When Samsung showed off the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 at Mobile World Congress, it was met with a resounding yawn. Aside from Ice Cream Sandwich, a MicroSD card slot and a slightly redesigned exterior, it was basically identical to the previous generation. But according to German site NetbookNews, the tablet has been delayed in order to get a more substantial upgrade: a quad-core Exynos processor. That would be a major win for anyone wanting some substantial performance gains over last year’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, and may be enough to warrant a second look from those dazzled by the Tegra and Snapdragon processors on other tablets.
The move mirrors the delay of the more well-received Galaxy Note 10.1, which was also upgraded to a quad-core Exynos chip. Both tablets were shown off at Mobile World Congress in a somewhat pre-production form, and rumor has it that the Galaxy Note 10.1 may be getting some more substantial revisions as well. Samsung is competing with price as well as features – the retail cost for the cheapest Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 is expected to be $399, a hundred dollars lower than the original, though you’re bumped down to 8GB of storage for the savings.
There’s no official word from Samsung on the change, though the source claims a tipster inside Samsung South Korea. This news comes after new Samsung tablets under an “Espresso” brand were revealed in a leaked document. Could the vanilla Tegra 2 Galaxy Tabs be re-branded, with the quad-core versions getting the an upgrade? What would this do to Samsung’s pricing scheme? At this point there isn’t enough information to draw serious conclusions, but more low-end options in addition to tablets for speed demons would definitely be to Samsung’s benefit. Also note the rumors of the Galaxy S III, which may also pack a quad-core Samsung processor.
[via SlashGear]
Samsung should have planned on a processor spec’d like this from the beginning. End of story.
What this delay means for me is that they probably won’t be updating my GTab 8.9 to ICS til then. Ugh.
I second that. Did Samsung really think they could just make a few minor tweaks to the 10.1 without changing the processor and call it 10.1 2 (or whatever)? Why would you buy it over the original?
Also, I think ASUS is the tablet to get just based on support and updates.
Great stuff, i hpoe it happeneds
http://goo.gl/V1T58
A hd screen at 1920 x 1280 would go nicely with that quad core Exynos. . .
The problem is not the hardware , the problem is android itself.
If they could keep the price below 300 bux, it would be an instant hit.