Arch rivals Samsung and Apple prepare to battle it out for the hearts and minds of tab users as Cupertino upps legal battle with the Koreans.
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| Pictured: Samsung’s latest tab on the block, the 10.1 Galaxy Tab |
Samsung’s Galaxy 10.1 Tab on Honeycomb 3.0 has just been unleashed to consumers in the US, emerging as a serious rival to the dominance of iPad 2.
The 10.1″ tab (not to be confused with the newly released 10.1v Tab on Froyo 2.2) promises to be “thinner and lighter” than previous Galaxys.
And at 595g and 8.6mm thick it is slimmer than its Apple rival and packs a tougher punch specs wise with larger screen, higher resolution (1280×800 V iPad 2’s 1024×768) and higher megapix on its dual cameras. Ouch.
And at $499 for 16GB ($599 for 32GB) it is looking to match iPad 2 at the tills also, although notably didn’t look to undercut Apple’s pricing.
But, it appears the rivalry between the two giants isn’t just confined to tablets and the iPad whizz kids are indeed concerned about the new Galaxy if their surprise new legal accusations against its Korean makers are anything to go by.
Late last week Apple upped the tone in its ongoing patents legal battle with the maker, declaring Samsung “has been even bolder” than any of its other rivals in its bid to clone its iPhone and iPad devices, accusing its rivals of “copying the clean flat clear surface of the Apple iPhone Trade Dress and the Apple iPhone/iPhone 3G/iPhone 4 Trade Dress” as early as 2007, according to Foss Patents blog.
Originally, it accused Samsung of copying the “look and feel” of its iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch on its Galaxy S 4G, Epic 4G, Nexus S and Galaxy Tab in the patent claim lodged April 15.
But it has now extended its patents violation claim to include other Samsung handsets: Exhibit 4G, Galaxy Ace, Galaxy Prevail, Galaxy S (i9000), Gravity, Infuse 4G, Nexus S 4G, Replenish, Sidekick, Galaxy Tab 10.1, and Galaxy S II.
Steve Jobs giant has now gone a step further in citing the uniqueness of its revolutionary smartphones and tabs, accusing Samsung of “blatantly [imitating] the appearance of Apple’s products to capitalize on Apple’s success” and refers to various journalist comments on the similarity between its and Samsung’s product portfolio in its latest 63 page legal claim filed last Thursday.
These include a Business Insider review of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 which stated “[f]rom the front, it looks like an iPad” and another CNET review which reads: “taking another page from the iPad 2’s school of sexy tablet building, the 10.1 has one of the cleanest designs we’ve seen on a tablet.”
“Before Apple’s introduction of the first iPhone product, no other company was offering a phone with these features. None had the clean lines of the iPhone, which immediately caused it to stand apart from the competition,” the company argues.
The timing of the claim is also interesting for another reason: the court hearing related to Samsung’s request to view prototypes of the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 to ensure Apple was not cloning its designs was taking place the very next day.
This followed the Cupertino based giants being granted legal permission in May to examine Galaxy Tab 8.9 and Tab 10.1 as well as Galaxy S2, and infuse LTE smartphones, all of which were unreleased.
Read Samsung Forced To Surrender Galaxy Tabs 10.1 & S Phones To Apple
Samsung, the second largest tab maker by sales was among the first to rival the iPad with its Galaxy tab released last year. Galaxy 10.1 Tab should be hitting Aussie shores very soon (if it manages to make it past Apple’s beady eyes).