Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 10.1 thinner than iPad 2

The tablet battles are heating up the market segments. When Apple unveiled its 8.8 mm thin iPad 2, the world took notice and so did Samsung. Apparently the Samsung executives were quite impressed with the slim beauty and obviously took on the challenge and hit back to their drawing boards. well they have emerged with something better, exactly 0.2mm better. And not with one but two tablets.

The company officially released the new Galaxy Tab 8.9 and the revamped ( read thinner) Galaxy Tab 10.1 which was first announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The two tablets measure 8.6mm in thinness have now conquered the thinnest tablets segment surpassing iPad2 by 0.2mm.

Both the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and Galaxy Tab 10.1-inch tablets run on Android 3.0 and have a touchWiz UX software layer by Samsung to further optimize the end-user experience.

The new 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab has a WXGA 1280×800 display, a 1GHz dual core processor, high speed multitasking, 1080p HD video playback, front-facing 2-megapixel camera for video calls with longer battery life.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 also comes equipped with a dual core processor and 10.1 inch TFT LCD screen with crystal clear resolution (1280 x 800). The device sports an 8 megapixel rear-facing camera with auto focus and a 2 megapixel front-facing camera and further packs Gyroscope, Accelerometer, Digital Compass and Proximity sensor among others.

Extra widgets, as we reported earlier, include a Live panel that allows you to see the most important information at a glance.

Live panels include Buddies now, Agenda, Email, Weather, News, Stocks, Gallery, Date and bookmarks. We assume they will work like the homescreen on the BlackBerry PlayBook where they are essentially mini versions of the apps/pages you have open.

The Mini Apps tray is another new feature for the Android Honeycomb-toting Galaxy Tab 8.9.It's another navigation feature that takes you to multitasking with one tap - just press the Mini Apps Tray at the bottom of the screen and up will pop your favourite applications.

There's also the Samsung Readers Hub and Music Hub, providing access to more than 2.2 million books, 2,000 newspapers in 49 languages, 2,300 magazines in 22 languages, and 13 million songs.

While Samsung has has not yet announced release dates for Galaxy Tab 10.1 or the Galaxy Tab 8.9, speculations are that the tablets will hit markets in India around June.

Samsung's tablets pose a serious competition to iPad 2 and Motorola Xoom. I guess we will have to wait ( or perhaps weight) and watch to see how this battle unfolds in the future.