For many, the 7″ screen size provided by the original Galaxy Tab was just perfect: it was portable and made typing easy in portrait orientation, but also big enough to qualify as a true tablet. The problem with the original Galaxy Tab was that it wasn’t very thin, nor was it very fast (because of its single core processor).

That all changes with the Galaxy Tab 7.7, which bumps the screen size of its predecessor a bit by 0.7″, while adding beautiful Super AMOLED Plus screen technology to provide deep contrast and sharp text and images thanks to the RGB subpixel configuration. Not only that, the Galaxy Tab 7.7 has a Exynos dual-core 1.4GHz CPU with 1GB of RAM. Unfortunately, it’s running Android 3.2, but an Ice Cream Sandwich update is waiting in the wings.

First impressions:

- The Tab 7.7 feels faster than the 8.9 and 10.1 thanks to the better processor, but still is laggy at times (most likely thanks to Honeycomb)

- The screen is gorgeous with amazing contrast, and at 200ppi text looks crisp, but you can definetly see pixels if you look up close

- While the backing looks like metal and feels a bit like metal, it’s plastic. Update: After further investigation, turns out that the backing is indeed metal.

You can buy a Galaxy Tab 7.7 with WiFi and 16GB of ROM for $572 at Negri Electonics. For about $100 more, you can get a 3G version that works on AT&T.