Well blow me down – Samsung have now decided that for all us smart tab hungry users out there, just to make the competition a little bit more competitive to just drop the price on their Android platform smart pad ‘Galaxy Tab’. Prices over in the UK range from around “£600-£700” – but the new price drop has seen the smart pad drop to less than £500.

Internet retail store Dixons has priced their Galaxy 16GB Tab at £469 + free delivery and Carphone Warehouse have priced their slightly larger 32GB Tab at £489.99.

With the price crash already in plan, could we see O2 dropping their price from – £599 to a more competitive price? Benefits of going with O2 though are that you get 2GB worth of data for free when you purchase the tablet on pay and go.

Now nothing has officially been released from Samsung in regards to sales figures, but with reviews on its side – I would expect that Samsung are doing quite well from this.

-Source O2, Dixons, Gadget Venue

If you were to ask yourself what a large touchscreen tablet was about a year ago, no one would have expected products from Samsung, Apple and BlackBerry to be this fast and sophisticated.

Not just this, with all of the tablets around now, it’s become more and more confusing into which tablet is best suited for your business and pleasure. The question of ‘what does X have over Y’ and ‘which would best suit my needs’ is one many questions surrounding these products.

As the tablet arena has 4 major competitors within in, I will try my best to cover all the major areas of the tablets, the hardware and more.

Apple iPad – iOS

The Apple iPad – probably the most predicatble one to start this blog with. With Apple having the head start on the smart pad market, Apple has most definately had the upper hand against the competition for a fair few months – until now.

Now when the iPad was released, it did start a revelution of smart pad competition. The only down-side with the iPad is the Hardware – the iPad has a 1GHz A4 processor (found in the iPhone 4) but only has 256MB of RAM.

The other thing with the iPad is that everyone knows that Apple holds these little conventions where they just have a massive press release and then go ‘welcome another new product to the Apple family’ – and rumor has it that there may be a new iPad on the scene around Christmas/ January time.

In terms of what could be expected from the new iPad V.2 could be anything. Undoubtedly the new iPad could punch FaceTime calling as well as a higher pixel screen for better resolution, gaming experience and just make it that little bit more cutting edge.

Read More on iOS

Samsung Galaxy Tab – Android

First Apple with their iPad, welcome Galaxy Tab a la Android. Samsung have produced this smart pad with Androud 2.2 OS which is probably the only smart pad which is close to hitting the market at the moment.

Android has definately been around on many different rip offs from China but Samsung have produced something which can be commercially sold to both SME and Consumers.

With a 1024 X 600 7″ display, the quality and pixel density is where the Galaxy Tab has the upper hand.

RIM Playbook – Blackberry OS

With manufactures such as Samsung and Apple, everyone knew that they were going to have a stab at the smart pad market. Blackberry on the other hand had a little step back, thought thoroughly about what to put into their smart pad and then just people thinking what Blackberry may actually produce.

With a dual-core 1GHz processor, 1GB RAM and both front and back facing cameras, the Playbook is something which has just come onto the smart pad market and shook it by the neck.

It is safe to say that if you’re a BlackBerry mobile phone owner, then you should be really interested in this one. Blackberry even claim that their development of their PlayBook is going to work closely with all their exisiting Blackberry products – could this be BIS and BES? Read more here

HP Slate – Windows 7

The HP Slate is going to be a smart pad but with a contriversial twist. If you notice that all of the rest of the smart pads have mobile operating systems on – the HP Slate has Windows 7 (a desktop operating system).

In comparsion to how it stacks up against the rest of the competitors – who knows?

We just need to wait for an update on what will exactly be crammed into this little bundle of joy and if it will come with a docking station for CD/DVD peripherals.

-For more information go to the original article source here at Zath

With Notepads, Laptops and Tablets all getting lighter, faster and reputable platforms being installed onto them such as Windows, Android and iOS4, we’ve seen many releases over the past few months.  The most popular tablet by far has been the Apple iPad.

The concept of the iPad was incorporating a capacitive touch screen (runs on a heat source, no stylus) and a larger version of an iPod Touch. The iPad has proved extremely popular for something so simple and so similar to the aforementioned iPod Touch, however it has ended up selling two million units within two months.

Apple are currently the market leader for “Tablets”, however many other vendors want a share of that market, meaning we have seen a lot of leaks online for tablets such as the HP Slate.  Due to the recent acquisition of Palm by HP, the Slate will probably not end up with Windows 7, but more likely webOS – the operating system currently used in Palm phones.

We have also seen products from Lenovo and Samsung where they have crammed Android onto their tablet products.  However, with virtually every manufacture cramming Android into their product, even the knock off ones from China, this may not provide them with a competitive edge or a compelling reason to buy.

In the past quarter we have seen the release of the Dell Streak which was produced as a smartphone but with browsing compatibility and no calling function. The Dell Streak can only be compared to the iPad as it’s marketed with a Data Plan.

Dell’s attempt at competing with the iPhone is likely to be put on hold until a more competitive operating system is released – Windows Mobile 7.

A lot of us are still waiting for a proper tablet to be introduced to the SME market.  The manufacturer who currently has the largest foothold in the SME gadget marketplace e.g. smartphones is RIM with its Blackberry product range. As Blackberry currently produce smartphones sold to both SME and Consumer, we know that they have the right credentials to work in both markets.

The online rumours surrounding Blackberry and the probability of them producing a Tablet has steadily been increasing. Recently, thanks to Mobile Crunch, they have discovered that Blackberry have registered a domain ‘www.blackpad.com’ for themselves. This could possibly suggest that RIM/ Blackberry have something up their sleeves – all that we know is that Blackberry is possibly developing something which will go into direct competition with Apple.

The Balckberry tablet is expected to have the following iPad killing features:

• Two cameras (one front facing)
• A faster processor
• New BlackberryOS6
• Bluetooth

and a few other’s that will definitely set it apart from the competition.

Whilst many features are still quite vague, we do know that Blackberry are producing it with a 9.7inch screen, it will make it work very close with their other Blackberry products and that it will be unveiled in November ready for Christmas.

Stay tuned for more information.