Hasta La Gadget!

BARCELONA — Amid the fuss about Samsung’s new ten-inch Galaxy Tab and the Galaxy S 2 cellphone, an even more interesting product has gotten somewhat lost: A five-inch Wi-Fi-only mini-tablet, called the Galaxy S Wi-Fi 5.0.

The thin little media-player is somewhere between the already wrong-sized 7-inch Galaxy Tab and the regular Galaxy S cellphone, only without the phone or 3G parts of either. For such an odd product –- kind of like the too-tall, gawky girl from school –- it’s actually pretty great. The screen is way better for watching movies than the smaller display of, say, the iPod Touch, but despite the extra roominess it still slides easily into the back pocket of your jeans. And the screen isn’t far from the size of a dedicated e-reader like the Kindle, either.

I played with the Android-based mini-tablet and immediately liked it. It is very thin and light but suffers from none of the plasticky feel of the new tat-tastic Tab 10.1. Multi-touch response is fast, and as far as I could see under the bright show lights, the LCD display gives a very nice rendering of movies.

The Wi-Fi 5.0 also comes with a camera for Skype, and a phone-like speaker and mic setup for VoIP calling. And I have the feeling it would make an awesome Angry Birds machine.

One note. The picture up top shows the Tab Wi-Fi alongside a regular (Galaxy S) sized handset, for scale. What isn’t to scale is the hands that hold them: The kind girl on the Samsung booth that held the two for the photo has teeny hands.

Photo: Charlie Sorrel