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Galaxy Note 8.0 Announced: Samsung's New Coming Pen-Equipped Tablet with Just-Right Size

Samsung Company recently announces its new 8-inch, Android tablet at Mobile World Congress, a large mobile tradeshow in Barcelona, and it hopes its new software features and the portable size will make it standout, especially against Apple's iPad Mini.

Size: The tablet is slightly wider than the 7-inch tablets on the market, including Samsung's Galaxy Tab 7, and is meant to be easier to operate in one hand.

S Pen: just like rest of the Note line, the Note 8.0 comes with the company's S Pen stylus, which is optimized for an array of baked-in apps, like Samsung's S Note and handwritten email software. And its S Pen is a good spotlight to attract people's attention.

With an SD card slot, a home button, and S-Pen stylus support, the Note 8 offers a level of functionality the iPad can't match, but it's too early to say whether that will guarantee it fame and glory. Expect this tiny tablet to appear worldwide sometime in the second quarter of 2013.

Besides the 8-inch 1280x800-pixel screen, the Galaxy Note 8.0 sports a 1.6GHz A9 quad-core processor, a 5-megapixel back camera (plus a 1.3-megapixel one on the front for video calls), 2GB of RAM and 16/32GB of storage that's further expandable via microSD cards.

Specifications for the Galaxy Note 8.0 include:

8-inch display with 1280x800 pixel resolution (ppi)

Quad-core 1.6 GHz Samsung Exynos processor

Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean OS

2GB of RAM

16GB and 32GB internal storage options

MicroSD card slot for memory expansion

IR port for TV control

5-megapixel rear camera and 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera

Dimensions: 210.8x135.9x7.95 mm and 338 grams of weight.

The Galaxy Note 8.0 will be available worldwide in the second quarter of 2013. Availability and pricing in the U.S.has not yet been announced.

Sony Xperia Tablet Z Globally Launched at MWC 2013: Release Price Confirmed

Earlier this year, the company launched the Sony Xperia Tablet Z in Japan itself. Now, at Mobile World Congress, Sony announced its world debut. Priced at upwards of $499 in USA, it will have to face a bigger fight with Apple iPad and Microsoft's Surface RT.

Stuffed with a 10-inch display with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 display, 2GB of RAM, 1.5Ghz Snapdragon S4 Pro Quad Core processor, an 8-mega pixel rear camera and 2.2-mega pixel camera on the rear, 16GB/32GB of internal storage, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean (confirmed by the manufacturer), and lastly ability to play around in harsh conditions as the device comes with waterproof and dust resistant capabilities. When you put DVD movies to Xperia Tablet Z, every image is crisp and vivid, thus it would not let you down performing like a multimedia entertainment tool.

In order to have the spotlight on an already-crowded 10-inch tablet market, Sony is betting on a case that it’s only 6.9 mm thin, making Xperia Tablet Z in the thinnest tablet in the world. Sony Xperia Tablet Z is also light, weighing only 495 grams, while being dust proof and capable of resisting in 1 meter-deep waters for up to 30 minutes.

The new tablet also comes with an infrared port and with the help of the TV SideView app the Xperia Tablet Z can be used as a remote control, but I don’t know how many of the customers will be attracted by this features, especially because the “remote control” will be a bit too big.

In terms of connectivity, Sony Xperia Tablet Z comes with WiFi and NFC, but Sony’s press release is not mentioning anything about 3G or 4G connections, which is a sign that the international model will be WiFi-only, even though the Japanese variant has LTE support.

Promoted as a premium tablet, Sony Xperia Tablet Z will have a price tag matching Apple’s iPad 4: $499 for the 16 GB model, and $599 for the 32 GB variant. Sony has announced some good news in that the Sony Xperia Tablet Z will be coming to the global market in the second quarter of this year. The second quarter of course encompasses April, May and June which means we will see a release by the end of June. As an impressive tablet alone, the Xperia Tablet Z is definitely worth a good hard look.