Samsung's iPad rival set for Christmas

The Android invasion on Australia is set to push on with a new wave of stormtroopers; Samsung's Android 2.2 Froyo-powered tablet is on the march towards our shores.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab is set to arrive in Australia in Q4 2010 according to Samsung. (Credit: Samsung)

Samsung this morning announced that its Galaxy Tab device is set to arrive in Australia in the last quarter of the year and rival Apple's iPad tablet.

"Following on from the outstanding success of the Samsung Galaxy S smartphone, we are excited to now be branching out into the tablet market to bring the Samsung Galaxy Tab to Australia," said Tyler McGee, Samsung's vice president of telecommunications.

"We believe the portability of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, combined with features such as front and rear camera, Flash support and telephone functionality will strongly appeal to both the consumer and business markets."

The Samsung tablet includes telephone functionality and runs on a Cortex A8 1.0GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, with 16GB of internal memory storage and the ability to support 32GB of additional memory via an add-in module.

Additional features include Flash 10.1, HD video playback with a wide range of supported formats (such as DivX, XviD, MPEG-4, H.263 and H.264), a seven-hour battery (based on HD video playback) and the texting/typing application Swype.

Sensors include gyroscope, geomagnetic, accelerometer and light capability. The new tablet sports two cameras, a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for face-to-face video calling and a 3-megapixel camera with LED Flash on its back.

Applications include the Samsung Readers Hub, which unifies Kobo, PressDisplay and Zinio eReader apps and has 2 million books, 2500 magazine titles and 1600 newspapers available in a multitude of languages.

The Galaxy Tab sports a 7.0-inch WSVGA (1024x600) TFT-LCD, which is smaller than the iPad's display, but this means the Tab also has a more compact design with 190.09x120.45x11.98mm dimensions. At a weight of 380g the Tab is far lighter than the iPad's 700g weight.

It also boasts Bluetooth 3.0, a 30-pin connector and Wi-Fi 802.11n. Networks supported are 2.5G (GSM/GPRS/EDGE) in the 850/900/1800/1900MHz ranges and 3G (HSUPA 5.76Mbps, HSDPA 7.2Mbps) in the 900/1900/2100MHz ranges.

Samsung will release pricing information and telco support closer to the launch date; however, it is possible that Optus will be one of the first to jump on board after an executive hinted the telco may launch Android-based tablets this year.