American Airlines plans to offer premium-class passengers a customized version of the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet for in-flight entertainment beginning later this year on select transcontinental and international flights.
In so doing, the airline chose an Android platform over the iPad's iOS 4 or competing platforms. The Wi-Fi-enabled Galaxy Tab 10.1, with dimensions of 256.7 x 175.3 x 8.6 millimeters, is said to be the thinnest large-screen tablet and it runs the Android 3.1 Honeycomb platform.
The iPad2's depth is 2 millimeters larger at 8.8.
Samsung will provide American Airlines with expanded memory for the 6,000 devices which the airline plans to deploy later this year.
American Airlines currently offers premium-class passengers "personal entertainment media players" and Bose QuietComfort 3 Acoustin Noise Cancelling headphones, and this equipment will be replaced by the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 on certain transcontinental flights, as well as trips to Europe and South America, later in 2011, the airline says.
Samsung says the Galaxy Tab 10.1 offers "faster and smoother transitions between different applications, more intuitive navigation to and from home screens and broader support of USB accessories, external keyboards, joysticks and gamepads."
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 will be available nationwide in the U.S. beginning June 17.