At the turn of the century people were amazed at how Lufthansa offered short films on their small aircraft. Now nearly 100 years later American Airlines has started a new chapter. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 will now be available to premium class passengers on American’s Transcon and international flights on their 757s and 767s.
This is a first for U.S airlines and I find this really cool. Apparently they feature hundreds of streaming movies, TV shows, songs, and games. They will apparently also soon have international wifi so you can watch your netflix over the Atlantic. How is this different from AVOD (audio video on demand) systems already onboard aircraft. These are portable, can be held in your hand, and allow third party changing apps. You can even play angry birds. These tablets have multitouch. This is a far better experience than AVOD but I’m curious how they recharge them in an hour layover between two eight hour from Europe to the U.S.
So Why didn’t they get the more popular ipad? We were wondering the same thing because of course while the Tab is a phenomenal tablet it is not an ipad. An American spokesperson told us exclusively “We have carefully reviewed all the tablet devices in the market – looking at customer features and cost with each provider – and feel the agreement we have with Samsung for the Galaxy tablet is going to provide our premium customers with a cutting edge tablet experience (outdoing other tablets in the market)”.
Conclusion: It sounds really cool. I hope to get to demo them one day soon.
So when can you see this on a plane? Today. They were apparently put on planes formally on December 14th. To those of you who experience it on future flights Enjoy.