Smartphone/ tablet/ cheap phone to take to SEAsia?

Two thoughts:

1) If you decide to go with just your galaxy and it is locked, when you get to Bangkok, go to MBK mall, 5th floor, and choose amongst the hundred of booths that will unlock your phone for, well, next to nothing. You could then buy your Thai SIM card at the same place for, well, next to nothing :-). For a few €s more, you could get a SIM with data plan for essential photo uploads, if you thought that would help, keeping in mind that...

2) noting that a typical smartphone photo 'weighs' 1.3 MB, if you have 1GB free on your phone, you can store ~750 photos. If you have 8GB free, you have room for LOTS of photos. Then if you find yourself in a guesthouse with wifi in room, set your phone to upload backup photos directly to your cloud provider while you sleep. You cut out the cybercafé risks and don't even have to wait for the upload to finish. In all cases, best not to lose your phone.

Worldranger, I think I didn't need to root my Asus tablet. The hard drive was connected without. As long as it has its own steam of course.

Another way around it - and you can use apple tablets this way too if I am not mistaken - is using a external drive with wifi build it and connect the hard drive this way.

Currently waiting until the i5 windows tablets come down in price myself.