I’m heading to New York for the official launch of Windows Phone 7, cohosted by Microsoft and AT&T, and will liveblog the news as it happens at technologizer.com/windowsphone7. There are still quite a few days about the phones that haven’t been announced, so it should be a good time–even if the rumors of tablet-related surprises don’t pan out.
Coverage begins at 9:30am (that’s eastern time, unlike most of our live events). Hope to see you there!
BGR–which isn’t an unimpeachable source, but one that sometimes gets stuff right early–says that it hears that the Sprint version of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab tablet will go on sale on November 14th for $399 with a two-year contract, or $599 without a subsidy.
The $399 price is $100 less than the cheapest flavor of iPad, but that’s not a very useful comparison, since the $499 iPad doesn’t have 3G and the Galaxy does. You want to compare the Galaxy against the cheapest 3G iPad, which goes for $629. And you want to compare against the $599 Galaxy, since the iPad is always sold unsubsidized, and lets you buy AT&T data at a reasonable price without committing to a contract.
Last week, I got to spend a half hour with Samsung’s Galaxy Tab in the back of the Los Angeles Convention Center. Samsung was sponsoring the World Cyber Games there, and had more than a dozen Tabs at its booth. I also fired some questions at Samsung representatives, mostly from readers who responded to my earlier blog post.
Read on for the answers, plus a few plus a few other observations on the Galaxy Tab that weren’t covered in Harry’s hands-on preview.
Over at Techland (where I’m guestblogging a couple of times a week–come visit!) I wrote about the tendency of lots of pundits to assume that the smartphone wars will inevitably repeat the PC wars, with Apple’s tightly-managed iPhone getting trounced by the widely-dispersed Android ecosystem. In the Techland post, I explain why I don’t think that’s a given. One big reason why is the existence of the Internet–if all phones end up being portals to an open-standards Net, there’s no particular reason why multiple platforms can’t thrive.
With bigger, traditional computers, we’re already largely there. For operating systems, the Web is a diplomatic place where it doesn’t really matter what OS you’re using as long as you’ve got a modern browser. And nearly all peripherals such as printers, cameras, and networking gizmos work equally well with Windows and Macs. It’s wildly different from the 1980s and 1990s, when the computing universe rotated around Microsoft’s platform and there were lots of things which Macheads simply could not do.
Last we heard about LG’s Android tablet, marketing vice president Chang Ma was promising that it’d be better than the iPad. Now, the tablet is reportedly on hold while LG looks for a better version of Google’s mobile operating system.
LG is squeamish about Android 2.2, also known as Froyo, an unnamed company official told Reuters, and is talking with Google to figure out the best version to run instead. Google’s director of mobile products, Hugo Barra, told TechRadar last month that Android 2.2 is “not optimized for use on tablets.” In all likelihood, LG will use Android 3.0, which is rumored to support tablets in earnest.
All of this puts Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, an Android 2.2 tablet and the de facto iPad rival of the moment, in an awkward position. Barra’s comments were embarrassing enough for Samsung, which plans to sell the Galaxy Tab through wireless carriers this holiday season. LG’s vote of no confidence in Froyo raises more red flags.
What this mainly comes down to, as Harry pointed out in his Galaxy Tab hands-on, is apps. Samsung has developed a batch of its own to make the best of a 7-inch display, but the Android Market offers only smartphones apps, enlarged to fill the screen or centered in the middle of a thick, black border. It’s not the ideal tablet experience, but it’s something.
The Galaxy Tab is a gambit. Samsung must be fully aware that soon after Google announces a tablet-friendly version of Android, the market’s going to be flooded with devices. To avoid becoming part of the pack, of which LG is now a part, Samsung is committed to firing first — optimized experience be damned.
David Spark is a veteran tech journalist and the founder of the firm Spark Media Solutions, which gives voice to companies by building their media network. Spark appeared on the last episode of Cranky Geeks this past week, and blogs regularly at Spark Minute. Follow him on Twitter @dspark.
A Couple weeks ago I attended the AppNation conference in San Francisco, an event for companies that create, distribute, and (try to) monetize mobile apps. (I was reporting on the event for Dice, the online job board for tech jobs). You can see a bunch of the videos I shot at the event at DiceOutLoud and DiceNews, but here’s a video showcasing some of the coolest apps I saw at the conference.
Hey, it’s been a long time since we’ve done a T-Grid–a very simple comparison chart comparing two at least vaguely comparable products spec-by-spec. Let’s do one on RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook and the iPad, shall we?
The point of a T-Grid is never to determine which product is better; it’s just to see how the specs stack up. From what we know so far, the PlayBook’s specs stack up rather well–it’s powerful, thin, and light, and has a robust OS in the venerable (if low-profile) QNX. But there are a few speeds and feeds that RIM hasn’t disclosed yet, and one particularly crucial fact remains unknown: How’s the battery life?
After the jump, the details we know so far.
Okay, the BlackBerry PlayBook will have at least one third-party app: Amazon’s already announced Kindle for it.
It’s always dangerous to judge a new tech product from a demo. It’s even more dangerous to judge one from a canned video and a features list. But here at BlackBerry DevCon in San Francisco, RIM just showed a video of its BlackPad tablet–which turns out to be called the BlackBerry PlayBook, and which the company is calling “the first professional tablet”–and revealed some of the key specs. And from what we know so far, it looks mighty cool–like “this is the most interesting-sounding iPad rival so far” cool.
Here’s the video we just saw:
Sharp has announced two Android tablets. One has a screen that’s even smaller than the one on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab; the other has one that’s even bigger than the one on the iPad.
