So this morning I get an email from Amazon apologising for the delay and giving a new shipping date: "Estimated arrival date: November 24 2010 - December 17 2010". Somehow 3-6 weeks until dispatch doesn't appeal.
I shall take the advice given above and try to get one from Tesco or CPW.
So this morning I get an email from Amazon apologising for the delay and giving a new shipping date: "Estimated arrival date: November 24 2010 - December 17 2010". Somehow 3-6 weeks until dispatch doesn't appeal.
I shall take the advice given above and try to get one from Tesco or CPW.
Interesting. Hopefully this does not mean the UK release has been delayed in general.
Of course this figure doesn't include marketing/manufacture/shipping/bulk-pricing/R+D, etc, etc, etc.
However, it seems that the markup for this product is quite high and more than one company is getting greedy. Thankfully, there may be some give on the price to late adopters if the demand isn't as high as expected (which follows my original speculations -- it's hard to raise prices, but very easy to lower them).
It's really interesting to look at the chart! For example:
- The 3G electronics are less than $20 in total, so pretty much all modern smartphones are overpriced.
- The flash memory and RAM is surprisingly expensive at $50. I would have expected it to be less so.
- The battery is only $10! This makes a very profitable upsell for those that have it replaced at a service centre for what's sure to be $100.
- The beating heart, the Hummingbird SoC is less than $10!
The real shocker is the lost cost of the 3G radios (for me anyway). At $20 it should be standard in all devices that have WiFi, or should be made into a modular appendage for WiFi devices. There's no WAY this addition should inflates the price from $300 on average (WiFi only) to $600 on average (Smartphone). Even with a USB interface, a standard network protocol, and a built in antenna system, this could be made to be a small as an insertable SIM for truly unlocked and very flexible devices. Those that don't want 3G now, don't have to pay for it, but it's an option for later, and they're not locked into any one carrier in the event that they decide to switch. Even better it provides the ability to travel without needing a new device.
Another benefit is it will increase carrier competition and drive prices down. It also lowers costs for manufacturers as they only need produce a single device rather than tailoring it for multiple carriers worldwide.
I'm really shocked that this isn't currently done, because there's no good reason why it cannot be. 3G dongles have existed for laptops for years and the price of the equipment is quite low. It would just take a smart and forward thinking company to produce a modular device to radically shift the industry. I'm betting that people will swoon to such devices.
Yum! Here's Unity 3D running on the Galaxy Tab. For those that don't know, Unity 3D is a very popular game development environment that's recently being ported to Android: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUsPTOeAy-w
What I really like about the interface is that the touchscreen becomes more of a touchpad rather than a touchscreen. So you move the cursor around as usual rather than trying to point and click on small icons. I love it.
I have not watched the whole thing, it's 40mins long!
EDIT: Here's a neat fact that may not be known about battery usage (31:00m)
- JKK got 6-7 hours of full-throttle usage on the device (games/videos/etc)
- JKK got 15 hours of moderate-to-heavy usage with the device.
EDIT: Adobe should be ashamed of itself. Flash CPU utilization on a website is around 60 - 90%! It's a battery drainer, and there's really no excuse for this performance. It's a bulky unoptimized bit of code. (~34:00m)
EDIT: It shows that Twitdroid actually has a tablet friendly interface! (~36:00m)
This is very encouraging and excellent battery life. I would imagine that light usage would easily provide a day or two of usage.
At lunchtime today I walked to the nearest Carphone Warehouse and walked out with a Galaxy Tab for £499 (with a 1 month rolling contract so I can decide what do to longer term). I verified that it is indeed not SIM locked: they had a stock level of precisely 1 so it was the same Tab whichever network I chose.
The sales guy was a bit green about the gills: he was waiting for an excuse to open the box, and he plans to buy one provided he can get his girlfriend's permission (or possibly even without).
No chance to play with it yet as I'm at work, but according to the box it includes a free 16GB microSD, so that might be useful info for anyone else ordering one: you may not need to buy a separate memory card.
At lunchtime today I walked to the nearest Carphone Warehouse and walked out with a Galaxy Tab for £499 (with a 1 month rolling contract so I can decide what do to longer term). I verified that it is indeed not SIM locked: they had a stock level of precisely 1 so it was the same Tab whichever network I chose.
The sales guy was a bit green about the gills: he was waiting for an excuse to open the box, and he plans to buy one provided he can get his girlfriend's permission (or possibly even without).
No chance to play with it yet as I'm at work, but according to the box it includes a free 16GB microSD, so that might be useful info for anyone else ordering one: you may not need to buy a separate memory card.
