Samsung has allowed journalists to have a look at the new Galaxy Note 8.0 two days before the official start of Mobile World Congress. The tablet will still be on shown at the event, alongside some other new Samsung electronics, but it seems the South Korean company want to get hype for the device before the big show.
The Galaxy Note 8.0 has an eight inch, 1280×800 resolution display. This is the same screen resolution as the Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire HD. The Galaxy Note 8.0 is an inch bigger than both those devices, but only 0.1 inch bigger than the iPad Mini, making it the perfect competitor.
The Galaxy Note 8.0 has a 1.6GHz A9 quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, a 5-megapixel rear camera and 16/32GB of storage that can be expanded with an SDcard. The device supports WiFi and HSPA+/LTE, the battery is a beefy 4,600mAh. Oddly, the tablet will be capable of making phone calls.
Android 4.1.2 is running on the Galaxy Note 8.0, and we suspect Samsung will be moving to get that to Android 4.2. TouchWiz has been slapped on the top of Jelly Bean, and it works pretty well, although we would love to see pure Android. Samsung has added Flipboard and Awesome Note to their start up apps for users.
Design wise, the Galaxy Note 8.0 looks a lot like a smaller Galaxy Note 10.1 and has the basic Samsung tablet look. The tablet is very thin and looks to be a reasonable competitor in the seven/eight inch tablet world.
As with most all Samsung tablets, the Galaxy Note 8.0 comes with the S Pen. The S Pen starts up some software when you take it out of its pocket, and the pen works a lot better than it has on previous versions. The S Pen even has a hover mode, so you don’t have to touch the screen when browsing.
The Galaxy Note 8.0 will be on sale internationally by the second quarter of 2013. We are unsure of pricing, although knowing Samsung, they will be going right for the sweet spot against Apple.
[Source: Mashable]