Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Arrives – Enhanced Competition for the Nexus 7?

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 has been in-dev for a very long time now and its presence hasn’t exactly been off-the-radar. However, we are now finally seeing the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 officially materialise at the Mobile World Congress 2013 event in Barcelona, Spain. Being an 8 inch tablet, it is obviously different to the plethora of 7 inch tablets we are used to seeing, the 8 inch display makes it noticeably wider. Journalists at the MWC have reported that the Galaxy Note 8 is made out of similar materials to the Galaxy Note 10.1 except with a bit more metal in the construction for solidity.

All that extra metal has been compensated by a very tin design leaving it at 0.74 pounds – only marginally heavier than Apple’s iPad Mini. The bottom of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 features three bezel buttons for menu, home and back, in left to right ordering. Samsung has added the functionality of being able to use their S-Pen with the three buttons, something that was missing off their previous Note II.

Other features include a rear facing 5MP camera, positioned centrally at the top, and a front camera at the top right. Along the bottom edge the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 includes two speaker grills, a micro USB port and the slot for putting the S-Pen back. The choice of OS is Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean with Samsung’s “TouchWiz UI” being layered over the top. Connectivity options include 3G (HSPA+21) and Wi-Fi, although for some reason the USA is limited to a strictly Wi-Fi only version.

The choice of display from Samsung is an 8 inch panel utilising a 1280 by 800 pixel screen which equates to a ppi count of 189. Powering this device is a quad core 1.6GHz A9 processor with 2GB of RAM and other key hardware components include the aforementioned 802.11 a/b/g/n (2.4 and 5 GHz) Wi-Fi, SD Card slot, S-Pen, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, gyroscope, accelerometer and a digital compass. Storage will vary between models but you have a rather predictable 16GB or 32GB choice.

Samsung have, unsurprisingly, declined to offer pricing information at this stage which means making a judgement on the value of the tablet impossible, especially against the Nexus 7 dubbed this tablet’s biggest competitor. Expect more news of the Note 8 as the product comes to market in the second quarter of this year (2013).

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