Hi.

A friend of mine has unexpectedly found himself in New York, due to the death of a relative (at 97, so he had a good run!). He's only really around with nothing to do today, the 11th, but is looking for a good place in centralish New York to get electronics at a sensible price. Specifically, he's after a Motorola Xoom and perhaps an HTC phone of some sort.

Can any USian suggest places?

pca

I can suggest that he forgo the Xoom and pick up the Galaxy Tab 10.1 instead, which he's lucky is only being sold in the Best Buy in Union Square until the 17th.

Seriously, it's the lightest tablet on the market (technically - it's only about 3 grams lighter than the iPad 2), about 1.3 pounds versus the Xoom's 1.6.

There might be some native New Yorkers who know places to buy electronics, but I can't imagine the stuff he's looking for will be available at a discount anywhere.

If I were him, I'd also be waiting for the Galaxy S II instead of picking up an HTC phone now...

It's already available in the UK. A friend's got one.

Ah, then even more of a reason to skip it in NY.

The only reason I'd suggest getting one is that apparently the GPS has been fixed since the first version, and there's strong signs that Samsung is open to letting the new sets be hacked. They gave a free phone to a Cyanogen dev.

The GPS issue was only in US based phones, due to them lacking the critical system software to drive AGPS. The fix was to add back Google's AGPS Android piece after Samsung had to remove Skyhook right before shipping the phones.

Thanks. I passed on this advice to James, and he compared the Xoom to the Samsung tablet, and decided that even with the lack of USB and HDMI ports, the screen was sufficiently better that he'd go for the Samsung one. They're exactly the same price.

Unfortunately they didn't have the 32GB one in stock, so he couldn't buy one.

pca

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Samsung did take what I thought was the smarter route** and released a product that could compete in price with the iPad at the low end, but I wish they'd come out with both the 16GB and the 32GB at the same time.

Samsung has accessories to add USB and HDMI, and while I really don't like that, I think it's something I have to live with to get a device that thin. Still, I'm not looking forward to dealing with a proprietary connector. I swore I'd never get a device with one again, but the Tab is far and away the best Android tablet out right now. I've already waited about 6 months for something decent, so I can't wait for the second generation to come along.

** smarter than Motorola