-Hey, I'm Donald Bell and today we're taking a first look at the Wi-Fi only version of the Samsung Galaxy Tab.
This is an android 2.2 tablet with a beautiful 7-inch screen and a reasonable price tag of $349.
Now, we first saw the Tab back in October of 2010 and for a while it was the best iPad alternative out there.
My biggest gripe was the price, which is only reasonable if you sign the 2-year contract.
Now, Samsung finally
cuts up the carriers and offers the Tab we wanted from the outset, but it might be too late.
The good news here is that everything we love about the 3G model is still here; the design is solid and easy to carry around.
They're still a little too big for your pocket.
The screen is bright and responsive.
You get cameras on the front and the back, built in GPS for use with the navigation and all the Google bread and butter apps for G-mail, android market, YouTube, and Google Talk are all here and you also have the W flash support
and pre-installed apps for Amazon Kindle, New York Times, quick video chat and more.
So, what's the down side, well for tablets, android 2.2 is kind of old news at this point and Google is creating an android 3.0 operating system that's made just for tablets.
We even have options now like the $399 Asus Eee Pad, which are twice the size and deliver a better tablet experience.
On the low end, you can also find $249 android tablets
like the Nook Color that offer many of the same features for substantially less money.
So that's the Wi-Fi version of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, it's a great little tablet that just arrive too late and it over shadow by the way of a bigger, better, dual-core honey comb tablets.
For cnet.com, I'm Donald Bell.
