Tablet

Queen's First Tablet Is A Galaxy 10.1

Khurram Aziz

The British Royal Collection has added its first tablet and it's not an iPad.

It is, in fact, a Samsung Galaxy 10.1, which, despite a UK court earlier this year saying was not as cool as Apple's device, will serve as an official digital time capsule for the English sovereign.

Samsung's device was chosen as the Royal Collection's tablet by the Royal Commonwealth Society charity to hold photos, videos and text collected from people who have recounted memories of the past 60 years of Queen Elizabeth II's reign.

The organization considered going with the iPad, according to reports, however it chose the Galaxy 10.1 without giving a clear reason why.

Apple virtually invented the market for touchscreen tablets when it launched the iPad in 2010. However, rival devices quickly followed, and out of all of them Samsung's Galaxy smartphones and tablets have become the Cupertino company's biggest challengers. Samsung today has 22.9% share of the market compared to Apple's 5.5%, according to research firm Gartner.

Apple hasn't taken this challenge lying down and has sued its South Korean rival in courts across the world.

In the US, in August, a Californian court found Samsung's Galaxy 10.1 device had significantly copied the designs and patents of Apple's iPad and awarded the US company $1.05bn in damages. That case is currently in appeal.

But in the UK, a court found in Samsung's favor, ruling that Apple's device was too "cool" to have been infringed.

The Galaxy tablets "do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design," Judge Colin Birss said in July. "They are not as cool."

Nevertheless, it seems the Queen has gone for the Android-based device.

"The digital nature of the project required a digital device to present to Her Majesty, and The Queen will be able to press 'play' on the tablet before watching a video of some of the best Jubilee time-capsule entries," said Danny Sriskandarajah, director of the Royal Commonwealth Society, in an interview with the BBC.

One advantage the Galaxy has over the iPad is a microSD slot which would allow the Royal user to increase storage by up to 64GB.

The project has reportedly collected over 150GB of data, however, only 60 selected items will be stored on the tablet.

The collection will also remain available to view online "in perpetuity," according to the organizers.

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