Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 June 2011

This is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. It's got a launch in the UK soon, in white and in black. There's going to be a 3G version and a WiFi version. It's going to come in with a 16, 32 or 64 gigabyte memory capacity. It runs Google's Android 3.1 operating system. That's Honeycomb, and it's been over layed with Samsung's TouchWiz 4.0 user interface.

We'll have a look at that in a bit more detail in a moment, but first a quick tour of the hardware. So to start with we've got the hard on/off switch here, which is next to the volume locker, go further along and we've got the 3.5mm headphone socket and the micro SIM card memory expansion slots. On the back, we have a 3 megapixel camera that shoots 720P HD video and there's a flash, as well.

On either side we have a speaker and on the bottom is the proprietary dock which will allow you to charge the device, but you can also get an HD TV adapter which we'll demonstrate in a minute with some gaming on the big screen, and you can get a USB adapter that will not only allow you to plug in USB hard drives, but you can also plug in a mouse or a keyboard.

And there's also a front-facing camera just here. Two megapixel stills and can be used for video recording. So, let's look at some of those games now using the HD TV adapter. And you can see how the dual core processor really enhances the graphics. At eight point six millimeters thick it's the thinnest tablet that we have handled before.

It's got a 10.1 inch screen and that's got a 1280 by 800 resolution. There's going to be a 8.9 inch version coming soon too with the same resolution. This 10.1 inch version has a pixel density of 149 pixels per inch. This Samsung Tablet is running Android Honeycomb 3.1 operating system which brings with it a number of new features, one of which is the re-sizable widgets on the home screen so, if we choose one to add here, well you can see the different sizes that are available to be set so the clock for example can be set for one size but email and the gallery example has a number of different sizes you can set it to.

So if we choose an image, like so, and add it to the home screen, we can then return to the home screen. Move it over here and re-size it to the size that we like. And we've also got an expanded Recent App list, which we saw on Android Honeycomb, but here there are even more of your recently used apps that you can scroll up and down through like that for quick access.

So, that's Android 3.1 but Samsung has overlaid that with their own interface, the TouchWiz 4.0, which brings with it a few new features too, including screen capture so you can capture the image or whatever is shown on the screen at that point by pressing that button. There's also the mini apps access or shortcuts which can be accessed through here, so it's these six applications, and they can be accessed whatever application you're currently working in, and there's the improved quick panel so you can access various settings.

Another new feature, the TouchWiz 4.0 brings to this device, is the ability to be able to use a clipboard for images, text or URL's. So, how you use that for example, on this website you can hold down your finger on an image and it will bring up the options so you can save it to the clipboard and paste it later.

You can also do that with URL's. So if you click on a link, you can save the link in your clipboard and then paste it in the address bar later to visit that page. Now Samsung has organized the content into hubs. There's the Reader's hub where you can buy and read your books and there's the Gaming hub where you can do likewise with games.

There's also the Music hub which really showsof the Honeycomb operating system very well, as you can control different aspects of the music hub at any one time. Then there's the Samsung Hub which has a bit of an editorial slant to it, where Samsung are recommending apps that you might be interested in and lastly there's the Social Hub which you can use to aggregate all your content from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, your emails, but you can also compose messages there, and you can send them out through a variety of channels.

And one other thing that I wanted to show off was the Bluetooth keyboard that comes in this hard case. So the case opens up like so and has a keyboard inside that's connected by a Bluetooth and you drop your tab in like that. There's a kickstand on the back here so you can tilt it on a surface and work like that, and it all closes up into a well protected unit.

So that's the Galaxy Tab 10.1. As I said, there's going to be a 8.9 version as well, and the specifications are going to be identical, although there won't be a 64 gigabyte version. So if you want to find out more about this device and other tablets, go to our website at which.co.uk/tablets.