Since I relaunched this site in July do you know what the most popular post has been? The Woot! deal on the Samsung Galaxy S 8GB Wi-Fi from just over a week ago. I’ve been getting more hits each day from people searching the web for it, so it seems there is a little bit of pent up demand.
Well, this post should make those users happy. Both the Samsung Galaxy 4.0 and Samsung Galaxy 5.0 are slated for US release on October 16th and Amazon has both models up for pre-order. The two models share most of their specs: Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread, a 1GHz S5P-C111 CPU, 800×480 displays, front VGA and rear 3.2MP (with auto-focus & flash) cameras, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP & AVRCP, 8GB of internal storage, microSD for up to 32GB of additional storage, built-in speaker & mic, and an FM radio tuner. Supported video codecs include DivX, XviD, H.264, H.263, MPEG4, WMV, & RM/RMVB (up to 480×320) and audio codecs include MP3, AAC, ACC+, e-AAC+, AMR, MIDI, & WAV. Basically the Samsung Galaxy Players (as they’re known) are to the Samsung Galaxy S smartphones what the iPod Touch is to the iPhone. The same basic platform with all the features, but without the phone.
The Samsung Galaxy 4.0, pictured above to the left, is listed for $229.99. It has a 4″ 800×480 display (if you couldn’t figure that out from the name) and a 1200 mAh battery which is good for roughly 36 hours of music or 5 hours of video playback). Overall it measures 2.43″ x 4.87″ x 0.39″ and weighs 4.27 ounces.
The Samsung Galaxy 5.0, pictured above to the right, is listed for $269.99. It has a 5″ 800×480 display (natch) and a 2500 mAh battery for approximately 60 hours of music or 8 hours of video playback. It measures 3.08″ x 5.56″ x 0.47″ and weighs in at 6.42 ounces.
By way of comparison the iPod Touch 4th generation has a 3.5″ 960×640 screen, supports up to 40 hours of audio or 7 hours of video playback, and measures 0.3″ x 2.3″ x 4.4″ with a weight of 3.5 ounces. The Samsung Galaxy Player offers several things the iPod Touch does not: a larger screen, expandable storage (via microSD), an FM tuner, and the battery is replaceable on the 4.0 (built-in on the 5.0). And you have full access to the Android Market over WiFi for apps.
Here are the original spec sheets for both players. It seems they’ve been updated a bit for the US release, notably the Android version.
