Samsung Ativ Q

The Nexus 10 is currently Samsung’s only high-resolution tablet offering.

Most people would agree that behind battery life and performance, the display is the most important component in a mobile device. Even more so in a tablet, where the display is especially crucial. A screen resolution which looks great on a 4.5-inch smartphone won’t pull off the same effect on a 10-inch tablet. The main reason for that is something called pixels per-inch (PPI).

We've been left a little perplexed by the lack of high-resolution tablet offerings from Samsung.

The iPad 3’s Retina Display set a bar for other tablets to reach with a pixel density of 264 PPI, but then the Nexus 10 surpassed it with its 300 PPI display. On Thursday, the new Nexus 7 beat them all into a submission with its 323 PPI screen, so we are left a little perplexed by the lack of a high-resolution tablet from Samsung, the biggest Android OEM.

Sure the Nexus 10 is technically made by Samsung, but Samsung has yet to grace its Galaxy Tab range or even its Galaxy Note 10.1 with the same high-resolution display.

Samsung’s current offerings are, well, consistent

In three years Samsung has never, not once, increased the resolution on the 10-inch variant of its Galaxy Tab range. For those of you who don’t know, that 1280 x 800 resolution on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 gives a pixel density of 149 PPI, less than half of what the Nexus 10’s display offers. Now in a market where staying still for even a brief second is suicide, that just isn’t good enough.

Samsung obviously hasn’t decided that its customers don’t deserve high-resolution displays, since it makes the Nexus 10’s 2560 x 1600 display, and the Ativ Q boasts a display resolution of 3200 x 1800. So what is Samsung waiting for?

The Ativ Q has a stunning 3200×1800 display.

It’s possible that Samsung simply believes that the Android tablet market just isn’t worth investing too much into and that the only way to beat the iPad is to undercut it and join in on the “race to the bottom”. Now that means that the costly high-resolution display is usually the first one to go.

Samsung is rumored to be working on a 12-inch Android tablet with a resolution of 2560 x 1600, but it won’t break any records with its slightly larger display size. The fact that Samsung’s high-end smartphones pack higher display resolutions (Full HD 1920 x 1080) into significantly smaller form factors doesn’t bode well for Samsung.

Wrap up

Samsung’s competitors aren’t standing still in the tablet domain either. Sony already has a Full-HD display on its Xperia Tablet Z, and Asus is packing a 2560 x 1600 display on its 10-inch Transformer Pad Infinity. Samsung needs to improve its tablet offerings ASAP if it wants to continue growing its tablet market share, because its current offerings are mediocre at best.

What do you think of Samsung’s current tablet offerings? Does Samsung need to offer a high-resolution tablet?