T-Mobile Claims G-Slate's 4G is Much Faster than iPad 2 and Xoom's 3G

A page on T-Mobile's website went live today debuting a comparison chart between what some might call the market leading tablets. T-Mobile is putting its own 4G-capable G-Slate, provided by LG, up against the iPad 2 and Motorola Xoom. One might look at this as an indicator that the G-Slate is not performing well.

A marketing campaign like this, one that attempts to directly call out competitors' products, is typical in the launch window for a new device. However, this far into a product's shelf-time (the G-Slate was released in the latter half of April of this year), ads like this typically indicate a device that is being out-sold by the competing devices it is calling out.

Headlining the comparison chart is the G-Slate's cellular data capability. Here T-Mobile purports that the G-Slate's over-the-air speeds are twice that of an AT&T or Verizon connected iPad, and three times that of a Motorola Xoom on Verizon. These appear to be claims against the maximum theoretical limits of each band for each carrier. It is rare if not impossible to ever achieve the maximum theoretical limits, as those specs do not take into account signal loss between source and recipient. T-Mobile does point out that the Xoom is expected to receive an upgrade to 4G in the future.

T-Mobile does make a good point in its chart on price. It is the least expensive of the three tablets, coming in $200 less than the Xoom, and $330 less than the iPad2 32GB. In general, T-Mobile's chart calls out everything about the G-Slate that meets or exceeds the iPad 2 and Xoom in a direct comparison.

There are things left off the chart that might present a different picture. Chief amongst those omissions is battery life, processor, memory, and operating system. While there has been some release of sales data, or estimates thereof, of the iPad 2, Motorola Xoom, Blackberry Playbook, and Asus Eee Pad Transformer, there is little to be found on estimated sales numbers for the G-Slate. It will be interesting to see if T-Mobile's new marketing tactic results in increased sales and if T-mobile will then report those numbers.

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