Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and Galaxy S WiFi 4.0

Samsung has anounced official US prices and launch dates for its upcoming 8.9 inch tablet and 4 and 5 inch portable media players. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 goes on sale in the States for $469 and up starting on October 2nd. The Galaxy Player 4.0 and Galaxy S 5.0 handheld media players will be available starting October 16th for $229 and up.

Or at least that’s what the press release says. But the truth is that we’ve already seen some of these devices go on sale. While Best Buy missed the original September 22nd ship date for the 8.9 inch tablet, the device is already available for pre-order. And the Galaxy S WiFi 5.0 was briefly available from bargain website Woot for $170 earlier this month.

The Galaxy Tab 8.9 is basically a smaller version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet. Both tablets have 1280 x 800 pixel displays, 16GB to 32GB of storage, and Google Android Honeycomb software with Samsung’s TouchWiz interface running on top. They also have the same 1 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 250 dual core processor.

But while the 10.1 inch tablet weighs about 1.3 pounds, the Galaxy Tab 8.9 weighs a little less than a pound. The 16GB model will run $469, while the 32GB version has a $569 price tag.

The Samsung Galaxy S WiFi 4.0 and 5.0 look like smartphones, but they don’t feature cellular capabilities. You won’t be able to make phone calls or surf the web unless you have a WiFi signal (or a voice over IP app such as Skype). But both devices run Google Android 2.3 Gingerbread and feature full access to the Android Market which means that they should be able to run most of the apps available for Google’s operating system.

Both media players feature 800 x 480 pixel displays, front-facing VGA cameras and 3.2MP rear cameras, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, and 8GB of storage.

The 5 inch model features a 2500mAh battery, weighs 6.4 ounces, and will sell for about $269. The smaller 4 inch Galaxy S WiFi 4.0will have a 1200mAh battery, weigh 4.2 ounces, and run about $229.

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3 replies on “Samsung’s 4, 5 and 8.9 inch tablets coming in October”

  1. Remember the good old days when a “smart”phone which couldn’t make phone calls was called a PDA?  You know, back in the days when we used the word “tablet” to mean computer with tablet computing features and not “slate”.  It’s so fun and sad to watch today’s “educated consumer” pretend like over-sized PDAs represent something new let alone something revolutionary.

    1. Hey, even PDA’s can be useful and new models are still new models.  You might as well complain about people who go to car shows.

      Reality of life is people like their toys and over thinking the reasons is a useless endeavor.  You either get it or you don’t!  While also lets not pretend like the technology hasn’t changed over the last couple of decades. 

      Todays tablets are far more capable than the PDA’s of old, and like it or not terminology and definitions do change as the technology changes.

    2. Personal Digital Assistant doesn’t really seem like the right term. When PDAs were young they were devices for taking notes, keeping appointments, managing your contacts, and other PIM (personal information management) tasks. 
      These new devices are… well, it’s kind of tough to say. They’re really smartphones that don’t make phone calls, or tiny tablets (or slates, if you will) which can handle media playback, games, and other apps. Yes… by the time they fell by the roadside, PDAs were doing those things too, but the new kids were designed from the ground up for a different use case, and some ship without much in the way of PIM or note-taking capabilities at all.

      I don’t think anyone’s really come up with a good name for these newer devices yet, which is why I tend to lump them in as iPod touch competitors… or portable media players, since ostensibly that’s what the iPod touch is. Sort of. 

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