726 Euros. That’s still expensive and above the early street price of 600 Euro we were talking about a few days ago but how does 630 Euros grab you? One retailer in Austria is offering it for that price today. The pre-tax price is just 525.03 Euro. (Link to latest pricing at Geizhals.at) Other Austrian retailers are also discounting heavily.
I’ll raise a little flag at this point and say ‘warning’ because retailers tend to play a lot of games on these price comparison engines but clearly the competition is already big on the Galaxy Tab and our predictions are looking spot on. We’ll re-visit this in a weeks time.
After our hands-on with the Galaxy Tab we couldn’t resist a few benchmark tests. In the video below you’ll see the Sunspider test which is a single-threaded test. For reference we’ve seen 9000ms on the iPad and just under that on Tegra 2 (with Android 2.1) A netbook comes in at about 2000ms. The Galaxy Tab? About 7500ms showing that the a single CPU core (we’re not 100% on the CPU details yet we suspect a single Cortex A9 core at the moment.)
Next up you’ll see the Quadrant test that we ran on the Tegra 2 platform this week. On the Toshiba AC100 we saw a very impressive score of 1911 which is one amazing score. Remember the Quadrant test is a CPU, 2D and 3D test so it tests more than just the CPU. On the Galaxy Tab we saw a score of 1064. That might sound a lot less than the Tegra2 platform but it’s more than the impressive Samsung Galaxy S!
After our hands-on with the Galaxy Tab we couldn’t resist a few benchmark tests. In the video below you’ll see the Sunspider test which is a single-threaded test. For reference we’ve seen 9000ms on the iPad and just under that on Tegra 2 (with Android 2.1) A netbook comes in at about 2000ms. The Galaxy Tab? About 7500ms showing that the a single CPU core (we’re not 100% on the CPU details yet – we suspect a single Cortex A9 core at the moment.)
Next up you’ll see the Quadrant test that we ran on the Tegra 2 platform this week. On the Toshiba AC100 we saw a very impressive score of 1911 which is one amazing score. Remember the Quadrant test is a CPU, 2D and 3D test so it tests more than just the CPU. On the Galaxy Tab we saw a score of 1064. That might sound a lot less than the Tegra2 platform but it’s more than the impressive Samsung Galaxy S!
We’ve managed to get some time with the Galaxy Tab at IFA and we’ve got pics, a video and some benchmarks following in the next post. It’s quite the looker, performer and a very good all-round tablet package.
Click to to see gallery
Fist impressions: Slick, fast, great weight/size ratio and Samsung have managed to include the Google applications AND their own app creations. The screen is sharp and, as expected actually, great quality with a contrast, brightness and ‘pop’ that we grew fond of with the Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC. Web sites loaded quickly and cleanly over 3G and capacative touch was smooth. Stereo speakers are loud and of good quality for the size. Another trick that Samsung performed on the Q1 Ultra!
We got an iPad and Dell Streak in for size comparisons and as you can see, it’s less than half the size of the iPad.
As for iPad and Dell Streak comparisons, I’m going to spend a few days thinking about it before I put any thoughts forward. We’ll get some more hands-on over the next few days and test out the Samsung apps and some applications from the Market. Stay tuned.
On to the hands-on video. [Uploading NOW! Update: Benchmark details to follow in next post.]
We’ve managed to get some time with the Galaxy Tab at IFA and we’ve got pics, a video and some benchmarks following in the next post. It’s quite the looker, performer and a very good all-round tablet package.
Click to to see gallery
Fist impressions: Slick, fast, great weight/size ratio and Samsung have managed to include the Google applications AND their own app creations. The screen is sharp and, as expected actually, great quality with a contrast, brightness and ‘pop’ that we grew fond of with the Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC. Web sites loaded quickly and cleanly over 3G and capacative touch was smooth. Stereo speakers are loud and of good quality for the size. Another trick that Samsung performed on the Q1 Ultra!
We got an iPad and Dell Streak in for size comparisons and as you can see, it’s less than half the size of the iPad.
As for iPad and Dell Streak comparisons, I’m going to spend a few days thinking about it before I put any thoughts forward. We’ll get some more hands-on over the next few days and test out the Samsung apps and some applications from the Market. Stay tuned.
On to the hands-on video. [Uploading NOW! Update: Benchmark details to follow in next post.]
In Mondays post I outlined the 1K challenge:
