Samsung showed off its 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab with Honeycomb last month over at Barcelona, but shortly after, Apple announced and launched their new second generation iPad, which raised the standard for tablets’ ergonomics and performance. It’s light, it’s thin, and yet it’s powerful. Even Samsung isn’t very happy of how their yet-to-be-launched Galaxy Tab 10.1 faired when compared to the new iPad 2.

Therefore, Samsung went back to the drawing board, and gave the yet-to-be-released Galaxy Tab 10.1 a quick diet mission. Now the updated Galaxy Tab 10.1 is showing up at CTIA 2011 being 2.3mm thinner. It measures only 8.6mm thick and weights 595 grams, which is both thinner and lighter than the new iPad 2, by a tiny bit. The display is a Xoom-like 1280×800 using Samsung’s PLS display technology. The iPad 2 by comparison is 8.8mm thick and weighs 601 grams.

Like the Galaxy S II, this new honeycomb tablet will get HSPA+ 21.1 support, as well as 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi with two spatial streams. The SoC used here is still unknown, as with the case of the Galaxy S II, it might be Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC or Samsung’s in-house Orion processor. Samsung is promising LTE and WiMAX versions of the new Galaxy Tab 10.1 as well.
Ergonomics aren’t the only area in which Samsung is competitive with the iPad 2; there’s also pricing. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 WiFi will be available in 16GB and 32GB versions, priced at an iPad 2 competitive $499 and $599 respectively. The 10.1 will be available starting June 8th. Arrival of 3G variants are yet to be known.