Samsung unveils 7.7in Tab and 5.3in smartphone

 

Gallery

By Sasha Muller

Posted on 1 Sep 2011 at 13:09

Samsung has taken the wraps off two additions to its mobile range - the Galaxy Tab 7.7 and the 5.3in Galaxy Note smartphone.

The company announced the gadgets at the IFA 2011 event in Germany at a time when manufacturers are trying to find the ideal form factor for mobile communications.

The two devices released are a smaller-than-average tablet and a larger than average phone.

Packing a dual-core 1.4GHz processor and Google's Android 3.2 operating system into a chassis which measure just 7.89mm thick, Samsung says the Galaxy Tab 7.7 weighs in at only 335g and is capable of fitting in a jacket pocket.

It's also the first in Samsung's tablet range to have a 1,280 x 800 Super AMOLED Plus display, the same technology used in the company's award-winning Galaxy SII smartphone.

Samsung's own TouchWiz UX interface makes it possible to customise the home screen with photographs, websites and social network feeds, and also provides an application tray of commonly used features, such as a task manager, calendar and music player.

The company said it would overcome potential screen size problems by using Google's compatibility zoom mode (a standard feature in Android 3.2) that helps optimise applications designed to run on larger tablet screen sizes, so that they can fill the screen without distortion.

The specification also includes 2-megapixel front-facing and 3-megapixel rear-facing cameras, dual-band WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth 3.0 and up to 64GB of internal flash memory. 

Samsung Galaxy Note

Like its bigger brother, the Galaxy Note also utilises a dual-core 1.4GHz processor, but it relies on smartphone favourite Android 2.3, displayed on a huge 5.3in Super AMOLED display with a 1,280 x 800 resolution.

At 9.65mm thick, the Galaxy Note is a business focussed handset, combining traditional touch-input with Samsung's new S Pen, enabling drawings and hand-written notes to be scrawled onscreen.

The 16GB or 32GB of internal memory can be supplemented with microSD cards of up to 32GB alongside GPS, 802.11n and Bluetooth 3.0.

There's no word on pricing or availability for either model as yet, but keep an eye on PC Pro's blogs for first looks coming up later today.