Monday, February 25, 2013

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 vs Nexus 7vs iPad Mini, Will Samsung Win?

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 has finally been unveiled at MWC 2013 (Mobile World Congress), which is undoubtedly give a boost to the tablet market specifically aiming at Apple’s iPad Mini and Nexus 7.

When Samsung is obviously the ruler of the global smartphones market, will it get the same success in tablets? We know, Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 is the very awesome one, so what’s this one? Maybe one interesting way of appreciating its future success is a comparison with its strong contenders Nexus 7 and iPad Mini.Just let’s have a look at the Galaxy Note 8 vs iPad Mini vs Nexus 7 battle.
Samsung Galaxy Note 8 vs Nexus 7vs iPad Mini

Design & Display
Samsung Galaxy Note 8 keeps the classic design of the Note line-up with round edges and plastic back lid, boasting an 8-inch 1,280 x 800 pixels display. Nexus 7 is superior to Note 8 with an elegant design, a textured back for the best grip and a 7-inch 1,280 x 800 pixels screen while Apple’s iPad Mini excels with its premium-looking body, solid construction and a 7.9-inch display with a resolution of 1,024 x 768 pixels.

For portability, Nexus 7 is the most suitable one, second iPad Mini, last Galaxy Note 8. But iPad Mini is the thinnest and lightest one, and also Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is about 2.5 mm thinner than Nexus 7.But for display, Nexus 7 is inarguably the winner, and Note 8 failed in this game.

OS & Software
Running Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean out of the box, Note 8 also features the optimized apps for the S Pen stylus, which allow you to easily draw or edit photos in Photoshop Touch with Handwriting support. Also, the TouchWiz UI of Note 8 offers the popular features on Samsung Galaxy S3 or Note 2 like Pop up Play, Smart Stay. Via Smart Remote app, you can even use Note 8 as a remotecontrol.

Coming with pre-loaded with Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean, Nexus 7 is the one of the few device which can upgrade to Android 4.2.2.

The iPad Mini certainly runs iOS 6 out of the box, but it can upgradable to iOS 6.1.2 now.

CPU, RAM & Storage
Note 8 sports the Samsung’s proprietary Exynos 4 Quad chipset based on a 1.6GHz quad-core processor, Mali 400 MP GPU and 2GB of RAM, which is really powerful to make the Note 8 a very fast tablet. It will come with 16 or 32 GB of internal storage, with up to 64GB expanded storage.

Nexus 7 comes with a quad-core 1.2 GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset ,1GB RAM and16GB/32GB models, and iPad Mini only includes a dual-core 1 GHz A5 processor , 512 MB RAM and 16/32/64 GB models.Both of they have no SD card port.

Obviously, Note 8 owns the most powerful hardware platform of the three. But remember although the iPad Mini does badly in this specs term, iOS still runs pretty smooth without the multitasking and other Android features.

Battery, Connectivity & Camera
Note 8 includes a 4,600 mAh battery while iPad Mini and Nexus 7 packs with the same 4,325 mAh battery .In this factor, the three ones is pretty close.

Note 8 uses a 5MP rear camera and a 1.2MP front camera and offers WiFi, 3G and 4G, just the same as iPad Mini while Nexus 7 can only offers WiFi and 3G and a front facing 1.2MP camera.

Verdict
Samsung Galaxy Note 8 definitely is the powerful and attractive device with higher technical specs. And Samsung may become stronger on the tablet market. However, Google and Apple will reportedly upgrade their tablets in 2013, and it is still the beginning of the battle. But until then the Note 8 is an important competitor for both Nexus 7 and iPad Mini.

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HTC One vs LG Nexus 4 vs Samsung Galaxy Note 2 vs iPhone 5

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