Samsung announces two new Android Honeycomb tablets | Hacker News Reader

Samsung announces two new Android Honeycomb tablets

pcmag.com

> The Galaxy Tab 10.1 Wi-Fi model will be available in 16GB and 32GB models. The 16GB model will cost $499, and the 32GB version will cost $599. The Galaxy Tab 8.9 Wi-Fi version will be available with 16GB of memory for $469, and the 32GB version will cost $569.

And so it begins...

(I don't know why people thought that the tablet competition would be any different than the smartphone market. Critics were way too eager to proclaim that no one could compete with Apple on price.)

I agree and actually the first thing I looked for when opening the article was the pricing (which was on the very bottom).

My complaint is not that said people (those who said no one could compete on price) are wrong, but that they totally miss the point. No one buys Apple products because they're cheaper.

These tablets look great, in terms of pricing and specs. But what will drive their success or lack thereof is the tightness and consistency of the overall experience. This is what Apple gets so well, even though delivering it flies in the face of so many things (lack of openness, vendor lock-in, app store approval policies, etc.).

As a rule, downvotes with no explanation really suck.

I meant this comment sincerely, and thought it worth reading. I'm quite willing to be wrong and learn, but I don't get anything from a bunch of -1s (given that I observed the no one-liners, no jokes, etc. rules).

Jus' sayin'.

Unless you've got multiple downvotes then it's just as likely to be someone with an iPhone and big fingers trying to upvote you.

Well, that's easy to say now that people are competing on price, but apparently nobody has been able to until now, or if they could they inexplicably weren't.

edit: Point being, maybe I'm just being pedantic, but it seems like they were right to say what they said.

Maybe Samsung is barely making any money with those prices in an attempt to compete in the tablet market.

Samsung wants to answer "yes" to every possible tablet size need, Samsung chief strategy officer Omar Khan said.

What are the guidelines (or general practice) for creating apps that scale across so many sizes?

My understanding is that Android apps tend to scale well across minor screen size/pixel density/aspect ratio variations, which is good, but I also note that most universal iOS apps have substantially different layouts between their iPhone and iPad versions: not just differing sizes but a very different arrangement of controls and even substantially differing functionality and interaction paradigms... for example, iPhone apps tend to be much more about drilling down into a hierarchy while iPad apps are "flatter".

Is there a guideline regarding where to make that cutoff? In a world of 3.5" and 9.7" screens being the only two options, it's easy to know which device gets the "little" layout and which gets the "big" one... but what sort of layouts should an app give 5", 7", and 12" tablets?

I guaranty these units are buggy. Samsung is not known for their amazing programming skills. What are they known for? Good luck getting a system update for it.

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