Whether you are an admirer of 7 or 8 inch tablet devices, or don't really care about these particular screen sizes, the leading mobile gear makers decided that there is a market niche to be won here, and with the introduction of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 everyone will have a dog in the small tablet fight this season.
We are pitting Samsung's latest Note family member against its most formidable opponents - the Apple iPad mini and the Google Nexus 7 small affordable slates. While we don't have much details on price and availability for the Note 8.0 rather than Q2 in Europe and Asia, the other two have been around for a while, so you can have a look how they stack up in the table below.
It's immediately clear that Samsung has placed a lot of effort to make its tablet as slim and light as possible, considering that it also has to house the S Pen silo and the stylus itself. The Note 8.0 is in fact slimmer and a tad lighter than the Nexus 7, despite being the slate with the largest screen of the bunch. Its resolution is actually the same as that of the Nexus 7, with a slightly lower pixel density because of the screen size. Note 8.0 also has the immediately recognizable styling of the Galaxy family with its rounded corners, looking like a larger Note II.
As far as processing power goes, the 1.6 GHz Exynos 4 Quad Cortex-A9 CPU might not be at the fastest edge of ARM's technology, but it would surely be more than enough to handle anything Android throws at it. Moreover, Samsung's tablet is the best of the bunch memorywise, sporting 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal memory, as well as a microSD slot for more, which the other two don't have.
When we add the generous 4, 600 mAh battery and the myriad of productivity options added by the S Pen stylus and the accompanying software, it seems that Samsung has nailed it in terms of specs as usual, so the only thing remaining is to get one for a review to check out the performance side as well.
DESIGN
Phone functionality
Yes
OS
Android (4.1.2) TouchWiz UI
iOS (6.1, 6)
Android (4.2.2, 4.2.1, 4.2, 4.1.2, 4.1.1, 4.1)
Dimensions
8.30 x 5.35 x 0.31 inches (210.8 x 135.9 x 7.95 mm)
7.87 x 5.30 x 0.28 inches (200 x 134.7 x 7.2 mm)
7.81 x 4.72 x 0.41 inches (198.5 x 120 x 10.45 mm)
Weight
11.92 oz (338 g) the average is 4.3 oz (123 g)
11.01 oz (312 g) the average is 4.3 oz (123 g)
11.99 oz (340 g) the average is 4.3 oz (123 g)
Design features
Stylus
Colors
Black, White
DISPLAY
Physical size
8.0 inches
7.9 inches
7.0 inches
Resolution
1280 x 800 pixels
1024 x 768 pixels
1280 x 800 pixels
Pixel density
189 ppi
162 ppi
216 ppi
Technology
TFT
IPS LCD
IPS LCD
BATTERY
Stand-by time
12.5 days (300 hours) the average is 17 days (411 h)
Video playback
9.00 hours
Capacity
4600 mAh
4325 mAh
Type
Li - Polymer
Li - Polymer
Not user replaceable
Yes
Yes
Yes
HARDWARE
System chip
Exynos 4 Quad
Apple A5
NVIDIA Tegra 3 T30L
Processor
Quad core, 1600 MHz, ARM Cortex-A9
Dual core, 1000 MHz, ARM Cortex-A9
Quad core, 1200 MHz, ARM Cortex-A9
Graphics processor
Yes
PowerVR SGX543MP2
ULP GeForce @ 416MHz
System memory
2048 MB RAM
512 MB RAM
1024 MB RAM (1333 MHz) / LPDDR3
Built-in storage
16 GB
16 GB
8 GB
Storage expansion
microSD, microSDHC, microSDXC up to 64 GB
CAMERA
Camera
5 megapixels
5 megapixels
Aperture size
F2.4
Features
Auto focus, Geo tagging
Back-illuminated sensor (BSI), Auto focus, Touch to focus, Digital image stabilization, Geo tagging
Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena since 2010, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.
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