Samsung has a new naming scheme for tablets this year. Understandably, the Samsung Galaxy Tab (the original Android tablet which came out last year) was called that because the Korean manufacturer did not have any other tablets in its portfolio. But now, with the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Galaxy Tab 8.9 announced, it was time to shake things up a bit.
Oh, and launch a successor to the original Galaxy Tab. That’s apparently just what Samsung plans to do in the near future, according to HDBlog.it. And that tablet will be called, predictably, the Galaxy Tab 7. Okay, enough about the name, which was almost obvious anyway.
What about features? Well, it looks like the Galaxy Tab 7 will be just a giant Samsung Galaxy S II, just like the original Galaxy Tab was basically a bigger version of the original Galaxy S. We’ll get to the innards of the tablet in a moment, but for now let’s let something sink in: it will run Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread.
Yes, Samsung plans to release a new tablet, in 2011 no less, running a version of Android designed for phones. Sure, Samsung is, in this regard, following in its own footsteps (think Galaxy Tab), but perhaps it really shouldn’t have. The Galaxy Tab wasn’t overly criticized for its choice of OS version because, frankly, there was nothing that Samsung could have done about that, except maybe not launch a tablet then at all. Google hadn’t finished Honeycomb when Samsung launched its first tablet, so that was understandable.
Samsung is apparently even going to make a big fuss of the Galaxy Tab 7′s phone features (which it will be able to have because it will run an OS version designed for phones). Because the first thing someone buying a tablet would want to do with it is place a phone call.
Spec-wise, the “giant Galaxy S II” image comes to mind. The tablet is said to have a 1.2 GHz dual-core Samsung Exynos processor, 1 GB of RAM, 2 GB of ROM, 16 GB of internal storage space, microSD card support, a proprietary connector with USB host capability, a 7-inch WSVGA touchscreen (just like the original Galaxy Tab), an IPS panel, and it will have TouchWiz 4 on board, which is described as being “halfway between Honeycomb and the Galaxy S II’s TouchWiz”. So supposedly a more tablet-optimized TouchWiz to make up for the OS version there, a la HTC’s Flyer with its tabletized Sense UI.
The new Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 will be released this fall (or autumn, if you’re not in the US). We’re still hoping that Samsung will have a last-minute change of heart and launch it with Honeycomb on board. Or wait for Ice Cream Sandwich to arrive. We’ll see.
