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When Apple chief Tim Cook unfavourably compared Android apps running on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab with the firm’s newly launched iPad 3, Samsung wasn’t going to let the trash talk slide.
Samsung circulated a comparison chart featuring "The new Apple iPad" and the "Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1" an unreleased Android tablet that bundles note taking capabilities via a Wacom digitiser. The company called the chart a "content creation comparison", targeting Apple’s claim that the iPad is a good tool for productivity and not just games.
In a footnote, Samsung noted (oh dear) that the Galaxy Note 10.1 is "lighter and thinner" than the iPad, although they didn’t say by how much. They also noted superior connectivity options such as a built-in IR port for controlling Hi-Fi equipment, attaching a mouse via a USB 2.0 port and external SD card memory expansion to 32GB.
Mostly Samsung harped on features of the pen, saying that it was ten times more accurate and featured 255 levels of pressure sensitivity compared to the iPad’s capacitive touchscreen. The company highlighted as a feature that the tablet could take notes in one app while viewing content in another, as well as pointing out viewing two apps side by side (although admitted app devs needed to support the feature).
Samsung is hardly the first manufacturer to add stylus capability in an effort to boost the productivity credentials of Android tablets, HTC has been in that game for awhile with the HTC Flyer. It wasn’t particularly successful for HTC.
The points about multitasking are obviously not limited to Samsung’s Android tablets, since they’re fairly generic features of Android ICS.
Whether or not such features, as well as a stylus, will turn significant would-be iPad 3 owners away from their purchase remains to be seen. One issue is that Apple is taking preorders for a fixed March 16th release date while no one has any idea when the Galaxy Note 10.1 wll appear.
