Samsung devices are no strangers to rumors, the Galaxy S III and the Note II that came out in 2012 were pretty much plagued with rumors. Now, it looks like the Galaxy Note line is to be subject to a fresh new batch of rumors, once again, word of a smaller Galaxy Note tablet is doing the rounds as the run-up to MWC in February starts in earnest. Sammobile have it on good authority that the tablet will be coming in an 8.0″ form-factor and carry model numbers of GT-N5100 and GT-N5110 for the Wi-Fi and 3G versions of the device, respectively. Obviously, this will be Samsung attempt to compete with Apple’s iPad Mini and if they can deliver a quality product at less than the iPad Mini’s – overly-high – price point then they could have another winner on their hands.
Of course, with this being a rumor and all, salt is needed but, this time you should be fine with just a pinch. Specs are going to be important and it looks like they’re going to have a decent mid-range to high-end tablet on their hands. Take a look at the rumored specs below:
- 8.0″1280—800 TFT (Super Clear LCD)
- 211.3—136.3—7.95 mm with a weight of just 330 gram.
- GSM networks: EDGE (850/900/1800/1900) HSPA+21.1Mbps, HSUPA 5.76Mbps (850/900/1900/2100)
- 5 Megapixel rear-facing camera with 1.3 megapixel front-facing
- 2GB of RAM
- True Pen-Input with the S-Pen
- 16 or 32GB of internal storage, with support for microSD Cards – up to 32GB
- BT 4.0, USB 2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, A-GPS
- 4,600 mAh battery
As you can see from the specs above, there’s no word on processor, which is a little strange as a lot of the other details seem to look legitimate, perhaps Samsung are still deciding on whether or not to use the upcoming Exynos 5440 to be based on Cortex A15 or the just-announced Exynos 5 Octa to fature eight processing cores based on ARM’s big.LITTLE design said to maximize both performance and battery-performance.
If Samsung are to debut this device, it might be at Mobile World Congress next month, which is the first time we saw anything of the Note 10.1. Samsung wouldn’t be the first to try with this sort of tablet though, I’m sure that many of you remember the HTC Flyer – or the EVO View 4G on Sprint – that was a 7-inch tablet to pack true-pen input through its Scribe pen. HTC didn’t launch the Flyer to much success however, with the pen costing extra from Best Buy and launching with Gingerbread back in mid-2011, there was an update to Honeycomb, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any further. Needless to say, it was HTC’s only entry into the 7″ Android tablet space, ad one of only two tablets they ever shipped.
Let’s hope that Samsung don’t suffer the same fate, do you think that Samsung could enjoy success with a smaller Note tablet?
[Source: SamMobile]