Samsung and AT&T Announce Galaxy Tab 8.9, Six new LTE Markets

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• Davabled - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link

  The link to the Verizon Galaxy Tab review leads to a blank page.

• Brian Klug - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link

  My bad, should be fixed now.
  
  -Brian

• agent2099 - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link

  $479 WITH contract? That should be the wifi only price. Also, 3G usually carries what, a $130 premium, so you are not getting much of a discount by being locked in for 2 years. By comparison the discount on phones for being under contract is usually $300+

• kidboodah - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link

  The difference is that with a smartphone, for example, the customer is paying $45+ a month. With a tablet, you only pay for a data plan...so the subsidy discount is therefore less.

• Impulses - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link

  This is gonna be huge in Puerto Rico, I'm very shocked we're one of the first fifteen LTE markets... Altho AT&T is by far the biggest player here so maybe it's just that lucrative a market despite our tiny size.
  
  I doubt most consumers will even notice in the short term, but if AT&T isn't backbone constrained and they can consistently offer 10mb+ speeds then they're gonna paint every cable and DSL ISP in a very bad light. I'm still on a 3mb DSL connection, they offer slightly faster speeds up to 6mb IIRC but the monthly cost is over $80 (just for internet). Cable is a little better, I think they offer 5mb for $40-ish but it comes with a ridiculous 40GB cap.
  
  The downside is AT&T obviously has the lowest caps of any mobile company tho... With Verizon now starting at 4GB, TMo only having a soft cap, and Sprint being unlimited. Here's hoping Sprint gets their act together here, because there's no Verizon on the island and T-Mo's network is relatively young and still growing.

• Seawolf2 - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link

  Impulses why you want speed if in a given month by the time you download a couple of movies and watch some news programs your 5Gb are gone.
  
  Consumers should complain until all this people that advertise the wonders of 4G are penalized for false advertising. After all, a product must serve its intended purpose and if you can only use something for a few days each months it's not serving its purpose.
  
  For now, keep using OneLink in Puerto Rico, and don't worry too much about their cap.
  
  We can't allow these humongous corporations to rule over the consumers, it has to be the other way around.

• Impulses - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link

  I don't necessarily want AT&T's LTE service, after all, right now I'm with Sprint despite their anemic connection speeds... But the fact that they're deploying LTE here gives me hope, it hopefully means that the island's backend connections to the outside aren't as limited as they were a few years ago or as limited as ISPs would have you believe.
  
  Yeah it's true that the faster your connection the more you tend to use it... But even with small bandwith caps I think widespread LTE deployment is a good thing. I mean, even with a 2GB cap, as long as you have a modicum of self control you can simply keep enjoying however much content you're currently enjoying, just faster.
  
  Who downloads full length movies at full res on a phone anyway? I want LTE so the next time I wanna quickly show someone a Youtube clip on a low signal I can still pull it thru in seconds instead of waiting minutes due to a sub 0.5MB connection. I want LTE so the next time I'm in a crowded bar/concert my connection speed doesn't drop to 56k levels (i realize the connection from phone to tower doesn't dictate that but you'd think implementing 4G would also mean backhaul upgrades).
  
  Anyway, your comment seems contradictory, you're lamenting mobile caps but telling me not to worry about a 40GB cap at home? Where I'm way more likely to actually download/stream high res content multiple nights a month? It's not very hard to hit 40GB in a month, particularly if you don't live alone. US ISP caps are in the 200GB+ range, 4x what Onekink offers. I've stuck with my crappy 3mb DSL line exactly because of this...
  
  Same reason I'm with Sprint. However if I don't see some progress to their LTE deployment by mid 2012 I'm gonna be tempted to switch. If that were to happen, hopefully will AT&T has raised their caps to something reasonable. I think 4-5GB is ok for mobile use, I'm even willing to pay a bit more for it. Biggest problem with AT&T is you don't even get a single option past 2GB.

• Tetracycloide - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link

  So if Anand Shimpi spent the weekend testing AT&T LTE in Washington, DC on a Samsung Skyrocket does that mean we should expect a review of the phone, the service, or the combination of the two at some point in the near future? If not would you recommend the phone in general over the other AT&T 4G phone or the iPhone 4s?

• Brian Klug - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link

  Combination of the two. If you recall what we did with Verizon LTE and their initial launch datacards + phones, expect almost the same for AT&T LTE.
  
  I can't speak for the device much more than to say that it's similar to other 1.5 GHz APQ8060 based SGS2s (like the T-Mobile version) and is paired to an MDM9200 for LTE. If you need 4G on AT&T the options are rather slim to begin with :P
  
  -Brian