Samsung Galaxy Tab vs. Apple iPad (NASDAQ: AAPL) : Shootout at the OK Corral!

Although the iPad has a 2 year first mover advantage, Steve Jobs should not be so non-chalantly critical of the competition, which is catching up fast. Very Fast.
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My company bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab for a project at work, and I was able to borrow it to use exclusively for the rest of this year.

"7-inch tablets are ... useless"
- Steve Jobs, Oct 18, 2010

"Competitors will likely offer less for more."
- Steve Jobs, Oct 18, 2010

At my local Bell Mobility dealer, the 7" Samsung Tab costs $649 + $35/mo for 5Gb data plan on an HSPA network. The Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) 9.7" iPad w/ 3G data plan costs $679 + cost of data plan. So assuming an equivalent data plan, then for an extra $30, you get almost 40% more screen real estate. Ok, fair enough, pricing goes to Apple on this one.


"7-inch tablets are too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad."

It was a dark and stormy night. My friend was holding a party. He had recently bought an Apple iPad. I was debating whether or not to bring my Galaxy Tab with me to the party. Heck, why not ?

I arrived at the party fashionably late. There were some people I had not seen for a while, so I engaged in the usual social chatter to get a "download" of their happenings while we ate takeout food. After dinner, the social chatter inevitably turned to tech, and then of course to tech toys. These people were talking about the new tablets, and naturally, I informed them that I had the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Naturally they wanted to see, and so naturally, I took mine out to show them. At this point my friend overheard our conversation. And so naturally, he said he had an iPad, and so naturally, we asked him to show it.

We sat down at opposite sides of the coffee table. I felt like Nolan Ryan staring down Mark McGuire. He showed off Multi-touch pinch zoom of maps on the iPad. Not a problem on the G-Tab. He showed off swiping to the next page of apps. "Check" on the G-Tab. He showed off an accelerometer game called Labyrinth. "yup" on the G-Tab. He clicked on a YouTube icon to show how he could view videos. Well, G-Tab can do that in the browser ! NY Times on the iPad? Ditto on the G-Tab, although I do admit the bigger screen real estate does make it easier to read more on the page.

At this point the conversation turned to other tech themes. Which suited me fine, since I was not really that familiar with using the G-Tab, as I had only just got my hands on it a couple days earlier. I had downloaded only a couple apps from the Android market. But later that night, I decided to explore the G-Tab, or Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android OS really, a bit further.

"Having done extensive user testing on touch interfaces, we really understand this stuff. "

Here are some things that G-Tab can do, which I'm not sure iPad can do:
- video chat on Skype.
- scan business cards with the camera, convert to text and store into contacts list with 1 touch
- order Indian takeout food in Hindi
- 720x480 video recording
- 720x480 video recording while listening to grooveshark.com and downloading an app from the Android Market.


So, while the G-Tab comes with its own set of warts (eg. I can't connect over WiFi when using WEP encryption), it certainly is no slouch and can more than handle itself very well in a head to head battle with the iPad. I am actually looking forward to bringing the G-Tab to the next iPad party. So it really comes down to what kind of a user are you. Again, like I said, which is the lesser evil: being forced to follow a cult, or having the sanctity of your privacy be pillaged and exploited ?