Vodafone yesterday announced its pricing for the Samsung Galaxy Tab, somewhat undercutting Optus' pricing. We noted when writing up Optus' Tab deals that the devil was still in the detail, but even the on-paper cheaper prices Vodafone's offering are only part of the story.
On a contract plan no Galaxy Tab comes in cheaper over 24 months than an iPad, but that's got data inbuilt into the plan, something you'd have to budget for with an iPad unless you were only ever using it within your own WiFi cloud.
It turns out, though, that even the outright price of the Galaxy Tab is higher -- or at best equal -- to the top-tier 64GB WiFi+3G iPad. Aside from contract sales, Vodafone will sell the Galaxy Tab "outright" for $999, which would seem to be cheaper than the $1049 that Apple asks for the top end iPad. The sting there though is that although you're paying the device cost upfront, it's still locked to the Vodafone network.
Vodafone representatives told PC Authority that an unlocking fee would apply to the Galaxy Tab it was selling. Performing the unlock online would cost $50 (matching the $1049 price of the iPad), but if performed over the phone the fee would be $75, making the Galaxy Tab a rather pricey outright prospect indeed.
It's unclear from Optus' pricing if the Tab will be offered outright. We've enquired with Optus about the availability of outright model pricing and whether they'd apply an unlocking fee to the Galaxy Tab, but at the time of publication had not received a response. We'll update this article when fresh information comes to hand.
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