11 Attractions of the Samsung Galaxy Tab

What do you call something smaller than a tablet? According to Samsung, it's just a tab -- and the company's Galaxy Tab is being buzzed about as the first genuine rival to Apple's iPad.

At 13 ounces, the 7-inch Galaxy is half the weight of the near-10-inch Apple tablet and small enough, Samsung says, to fit into a jeans back pocket or the inside pocket of a jacket. Here are some reasons the Galaxy Tab is attracting attention.

Rather than being offered in an exclusive deal like Apple's with AT&T, the Samsung will be available everywhere you turn around, with all four major U.S. carriers -- AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon -- offering the device and data plans at prices to be announced this holiday season.

The Android 2.2 OS-based Galaxy Tab's specs include a 1GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird processor, 2GB of onboard memory, and a 16GB microSD storage card (expandable to a 32GB flash card). The 7-inch touch screen features 1,024 by 600 resolution.

Apple won't mention the F word, but the Samsung boasts full support for Adobe Flash Player 10.1 for accessing Flash-enabled websites, watching video on the likes of Hulu and YouTube, and playing games.

The two cameras include a rear-facing 3-megapixel snapper with flash and zoom and a front-facing 1.3-megapixel webcam. Users can align the Tab with video chat clients including Qik and Fring and seamlessly talk with other people over a WiFi connection.

In addition to conventional two-thumb operation, the virtual keyboard supports the Swype technology seen on recent handsets for speedy text input via one continuous finger motion across the keyboard.

A keyboard dock that combines a full-sized keyboard with a charger for power and sync of media and data is a $100 option; it also has a stereo audio output jack for speakers or home stereo. A $50 desktop dock/charger turns the Galaxy Tab into a digital picture frame and offers HDMI output for connection to an HDTV set, while a $100 car dock attaches the Tab to windshield or dashboard for turn-by-turn GPS navigation instructions and traffic updates.

Samsung's answer to iTunes is the (much smaller) Media Hub content service, a mobile video store with purchase or rental access to a library of movies and TV shows from the likes of Paramount, MTV Networks, and NBC Universal.

The Tab's answer to Apple's App Store is the (much smaller) Android Market, which currently offers some 80,000 applications. Some, Samsung says, will appear in full screen; others will be framed and centered on the display, like iPhone apps on the iPad.

Samsung's Social Hub application works with the user's messaging and contacts to initiate the sending and receiving of information, whether email, IM, SMS messages, or social network updates. Calendar information from portal calendars such as Google's and social networking services are displayed in a single calendar with two-way synchronization.

In addition to integrated 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, the Galaxy Tab offers mobile hotspot capability to simultaneously connect up to five Wi-Fi devices. Another wireless feature, AllShare, is a technology that shares music, pictures, and video stored on the Tab with Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) enabled devices such as HDTVs and PC monitors.

In addition to browsing the web, sending and reading email, and viewing pictures and video, a Microsoft document viewer lets users open and make changes to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files and read PDFs. Android 2.2 supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync to synchronize corporate email, contacts and calendar data.