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If 2010 was the year of the iPad, 2011 is going to be the year of the other tablets.

Overseas, if you are willing to pony up £600 in the UK or upwards of $539 in The States you can get a Motorola Xoom – the first Honeycomb / Android 3.0 tablet (Plus the cost of a data connection). As Google’s flagship Honeycomb tablet it’s pretty slick. Other manufacterers have their own iterations in the works as well, The HP slate, running Palm’s old OS and Windows among them.

Here in Korea it’s a two horse race between iPad and Samsung’s 7 inch Galaxy Tab, with a 10.1 inch already shown at The Consumer Electronics Show in January and nowrumours of an 8.9 inch version coming as early as the end of the month.

Beginning late February the Galaxy Tab was introduced by LG U+ (LG Telecom) at various rates including essentially for free if you sign up for a data / voice plan over W55000 a month. The data plans are by no means generous with 2 and 4GB monthly free or with unlimited use if you go for the W55000/mnth plan.

The LG U+ model with models

However according to this ETNews article the plans (with 2 or 3 year options) compare favourably to those offered by SK Telecom.

I’m not entirely sure, but comparing Samsung’s micro sites for the product it looks like The LG version runs CDMA 3G, which after all makes sense considering it only has a CDMA network.

The big news is KT’s offering. It seems KT and Samsung have gotten over their tiff over KT selling iPhone. (Indeed SK Telecom will start selling iPhone 4 and iPads from March 16th)  KT will be offering a Wi-Bro / Wifi version of the Galaxy Tab. Rather than having to carry around a Wi-Bro modem (Like KT’s Egg) the Wi-Bro (Mobile WIMAX) radio is built in. And although from that article it is hard to discern, (My Korean is not that good OK?) it looks like the 3G radio is dispatched altogether in favour of the Wi-Bro, meaning voice calls will be VoIP. Confirmed via Yonhap.

The KT Model with a Model.

KT is offering the Galaxy Tab at various rates with various plans and discounts etc.

It comes at an interesting time when this week KT announced that all the metropolitan areas in Korea now have Wi-Bro coverage (previously it had only been Seoul and the part of Gyeonggi down to Suwon) and that you will also have Wi-Bro coverage Along most of Korea’s main highways.

But the bigger big news is that FINALLY Samsung will reease a WiFi only version of the Galaxy Tab for those of who don’t need yet another contract with one (or more) of the Telcos listed above. And unlike the SK Telecom, KT or LG versions won’t set you back W995,000!

Instead the wifi version is set to retail at just over a third less at W600,000.

Wihch is interesting.

Considering that the 10 inch WiFi version of the current and next iPad versions will sell at W500,000.

But I do so want one. The form factor is great, my iPad is starting to really bug me when I am reading on it for long periods, and in the subway it is near unusable unless I am sitting down, holding it any other way becomes quite tiresome after about 3 or 4 stops. The Galaxy Pad is much more hand friendly and as I said in my iPad2 post the iPad is becomeing more and more content creation friendly while reading on the Galaxy Tab’s 7″ TFT display will still be a pleasant enough experience.

Add in support for Gingerbread (it’s coming, Samsung seems to have turned it’s ire towards Google after suc a promising start) and probably HoneyComb (or at least a pairded down version thereof) and the Galaxy tab makes for a better proposition. I doubt my iPad will see more than two more software updates before becoming obsolete anyway.

Samsung has promised the WiFi version by the end of 2011 Q1 (i.e. by the end of March) and preorders are being taken on it’s website (although I can’t find where) and through it’s retail stores (though the shop clerks at Samsung Digital Plaza seldom know what you are talking about and will point you towards SK Teecom if you go asking about a Galaxy Tab.

From Yonhap.

Samsung Electronics started to receive pre-orders for the WiFi-only Galaxy Tab at the price of 600,000 won (US$536) this week through its online Web site and retail shops in South Korea. It did not disclose the launch date.

So expect a review of the Galaxy Tab WiFi version sometime this month, But I can’t disclose the review date.

On Thursday (early morning Korea time) Apple introduced its much-talked-about refresh to the iPad line, the iPad 2.

Right off the bat, let me put your mind, and my pocketbook at ease – I won’t be buying one… not that I wouldn’t mind a free one.

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Look, when even the maker of the product says it is decrepit, washed up, bad at what it does and a giant gaping hole in computer security, it is probably time to say goodbye.

Microsoft has launched the Internet Explorer 6 Countdown, a site aimed at promoting downloads of its newest version of Internet Explorer (number 8 by all accounts) and ridding the world of IE6. Its aim is to reduce use of IE6 worldwide to just 1%.

It currently stands at 12%.

