As Samsung prepares to release its rival to the iPad, the Samsung Galaxy tablet, its attempts to keep a lid on it were foiled this week after an Australian technology journalist filmed it being used on a Sydney train.

"It was quite a find," Sanjiv Sathiah, a journalist with Electronista.com, said in a telephone interview.

"I was standing in my usual spot at [Central Station] and I thought 'What the hell is that?'

"And then I noticed, 'That's got an LCD screen - that's not an [Amazon] Kindle or an e-reader - that's a tablet!'"