Samsung's 10-inch Galaxy Tab starts retail rollout

Samsung said that it will offer its 10-inch Galaxy Tab in limited quantities in New York on June 8 and open it up for pre-orders on Best Buy.

The 10.1 inch Tab is Samsung's effort to give Apple a serious run. The 10.1 inch tab is Wi-Fi and 8.6 mm. A 16GB version will start at $499 with a 32GB version at $599.

I've been testing the 10-inch Tab running on Honeycomb 3.0. My initial takeaways are:

• The hardware is very nice;
• Third party apps can crash;
• But overall, Samsung's Tab is worth consideration, especially with the updated Honeycomb.

Samsung's larger tablet will run Android Honeycomb 3.1, an improvement over the previous version. Google said at its I/O conference that it was pushing 3.1 out to existing tablets.

The latest Tab will be available at Best Buy's Union Square store.

Samsung added that a future software upgrade will add a user interface for better viewing of pictures and social feeds as well as a media hub. Samsung will also add a Readers Hub that will include 2.2 million books, 2,000 magazines and 2,300 magazines.

In the end, Samsung is hoping the hardware package, which is slick, an improved Honeycomb and media and periodical support can better compete with the iPad.

Related: Samsung, Nvidia move to front of Google's Android tablet army

Google is selling pre-Honeycomb tablets short, they work fine