Verizon drops Samsung Galaxy Tab price to $499

Verizon has lowered the price of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 inch Android tablet to $499. If you purchased one at $599 within the last two weeks you can also hit up Verizon for a $100 refund.

What’s more, Verizon is giving $60 in free movie rental credit to new customers. You can use the credit with the Samsung Media Hub or the Blockbuster app that comes with the US version of the tablet.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab features a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor, a 1024 x 600 pixel display, 3G, Bluetooth and WiFi, front and rear-facing cameras, and runs Android 2.2. It’s probably the best Android tablet on the market today, but it’s also one of the most expensive — even after this price drop.

The new price isn’t showing up online yet, but Droid Life reports that it’s available in some Verizon stores — hopefully with more to come.

Posted on Saturday, January 1st, 2011, 2:48 pm by Brad Linder | 9 Comments

Guest 2

I just wonder how long carriers can continue to gouge consumers on
the various data plans for these Internet-connected devices. I believe I read somewhere (ZDnet?) that only around 15% of all iPads had a 3G
data plan.

The problem is exacerbateed by the so-called 4G technologies like LTE, which, given the same bucket of data as 3G for the same monthly charge, can theoretically use up a month’s allocation in a matter of as little as 2 hours or so.

So I’m wondering what use the movie credit mentioned in the article
will be. Already, Netflix video streaming is one of the biggest bandwidth
hogs on the Internet, and cause of the tiff between Comcast and Level 3 Communications (Level 3 hapens to be the primary outbound carrier of
Netflix content).

Unless the carriers come up with more generous data plans for the consumer, they may find fewer takers for their latest data plan offering.
That would sink their return on investment on their fancy new technologies.

They can start by coming up with family share type plans for data, where several devices can draw from a bucket of gigabytes, rather
than each device having its own data plan.

Additionally, the carriers can do something about the lopsided mismatch between the buckets in wired (250 or 500 GB data transfer per month) vs cellular (as litttle as a few hundred MB to a typical maximum of 5 GB data transfer per month).

Onerous overage charges can also be dropped in favor of throughput throttling once the monthly bandwidth cap is reached.

3G data plans can also come with free access to the carriers’ affiliated WiFi networks (which could be more extensive).

These and other steps need to be taken, otherwise, the carriers’ ads for data plans will just ring hollow.
gman

I’m on record with my feeling about tablet hype. With that said?

I’m personally waiting for the free toaster before I sign up for a Galaxy Tab.

Refunding money? Free movie rental credit also? Wow, sounds really desperate to me. Anyone else feel the same way?

There’s only one reason why they are doing this. It points to my theory as to why a lot of tablet manufacturers are “waiting” until mid 2011 before they launch anything. If these manufacturers release ebook readers, I really wonder who the heck would buy their higher priced tablets.

Quite honestly I’m looking forward to 2011 and seeing how all this shakes down. In fact it may well be worth a big ol laugh!
Scottg53

Not to offend anyone who likes these things, but for the life of me I can’t understand 1. Why would anyone pay $500. for it. 2 Why would anyone even want it to start with. Must just be me.
gman

Naw, it’s not just you thinking the same things. I just ask myself if I’m looking primarily for a color ereader, why would I spend an extra $300 for this, when there will be a color Kindle in the near future? Color e-ink will far surpass battery life and readability and price of these tablets. Again, as you suggest, who TF would pay $500 for capabilities that you really don’t need from the device. Not only that, but they are capabilities that come at the all important cost of BATTERY LIFE. Therein lies the conundrum. The tablet invasion could turn out to be the biggest bust of all time. Yes, a bust even bigger than Dolly Parton.
Anonymous

Three things you don’t seem to be considering…

A) Wireless doesn’t have anywhere near the bandwidth available, both speed and capacity, as Wired.

B) Cost of running Wireless is generally higher than Wired. Especially since it needs to cover more area than wired.

C) More people use Wireless than Wired and they’re starting to over load the system.

Many of those steps you mention are just to alleviate the problems but doesn’t get rid of them.

Strangely enough it’s services like text messaging that is more commonly price gouged, especially when you consider that it uses even less bandwidth than a simple voice call… Hard to beat unless you use a data plan while roaming…
Anonymous

Tablets can be used for a lot more than just reading. Like playing games, watching videos, surfing the web, draw/sketch, etc.

E-ink is more energy efficient, but even the upcoming color e-ink screens don’t yet have the refresh rates to watch videos properly or the full color range.

While battery life is always a problem, the more powerful a computer device then the shorter the battery run time will be. But price also goes up with performance.

You might as well ask why people spend thousands on laptops when they can just get cheap netbooks instead for just a few hundred instead.

There are simply things that e-Readers and even netbooks can’t do compared to the higher powered and higher priced products.

Though most tablets are more or less a luxury device but there are usages in which they are useful and even preferred. So like them or not they will continue to be part of the market for the foreseeable future.
gman

You miss the point. The color ereaders aren’t here yet. You essentially have one choice right now. That will in fact change. You will soon see if the appetite is justified based on the hype. Quite frankly it’s nauseous the amount of bandwidth dedicated to them. It’s only once you get these color ereaders on the market competing with tablets that you know that the real demand is. There is simply no way in hell the amount of stories about tablets justifies the number they are about to sell. It’s freaking way overblown and out of proportion.

You think the demand for tablets is there? I say prove it. Prove there is an appetite beyond the iPad or eReaders. Thing is you can’t. You can’t say the press and stories and products coming prove the appetite. That’s my point. iPad sales number prove squat about a so called pent up fetish for these things. It just seems like nobody has anything else to talk about. That’s fine, but let’s see how great is all turns out. Ask all the folks who bought into this Galaxy Tab who have them in the warehouse. They may end up in the desert like ET for the Atari. It’s out there somewhere. Crates of ET video games buried deep and for the most part forgotten about. Nobody has followed the Tab for a reason. It’s foolish to come out now with something with a price tag like this because it’s an obvious failure at this point.
Anonymous

What proof do you think will ever be enough for you?

Tablets have been a part of the market for over a decade, Apple’s iPad is just the first major big name success in the market but they did not create the market. Plus regardless of the hype many other tablets have been selling quite well all over the world. Many market analyst even estimate the market share will increase to nearly 10% in the next year or two. Not huge but they don’t need to take over the whole market to be considered a success, they just have to survive as a product category.

For the average consumer there may not be a big reason to use a tablet and for them it’s mainly a luxury device. But fields of engineering, business, and medical fields can make actual use of tablets and for them it’s not hype!

While e-Readers are specifically made to be barely powerful enough to do what they are described for and that means you can’t use a e-Reader the same way as you can a more powerful tablet device. They’re simply not meant to do more.

Even discounting performance, you can take upcoming Color readers like those that will be based on Qualcomm’s mirasol display and see they will not have the color range or refresh rates to properly watch videos for years yet and when they do the screens will likely be applied to all tablets because power efficiency is something they all want.

Whether you like it or not the Galaxy Tab is the first major Android tablet product from a major company and like any other company they have to start somewhere and they’ve already sold millions of units. No matter who’s numbers you use… tablets may not live completely up to the hype but neither are they going away any time soon.

I’m sure there are plenty of products you will never use, just like there are many products I will never use. By no means does it mean those products are failures and that no one wants them.

So regardless of the hype, you can’t let personal bias determine whether a product is actually good or not.
sola

Samsung says they are selling tons.

Personally, I also think it is a desperate act to sell more.

I believe the right price should be ~$300 to make these really appealing for the general public.

Verizon drops Samsung Galaxy Tab price to $499

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