As we wrote about just the other day, Verizon made a lot of waves with their announcement to offer the Galaxy Tab without a contract option.  As expected, other carriers announced their intent to offer the Tab, surprisingly with a contract.

Both Sprint and T-mobile will offer the Tab for the discounted price of $399 in exchange for a 2 year service agreement, but is this really a decent choice for consumers?

Samsung and Verizon made some waves today when they announced that the newly minted Tab would run for $599.99, and no contract options.  For those of you not familiar with the device, the Tab is the first Android tablet to officially come with the Google marketplace in tow and major carrier support.  It’s a 7″ all touchscreen device, and features 16gb of memory (expandable to 32gb), a 1ghz processor and both a rear and front facing camera.

Sounds great right?

Most of you are likely thinking “Not really.  Look at that price!”  To paraphrase  one internet commenter; “Why would i get something that is only 3″ bigger than my Fascinate and 3x the cost?”  When I first heard the cost, I thought the same thing.  Then I remembered that the Fascinate is actually $589.99 so for an extra $10, you get a noticeably larger device.

The problem is that as consumers, we’re trained to think of anything cellphone related in terms of contracts and subsidies.  We don’t care how much a device costs because we only have to pay a fraction of that cost with our contracts.  We’re pretty vocal about allowing unlocked devices on our network of choice.  Getting used to the unsubsidized cost of a phone is just the first step towards carrier independence.