Apparently someone felt threatened by the most recent offering out of Cupertino, so what do they do? They completely redesign their Galaxy Tab 10.1, and up the game on the 8.9. Make them go on a diet, and pack some serious hardware. They will also be the first slates to deviate from unadulterated Android 3.0 experience, having something that Samsung calls TouchWiz UX or TouchWiz 4.0.

Both of them look like brothers, very similar, different only in size. They are just .33 inches thick [iPad at .34 inches]. The models haven’t been finalized, but nonetheless Samsung is confident it will be able to contain the weight of the tablets to 595gms and 470gms for the 10.1 and 8.9 respectively. Both will feature microSD, 3.5mm Headphone jacks, SIM slots. Wi-Fi versions of both will available too. Both will have the same cameras, 3MP with LED flash on the back and 2MP on the front.

Coming to the hardware front,  both will pack 1GHz dual-core processors of unknown origin. Batteries are 6000mAH for the smaller sibling and 6860mAH for the larger one. Both will give around 10 hours of video playback. Accelerometer, Gyroscopes, Digital Compass, and a/b/g/n Wi-Fi standard for both. Very weirdly, the 10.1 only has Bluetooth v2.1[with EDR] whereas the younger sibling gets Bluetooth v3.0. Both will come in flavors of 16, 32 and 64GB.

Now the most important part: Pricing. Samsung has gone all out and priced both the tablets very aggressively, with the pricing of the Wi-Fi only models are: 469$/499$ for 16GB and 569$/599$ for 32GB for the 8.9/10.1 version respectively. Now the cheapest offering by Samsung is actually cheaper than the iPad 2, and should go out a long way. US launch for the 10.1 is June 8th, but the company is vague about the launch of the 8.9. Anyway, this summer we have something to look forward to!!