A whole new Galaxy

Amongst the hundred tech company crowding our world I always liked Samsung. Many Samsung’s product I had surprised me in positive way earning them a not neutral aptitude towards them. Nevertheless I was not thrilled about their newborn tablet project and I even overlooked previews, blogs and news regarding it.

Since Apple (who else?) refreshed the not-so-new-and-magical tablet concept with the iPad there was a spawning of too much tablets. None of them catch my imagination.
Call me Apple hateboy, but I see no magical anything in the iPad. I think an e-book reader like the new Kindle is a thousand time better reading device than the iPad and color magazines are too small bonus to let me pay the huge difference between the two. Browsing, messaging, e-mailing, chatting and almost everything that is now popping in my mind, could be done much more easily on my home desktop PC’ 19 inch display than crammed in a tiny display (I know what I say, I own a 10 inch netbook too…) with the added malus of not having a full size keyboard (I type with all my fingers, reverting to one finger or two fingers typing is not something I seek).
On the mobile side, I see no big advantage of a tablet over a good mobile phone. It could be a good solution for a first class airline traveler but being a daily train commuter, I’m sometime forced to stand in a crowded corridor. I couldn’t see myself holding a large tablet to surf the Internet. Just to clarify, I wrote this post while standing on a shaky train using my phone; doing the same holding a tablet would be impossible.
I do not hate tablets: their business case simply do not fits my needs. I prefer using a mobile phone rather than a extra-huge iPod/iPhone clone. I admit that the tiny three inch Xperia screen is not the best one could find, but I’ll still save those 700 euros for buying an iPhone4 rather than a tablet. At least you do not need a bag to carry it around. I’m not scared by the size of a device; since the beginning of mobile computing I carried around an HP Jornada 720 first and a Dell Axim X51v later (that’s why the blocky look of Xperia X1 is not scaring my pockets). Nevertheless all of them were still fitting my pockets without odd solutions (joking or not).

During my daily scavenging in the third millennium of knowledge (i.e. Internet) i found a preview of the new GalaxyPad and glanced at it with the usual “uhm, another tablet” approach I adopted from the release of iPad: “… 1GHz processor, 7″ display, 1.3MP camera… Hey, what the f**k… a 7″ display? I have a seven inch portable DVD player and it’s display is not SO big”.
I, then, re-read the whole article with a better focus and I discovered what was probably obvious to the whole world except me: The GalaxyTab is not a tablet. It’s more a large mobile phone.
Ok, said this way is less sexy and will make Samsung people shout at me, but, damn, it’s a phone. A big, shiny, full feature phone. It also has Android 2.2 on it. If you read all the specs without considering the screen size line, you’ll see a smartphone coming out, not a sub PC thing smuggled as “tablet”.
Damn, I like it. My smartphone usage is 99,5% Internet browsing, chatting, e-mailing, messaging and 0,5% phone calling. My Xperia is handling all of it like a breeze but a seven inch thing could do the trick and still being pocketable. I could see it used in my car as navigation equipment or used at home as always on video calling equipment. Its size is big enough without being cumbersome and the usage of a 4000mAh battery coupled with Android sounds really good choice for a all day long jack-of-all-trades equipment.
I’ll need to take a real glance at it and test it to being able to say the final word, but all I saw looks extremely promising. Just take a look on your own here.