Hasta La Gadget!

Across the pond, lucky Europeans are waking up to the opportunity to buy Samsung’s overpriced Galaxy Tab. The Android 2.2 3G tablet is on sale today, and can be had on the 3 network at a confusion of different prices.

These tariffs come from Carphone Warehouse, as good a place as any to choose for pricing as it sells phones from all carriers. On a monthly plan, the cheapest handset price is £99 (£159) if you you sign up for two years at £40 ($64) per month. That gets you 5GB of bandwidth, which isn’t bad.

If you pay the full whack of £500 ($800) you can opt for a £10-per-month ($16) contract-free data-plan. It rolls along like any other plan, automatically renewing itself until canceled, and gives you 1GB of bandwidth to use.

Finally, the raw, no-nothing handset price is $529, or $850. That, if you’re counting, is $21 more than the most expensive iPad, with 64GB storage. To be fair, this compares the rather expensive Pound Sterling prices back to the iPad in dollars, but even in Blighty the Tab costs the same as the 16GB Wi-Fi iPad.

If anything, this head-to-head pricing will really show us if the bigger Tab can be as popular as its multi-million-selling little brother, the Galaxy Tab S. We hope so. The Tab is the first real rival to the iPad we have seen yet.

Samsung Galaxy Tab product page [Carphone Warehouse]

See Also:

• Samsung Galaxy Tab: Cheaper Than iPad, But Not Really
• Official: Samsung Galaxy Tab $600 on Verizon
• Samsung Introduces 7-Inch Tablet to Rival iPad
• Samsung Tablet to Debut on Big Four U.S. Carriers
• Gadget Lab Podcast: iPods, Apple TV and Samsung's Galaxy Tab …

We played devil’s advocate with Verizon’s $599 Galaxy Tab, but it looks like the T-Mobile version of Samsung’s Android 2.2 tablet is going to cost a Benjamin more — it’s ringing up at $699.99 right now at Amazon unsubsidized. If we were you, we’d wait and see what kind of deals can be had in-store come November 10th, but if you simply must have one immediately you’ll be able to use it with one of Magenta’s standard mobile broadband plans. $25 a month gets you 200MB with 10-cent-per-megabyte overage fees, whereas $40 buys you unlimited use with a 5GB speed cap, and you can purchase blocks of prepaid data an 100MB, 300MB and 1GB increments at the usual rates. It’s a bit of a shame we’re paying the price of a decent laptop for a seven-inch smartphone sans cellular calls… but you didn’t really need that rent money, right?

T-Mobile’s Galaxy Tab available for preorder at Amazon, costs $699 unsubidized originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Oct 2010 16:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Android Community  |  Amazon  | Email this | Comments

$599 is a bit pricey for a seven-inch tablet, and while you can get $200 off that at some places by signing your life away to a data contract, that really isn’t any fun either. Thankfully Samsung appears to have another option with what looks to be the $499, WiFi-only model that showed up in a Best Buy flier earlier this week. That version has now been cleared by the FCC, indeed with only tests for 802.11 and Bluetooth wireless. The absence of 3G looks like it will save you $100 and obviously make the device a little less flexible than its bar-bearing brethren, but whether that modified cost:inconvenience ratio works out in your favor depends largely on the value of your income:restlessness factor.

WiFi-only Galaxy Tab stops by the FCC for tea originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Oct 2010 07:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink SlashGear  |  FCC  | Email this | Comments

It’s the year of the tablets as electronics makers rush to get one of the hottest gadgets of the year into the hands of users. Acer is the latest to announce it will launch a new line of tablets.

The devices will be introduced in New York on November 23 and will be priced ranging from $300 to $700, according to a Dow Jones Newswires report.

Acer tablets will join a crowded and extremely competitive market. Since the launch of the Apple iPad in April, most major electronics makers have announced their own devices to take on the iPad. So far, Apple has sold more than 4.3 million iPads.

In June, Dell launched a 5-inch tablet called Streak, while Samsung recently debuted a 7-inch device called the Galaxy Tab. Meanwhile, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion’s tablet Playbook is expected to hit stores next year.

Separately, T-Mobile has said it will offer the Samsung Galaxy Tab for $400 (after a rebate) and with a two-year service agreement. It is similar to Sprint’s pricing for the device. Verizon has said it will sell the Galaxy Tab for $600 without a contract.

Acer might try to ink a similar deal but it will have to do more in terms of product features to stand out. Acer hasn’t said if the new tablets will be based on Windows or Android OS.

But one thing’s likely–Acer is going to find it hard to see the same kind of success in the tablet market that it has with netbooks.

See Also:

• Tablet Catalogs Rethink Casual Page-Flipping
• Why 2010 Will Be the Year of the Tablet
• Why India’s $35 Tablet May Be Just a Dream
• Build Your Own Tablet for $400
• How the Tablet Will Change the World

Photo: Acer Aspire in slate form (arabani/Flickr)

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, one of the first tablets to contend with the iPad, is getting multiple price tags.

Samsung on Monday confirmed that Sprint will sell the 7-inch Galaxy Tab for $400 with a two-year contract. Incidentally, a leaked Best Buy brochure hints that the retailer will sell a Wi-Fi-only Galaxy Tab for $500. And last week, Verizon said it would offer a contract-free version of the Galaxy Tab for $600. The Galaxy Tab goes on sale mid-November.

At first glance, these prices seem competitive with Apple’s iPad, but they’re not that impressive. Sprint’s pricing for the Galaxy Tab is a raw deal: It will cost you $400, but you’ll pay at least an additional $720 over the two-year contract. (Apple’s 3G iPad is contract-free, so you can activate cellular data whenever you need to use it, and opt out when you don’t.)

Verizon’s $600, contract-free Galaxy Tab and Best Buy’s $500 Wi-Fi appear to match the pricing of the iPad. (The iPad costs $500 for its Wi-Fi only model, and the 3G model starts at $630 without a contract.) However, the iPad has a bigger screen and more apps.

The pricing of the Galaxy Tab only proves Steve Jobs’ point. Apple’s CEO said in an earnings call last week that other manufacturers were having difficulty producing tablets at a competitive price with the iPad.

Jobs also pronounced 7-inch tablets “dead on arrival,” arguing that their screen size was too small for a good touchscreen software experience. However, that’s up for debate; we’ll have to wait to see the consensus when the Galaxy Tab finally ships in November.

See Also:

• Official: Samsung Galaxy Tab $600 on Verizon
• Video: Samsung Galaxy Tab Caught in the Wild
• Samsung Introduces 7-Inch Tablet to Rival iPad

Photo courtesy of Samsung