Details of Galaxy Tab 8.9 surface before CTIA announcement tomorrow

It was suspenseful while it lasted, but it looks like Samsung’s secret is out of the bag. The much hyped 8.9” Samsung Galaxy Tab appears to have been all but officially confirmed, thanks to a few sneaky member of the press that managed to snag a look at Samsung’s booth and photograph some relevant place cards.

Samsung has been promoting their newest tablet for the past month or so with various teaser images and videos. Unfortunately, the media provided by Samsung was vague and only provided flashes of the tablet without any specs. However, thanks to the photos taken, it appears the tablet is indeed an 8.9” Galaxy Tab featuring a 1280x800 pixel resolution WXVGA display. Samsung also appears to have bested Apple in the slimness department by .2mm (8.6mm thickness for the 8.9” Tab compared to 8.8mm in the iPad 2) and the device should weigh only 470g.

Another tidbit detailed by the images appears to be an unnamed 1GHz dual-core CPU taking care of the processing capabilities. While the CPU model is unknown it will most likely be either a Tegra 2 processor found in the Galaxy Tab 10.1 or Samsungs own dual-core processor. Otherwise, true to typical Samsung tablet naming practices, the device will be known as the Galaxy Tab 8.9 and should also be the first tablet to receive a custom UI on top of the Honeycomb interface. Most tablets tend to stick to the stock Android experience, but Samsung seems to be changing things up with their own customizations. The added content includes a “Live Panel” home screen and a “Mini Apps Tray” that provides easy switching between apps.

Unfortunately, the actual device wasn’t lying around anywhere and we’ll have to make do with the place cards for now. Thankfully, the Samsung conference tomorrow in Orlando should provide all the necessary info and more; so make sure to stay tuned for news about the official announcement.

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