Time to crank up the rumor machine again this morning. This time for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 series. We have recently reported on the company’s plans to announce three new tablets later this month at sizes of 7″, 8″, and 10″, meaning that we will probably get our first look at them during Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona, Spain.
One of these devices, the GT-P3200, which is supposed to be the budget friendly version of the three, just showed up on the GLBenchmark database. Now benchmark numbers are a tricky thing and their reliability depends on who you talk to, but one thing that is for sure is that they do give us a look at some of the actual hardware on a given device.
In this case GLBenchmark shows that the GT-P3200 will have a 7-inch screen with a 1280 x 800 pixel resolution. This is the same as the resolution of the Nexus 7 and you would be hard pressed to find many complaints with that screen.
Next up we take a look at the processor. The SoC listed is the SMDK4x12 which is the same as that in the Samsung Galaxy S III running an Exynos system. Assuming that this is correct we can expect to see the GT-P3200 with either a dual-core or quad-core processor running between 200MHz and 1.5GHz. Also present on this benchmark is a Mali 400 MP GPU. Additionally this tablet will be running Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean right out of the box.
Between the Galaxy Tab 3 GT-P3200, the Acer Iconia B1, and the rumored refresh of the Asus Nexus 7, 2013 is looking to pick up right where 2012 left off in the “budget” Android tablet world. This is obviously great news because budget no longer means cheap or crappy. Since the release of Amazon’s Kindle Fire, manufacturers have been bringing the price down on some very good to great devices and giving us all an excellent Android experience for relatively low prices. Thankfully, long gone are the days of the Pantechs and Cobys of the world with those ridiculous resistive touchscreens that did absolutely nothing but put a sour taste in the mouth of whomever had the misfortune of picking one up.
I know that there is a very loyal Samsung following out there so does this Galaxy Tab 3 get your juices flowing? Or has the Nexus 7 spoiled you for other tablets and you’re patiently waiting for Google I/O and the potential Nexus 7 refresh?