Samsung Galaxy View – the tablet that thinks it’s a TV
What the absolute flip? I am all for pushing boundaries and blurring the lines. Larger mobile phones, smaller tablets, phablets, that kind of thing. Now Samsung has unveiled an 18.4-inch screened tablet that’s basically a portable television. Tabelly? I give you The Galaxy View.
The Galaxy View is an 18.4-inch portable touchscreen TV that measures 275.88mm x 451.8mm and is only 11.9mm thin. I’ll let those dimensions sink in a while. Imagine a tablet the size of a pizza box.
The View will be available in LTE and Wifi-only models and promises eight hours of video playback thanks to the 5700mAh battery. I am digging the funky stand that doubles as a handle so that you can more easily cart this large Android device around. Under the stand is where you’ll find the two 4 watt speakers.
Weighing a little over 5.8-pounds I don’t think that it has been really designed to be carried or held for long periods of time. The handle-stand does flip so that you can rest it on your lap at a convenient angle.
The Samsung Galaxy View wears its purpose clearly on the homescreen. Thanks to partnerships with major cable companies like Time Warner Cable and Xfinity, you can connect your account to the tablet so that you can watch any available station on that huge 1920 x 1080 screen.
When not watching your favourite shows you can use the View as a regular, albeit super-sized, Android Lollipop-powered tablet. Handy for reading emails without your glasses or XXL Skype sessions.
Under the hood it’s pretty much a normal Android tablet. You get a 1.6-gigahertz processor and 2GB of RAM. It comes with either a 32- or 64GB of storage as well as a micro SD slot and a spot for a nano SIM.
The Galaxy View sports Bluetooth connectivity so you can connect the device to external hardware like gamepads and speakers. The Galaxy View will also connect to other Android devices so you can, for instance, start playing a game on your phone and pick it up on the TV tablet.
One thing it doesn’t appear to have is an HDMI port. That could mean that it might not play nice with set top boxes nor gaming consoles.
There is, however, a USB port, a headphone jack, and a charging port.
Prices for the Samsung Galaxy View will most likely be around the £600 mark.
