By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
Samsung might have found a way to make up for flagging Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales. It is readying the release of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 on August 15th by inviting some press to "meet the new way."
The Samsung Galaxy Note was intially criticised as being too large for a smartphone although Samsung touted the stylus (which is limited in use only on certain Samsung apps) as a big feature. Despite this, te device sold 5 million units as of March, proving that there is a place for phablets in the market.
As for the 10.1-inch version of the Galaxy Note, it can't pretend to be a smartphone at that size. It will feature a 1.4GHz quad-core processor, a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus.
This is the exact same processor featured in the popular Samsung Galaxy S3.
I am waiting to see if this will have an 4G-LTE data version that could skew it towards the corporate set.
The Galaxy Note 10.1 features Android 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich with Samsung's TouchWiz widgets and elements.
It is expected to feature a screen resolution of 1280x800 pixels.
It will also has 2GB of RAM and 16GB of system memory that is expandable through an SD card slot.
This is a great way for Samsung to pivot the market for its 10.1 inch Galaxy Tab which has been banned for sale in certain markets since last year because of the ongoing patent dispute with Apple.
Samsung is also following up the Galaxy Note with a revised version that will be a 5.5-inch upgrade to the existing 5.3-inch version.
A 10.1-inch tablet with a stylus is oddly reminiscent of 2001's TabletPC from Microsoft and built by Compaq, of course that earlier version had a physical keyboard to boot and a not so awesome OS experience.