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Samsung Galaxy Tab (2010 model)

Samsung appears to be preparing an updated version of its 7 inch Galaxy Tab. While the company has been pushing its new 10.1 inch and upcoming 8.9 inch tablets this summer, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 inch tablet was one of the first high profile Android devices to hit the market way back in 2010.

But that tablet is starting to look a little dated now thanks to its 1024 x 600 pixel display and Android 2.2 operating system. Earlier this week a purportedly leaked product roadmap suggested Samsung was working on a few new tablets as well as a number of new smartphones. Samsung has responded, calling the roadmap is inaccurate — but the company hasn’t said exactly which items were wrong.

Now I’ve received a tip from a trusted source that we’ll see a new 7 inch tablet from Samsung with the model number GT-P6500 soon. The new tablet is described as having a WXGA screen, which means we’re looking at a 7 inch device with a 1280 x 720 pixel (or similar) screen resolution.

Previous reports havesuggested Samsung was working on a GT-P6000 tablet with a 1280 x 800 pixel screen or a model with a 1280 x 768 pixel display.

If I had to guess, I’d say that means the tablet will run Google Android 3.2 Honeycomb or possibly even the upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android. Both are designed to run on devices with a wide range of screen sizes while earlier Honeycomb tablets all had the same 10.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel displays and most Android 2.x devices have had screen resolutions of 1024 x 600 pixels or less.

That’s about all I know about the new tablet for now — but a higher resolution screen seems like a good place to start. The apparently inaccurate leaked product roadmap suggested that Samsung’s new 7 inch tablets would have 1024 x 600 pixel displays which doesn’t seem all that likely given the current pixel density arms race.