Samsung has officially revealed their new 8″ Note tablet which also has a smartphone capability. The 20.3cm tablet is expected to go on sale in Australia in May 2013.Powered by Google Android the new device that was revealed overnight at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona has a stylus pen allowing the user to write or draw on the screen, which can also be split in two to run various programs at the same time.
The Note 8.0 sits between the Galaxy Note II, a 5.5 inch mega-phone, and the Galaxy Note 10.1, a full-sized tablet. The new model’s screen size also makes it possibly the most direct competitor to Apple’s iPad Mini, which has a display that’s just a tad smaller at 7.9 inches. (The Note’s resolution of 1280-by-800 beats the Mini’s 1024-by-768.)
The pressure-sensitive pen is based on Wacom’s technology, software which takes advantage of Samsung’s unique two-apps-at-once feature.
The version revealed at Barcelona is an international version, with HSPA+ wireless, which can also be used as a ridiculously large phone; it’s due in the second quarter of this year. There will be Wi-Fi-only and LTE versions for the U.S.; no details yet on how much they’ll cost or which carriers will have the LTE variant.
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Samsung said the launch of the Galaxy Note 8.0 will “reignite the mid-size tablet category” – a segment increasingly crowded by rival products including the iPad mini that launched last November and Google’s seven-inch (17.8cm) Nexus 7.
Samsung and Apple accounted for more than half of all smartphone sales in the final quarter of 2012 – 29 per cent for Samsung and 22.1 per cent for Apple – according to research firm Strategy Analytics.
The latest device – the first from the company to feature an eight-inch screen – is set to fill a gap in the firm’s wide product line-up, which ranges from the flagship smartphone Galaxy S3 to the 5.5-inch (14cm) Galaxy Note 2 and the 10.1-inch (25.7cm) Galaxy Tab tablet PC.
Samsung has recently shifted its focus to its Galaxy Note, which turned out to be far more popular than the larger Galaxy Tab, offering the Note in various sizes in a move that blurred the lines between smartphones and tablet PCs.