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New figures from local consulting company SCOTOSS show how Koreans are continuing to move away from traditional media toward the internet. More than that, they indicate an online shift is also under way: from e-mail to a greater use of SNS sites, in particular Facebook and Twitter.

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Brought to you by the Korea Tourism Organization, the MediTour app (Android and iDevices) offers ample information for those bound for a Korean medical tourism trip. With versions in English, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian, there are no language barriers and few language issues to speak of. While good if you’re already coming to Korea or desiring more information, it’s missing a few things to give it the highest recommendation.

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It’s been just over a year since the iPhone heralded Year Zero in Korea’s smartphone market, and two recent surveys offer some interesting snippets on where it stands now.

First off, Bloter reports on a survey in which ROA Consulting asked almost 12,000 Koreans what their favourite and  least favourite smartphones were in 2010.

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First up the big news that I have been personally waiting for – a Wi-Fi only version of the Galaxy Tab coming (to America at any rate) in Q1 – so sometime in the next 10 weeks.

Apparently the people at Samsung America haven’t quite figured out the “cute model handling your product” play just yet, instead we have Trevor giving us the details:

Of course no word on price or exactly when before the end of March this thing will be out in The States – let alone Korea, but if the first model is anything to go by then the 2 launches should be closely loinked.

As to whether a wi-fi only version of the Galaxy Tab will do well in Korea is another question entirely, with some noting that, if it weren’t for the phone capability the Galaxy Tab really has little else going for it. (Someone mentioned it works well for reading comics).

Note to the Android 3.0 “Hummingbird” was also previewed at CES and is supposed to be a Tablet only version of Android – will the Galaxy Tab have the chops to upgrade later in the year…?

Sticking to tablets – but with more of the Windows & variety Sammy has done something very interesting with its new PC 7 sliding series:

Again no models.

There was some talk of this a couple of months ago on Engadget with a render showing the keyboard directly below the bezel of the screen – no one cottoned on to the fact that the screen also tilts up creating a more traditional notebook form factor.

Questions I would have and one comes to mind immediately – is how sturdy is the sliding-tilting mechanism. We have all had the “Floppy Nintendo DS” syndrome where the top screen looses it’s staying power and flops all over the place. But then in saying that Samsung is known for its sturdy, if not rock solid aluminum (ala Apple) construction.

The second question is of course what’s under the hood? No word in the video of course – but I’m guessing some sort of high end Atom for mobility and battery – is it a touch screen? Has to be right – especially when in tablet mode, but there’s a distinct lack of a track pad in front of the keys when the slider is out…? Surely Samsung doesn’t want us to be reaching up and touching the screen all the time…?

Already predicted a long time ago here at The Chosun BImbo – Samsung’s answer to the iPod Touch – The Galaxy Player.

Unfortunately no official Sammy USA video for this one – instead some right geeza from the UK innit:

Two interesting things from that minute of footage – the fact Samsung is touting it as an INternet connected device – as opposed to an MP3 player, and secondly that it is supposedly optimized for VOIP - can you see the ear speaker at the top of the device – VERY Galaxy S-like.

The guvna’ in the video says it’s already available here in Korea – might have to have a look around again and find out exactly how much it gores for. Like the Galaxy Tab Wi-Fi only version this, with a lack of a cellular radio in it, should actually be quite cheap comparative to their cellular connected predecessors

And still on the Android / Froyo Buzz it’s the successor to the Nexus One (My recently purchased phone) The Nexus S. Here’s Trevor again:

Samsung and The Google have struck up something of an interesting partnership considering only a year a go Samsung was calling Android rubbish and touting it’s own Bada operating System – now the two are so close (10,000,000 Galaxy S phones later) that Samsung has the pleasure of putting out the first Android 2.3 phone, and the second official development platform for Android as well.

Gadgets aside CES always gives Samsung a chance to shake it’s real money maker – TVs This time Trev is replaced by….a young Forest Whitaker:

Cool. But can I stream a torrent to it?

As always all of this gadget goodness may or may not make it to Korea (which is odd) or in various different iterations over the next year.

Have a look around Engadget for more coverage of Samsung and CES in general

As an ever increasingly connected world, and as one that now relies on Google more than our own brains (mostly) as a receptacle for knowledge, looking back on the year’s most searched-for terms is always a good way to get the pulse of the people, as well as start pondering what will happen next year as we find ourselves in those odd few days between Christmas and The New Year.

For your reading pleasure, I’ll look at Google International results, then focus on what Koreans have been searching for on the increasingly ever-popular (in Korea) Google.

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The round-up starts this week with a possibly very significant story about what still is, just, the smallest of Korea’s top five portals.

For those who haven’t before, meet Paran. Though it has long trailed the mighty Naver, Daum, Nate and Yahoo! Korea, the last nine months, as this story in ZDNet explains, has seen a significant reversal in its fortunes.

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