Korean electronics giant Samung has shown off its own effort at an Android-based tablet device for the first time, showing an image on its South African Twitter account that was fairly quickly removed.

It's certainly a very... iPad arrangement

SamsungHub is reporting that, for the moment, we don’t know an awful lot about the device, but what we do know does lead to some fairly interesting inferences. The first is that the device is running Google’s Android OS, good news for those who are of the opinion that tablet hardware, as it stands just doesn’t work as well with desktop operating systems. The second is that the device boasts the “phone” icon for an app in its bottom row, which would seem to indicate that, unlike Apple’s iPad, the device is actually capable of making and receiving calls and sending texts, but that’s not where the implications end.

Interestingly enough, the tweet that revealed the device said that “this particular one” is a seven-inch model. While that could just be a turn of phrase, many are taking it to indicate that Samsung is gearing up to release multiple tablets at different sizes. Just that that range might be is anyone’s guess for now, but if Samsung could go as low as the Dell Streak’s five-inches and up to the same size as Apple’s iPad then things would be looking very interesting indeed.

Other interesting titbits include the fact that the device boasts a front-facing camera, as well as a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, though the latter might well have been a given. The device is also that bit more widescreen than Apple’s tablet, which could well indicate a greater focus on video.

For the moment, there’s no official word on just when we can expect to see Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, as it’s being called, in the wild, but we’ll be very interested to take a closer look when it does arrive.

It’s also worth noting that attempting to view the original TwitPic link to the image now only presents a page to inform users that, “The photo you are looking for no longer exists.”