Hands On With Samsung's Galaxy Tablet Computer

The new Android tab will be available from all four major mobile carriers, but none has announced pricing yet.

"We've heard a lot of chatter about the coming army of Android tablets, but we haven't seen any real contenders posing a challenge to Apple's dominant iPad--until now. Samsung first unveiled the Galaxy Tab at the IFA show in Berlin earlier this month; now, the company has formally introduced the Tab to the U.S. market for all four major wireless carriers (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon). And judging from my initial hands-on with a preproduction Samsung Galaxy Tab, this tablet has the chops to compete with the iPad.

The carriers each already offer a custom branding of Samsung's Galaxy S family of smartphones. For the Galaxy Tab, Samsung said that it was leaving the pricing and availability announcements to each carrier--and right on cue, all four carriers have issued announcements about their respective devices. So far, none appear to have applied a unique name to the product, referring only to the Samsung Galaxy Tab. None of the carriers discuss pricing or service-plan options in their announcements, either, nor do they discuss availability beyond broad strokes: "holiday" (T-Mobile), "the coming weeks" (Verizon), "the coming months" (AT&T), and "this fall" (Sprint)."