Late last month, Samsung ensured the tech world’s attention wouldn’t be solely focused on the iPhone 5 or Nexus 7 by pinpointing August 15th as a date for a key announcement. The tactic worked, and fans of everything digital have been speculating what the Korean company may have up its sleeve.
The Galaxy Note 10.1 seemed to emerge as the clear favorite to be announced on 15th, with the Galaxy Note II following a couple of weeks later on August 29th. The original Galaxy Note was a rousing – if somewhat surprising success, finding a strong niche among consumers looking for more than a smartphone, but less than the sizeable tablet.
The follow-up to the Note "phablet" has garnered almost as much fuss as the Galaxy S III pre-launch, but the company has previously pledged its desire to get moving on a new tablet release, so as to not fall behind the likes of Google and Apple. Thus, the thought of the Korean outfit releasing the Note 10.1 after the Note II seemed to make little sense, and now it appears the emphasis is indeed firmly on the Note 10.1, with the electronics company having just announced plans for the global availability of the newest slate.
The Galaxy Note 10.1 will run a 1.4GHz Exynos 4 quad-core processor, rendering it among the most powerful devices on the market. The Nexus 7 made an instant impact with its quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM, but the Note 10.1 should take things up a couple of notches on that, with 2GB of RAM on all versions of the upcoming device – the first mainstream slab to do so.
There will be three different iterations available to consumers; The Wi-Fi-only, which, in general, tends to suit a large bulk of consumers; the Wi-Fi and HSPA+ edition; and the high-end version, featuring Wi-Fi and LTE for incredibly fast downloads. The first two (Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi and HSPA+) will be available later this month, although those looking for the LTE version will have to wait until later this year.
It’s been a long time coming, but it does appear tablet vendors are finally throwing down the gauntlet to Apple and the market-leading iPad, which has stormed through unchallenged in the past couple of years.
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