Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 vs Motorola Xoom

Samsung launched its 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, reflecting its move from the 7-inch form factor to tackle the likes of Motorola Xoom and Apple iPad.

At the CES 2011, Motorola wowed the industry with its edition of Android 3.0-based tablet, the Xoom, giving birth to the 10.1-inch form factor. In the process it has created a new benchmark which has taken the focus away from iPad's 9.7-inch display. Samsung's graduation from 7-inch display to 10.1 is a testimony to this change.

The new 10.1-inch tablet from Samsung has sufficient guts under its hood to take on the star of CES 2011, Motorola Xoom.

Both Xoom and Galaxy Tab 10.1 bring the goodness of Android 3.0 or Honeycomb on a 10.1-inch display. The tablet-friendly OS finds ample room to display its properties. Both Xoom and Galaxy Tab 10.1 offer a similar screen resolution of 1280x800. The balance tilts in favor of Samsung, as all the glories of a beefed-up screen size and resolution haven't tipped the scales. Galaxy Tab 10.1 weighs 1.3 pounds compared to Xoom's 1.6 pounds. The potential to be an eReader-alternative lies with Galaxy Tab 10.1-inch as it is lighter and also thinner at .44 inches while Xoom is .51 inches.

Under the hood, Galaxy Tab 10.1 has a 1GHz dual core processor, thus, it has the guts on the power front to tackle Xoom's Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor. The processor used by Samsung could be its new dual-core line of processors called Exynos.

From the memory front, Galaxy Tab 10.1 comes in two variants in 16 GB and 32 GB format while Xoom has only 32 GB format. Samsung has not revealed the RAM size but with the specifications it sports, like 1GB RAM, would be a requirement to add speed, although its Galaxy Tab 7-inch tablet uses 512 MB RAM.

Galaxy Tab 10.1-inch packs in an 8MP rear-facing camera which makes Xoom's 5MP rear camera look like a minnow, although it sports a 2MP front-facing camera which is the same as Xoom's. Galaxy Tab also offers 1080p video capture support while Xoom offers 720p in video capture ability. Although both the tablets offer 1080p native video playback ability, the support to shoot and play 1080p videos tilts it Galaxy Tab's favor.

However, Samsung has not specified the exact battery, which would play a key role in customers' decision-making. Motorola Xoom offers 10 hours in battery life.

The deciding factor could be pricing as AfterDawn reported that Best Buy put up a pre-order page pricing Xoom at $1,200. If Samsung is able to keep the price low, it certainly would be a better buy compared to Xoom.

Here is a comparison between Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Motorola Xoom: