The Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet has been periodically surfacing ever since MWC back in February. It has never reared its head for very long, however, generally only popping up just long enough to spark speculation and rumour before disappearing once again back in to the murky world of devices that are “coming soon”.
Well, the Galaxy Note 10.1 has once again reminded the world that it hasn’t been scrapped yet with some reportedly leaked specs making their way on to the net. The specs themselves are a mixture of impressive and satisfactory, probably still placing the Note 10.1 at the more premium end of price-points.
The Galaxy Note 10.1 leaked specs are as follows:
- Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
- Quad-core 1.4GHz CPU
- 10.1 inch WXGA (1280 x 768) display
- 5MP camera with LED flash
- USB 2.0, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n (2.4GHz and 5GHz)
- Accelerometer, Gyro
As you can see some of these specs, such as the 1.4GHz quad-core CPU, should be more than enough to compete with the top end of the market. However, we’re particularly disappointed to see the same old issue of a last-gen Android OS showing up on a current-gen device. It’s true that ICS was and still is a fairly solid tablet OS, but demonstrations of 4.1 Jelly Bean have so far been far superior in terms of response time and overall user experience across the board.
In fact, Jelly Bean support out of the box would have been just the thing to raise our hopeful expectations up to good, old fashioned excitement. We loved the original Galaxy Note smartphone when we did our review recently and have been keenly anticipating the release of the Galaxy Note 2. Of course we’re equally as keen to see the Note reincarnated in tablet form, but we were definitely hoping for more than ICS.
That being said a tablet with Galaxy Note S-Pen integration just makes sense. Proper stylus integration built right in to the UI would be a solid way for Samsung to not only set their product apart from the iPad in terms of marketing, but should hopefully be enough to side-step the patent infringement issues it face when releasing its Galaxy Tab 10.1 last year. It would be more difficult for Apple to argue that a tablet with such a keen focus on S-Pen functionality was a direct rip-off of the iPad.
We also just think that a proper stylus system could work very well with a tablet, perhaps even better than it does with the Galaxy Note “phablet”. The larger screen would definitely lend itself to the note-taking and casual scribbling focus of the Note range. The increased screen real estate could also open up room for some interesting apps, although considering the likely small number of Galaxy note users compared to Android Tablet users as a whole we won’t hold our breaths.
It’ll be interesting to see how a Note tablet would fare compared to the more traditional Galaxy Tablets offered by Samsung. After all it should support the same kind of basic functionality and services offered by the traditional variety, but also boast the S-Pen integration on top. It’s entirely possible that, moving forwards, we’ll see Samsung begin to focus more heavily on Note tablets than Galaxy Tabs, but that is obviously something that only time can tell.
Until it’s officially announced we’ll have to be content with the small snippets of information that surface every now and then, although we shouldn’t have to wait too long. Word is that the Note Tablet will be announced on August 15th, which is only a little over a week away.
UPDATE: Samsung posted this video on YouTube shortly after we published this article. Enjoy.