Microsoft Surface 2 Powered By Tegra 4 Benchmarks Leak

Another unannounced device has just popped up on GFXBench's online database, and this time it's Microsoft's Surface 2 tablet. 

Looks like Microsoft hasn't given up on Windows RT after all, but it doesn't seem like they're putting much effort into it either, as the leaked device has a screen resolution of 1360 x 768 in plain 2013. The device, named Microsoft Surface 2, boasts a very powerful Tegra 4 processor, at least. (Recap: The Tegra 4 consists of four Cortex-A15 cores clocked at up to 1.9GHz and a 72-core GeForce GPU)

There are only two results on the database. One is for the T-Rex HD Offscreen test, which gets a score of 10.6 fps. I certainly hope the performance is being affected by unfinished software, because this score is mediocre compared to other Tegra 4 devices. For comparison, the iPad 4 scores 19.1 fps on the same test, and it's 10 months old!
The other benchmark score is for the Onscreen T-Rex HD test, and that gets a score of 24.4 fps, which is considerably above the iPad 4's 12.7 fps score, but that's just because of the Surface 2's mediocre resolution. 

Take this all with a grain of salt, of course, but if this is really the Surface 2 I can almost guarantee it'll be another flop. 1360 x 768 resolution for a 10.6-inch display (the size of the last-gen Surface, and most probably the Surface 2 too) was acceptable for a high-end device in 2011, but not today. And unless these benchmark scores are justified by unfinished software, then the Surface 2 will be far behind in terms of performance, even compared to other devices powered by the very same SoC. 

Update: The Surface 2 has been officially announced, and the resolution of the device, unlike what the benchmark leak reports, is 1920 x 1080. Also, the Tegra 4 SoC is now officially confirmed, though clocked at a lower 1.7GHz.

ASUS MeMO Pad 10 and MeMO Pad 8 Officially Announced at IFA 2013

Before I begin this article, I should point out that the MeMO Pad 10 is not to be confused with the higher-end MeMO Pad 10 FHD.

ASUS announced today two budget-oriented tablets, the MeMO Pad 10 and MeMO Pad 8. These two tablets are almost identical except for their screen sizes (10" and 8"), battery capacities and cameras. Both have IPS displays of 1280 x 800 resolution, and for the 10-inch MeMO Pad this means a rather mediocre 149ppi, and for the 8-incher a less sore 216ppi. For the first time in an ASUS tablet, both of them have their displays surrounded by a white bezel.

ASUS MeMo Pad 8 (left); MeMO Pad 10 (right)

Both have glossy plastic backs. The 10-incher gets a rather mediocre rear camera capable of 2 MP shots and 720p video, while the 8-inch MeMO Pad gets a better 5 MP rear camera, also 720p-capable, and both tablets have a 1.2 MP front camera. The MeMO Pad 10 is very light for a 10-inch tablet, weighing 522g, but the MeMO Pad 8 is rather hefty for its size, at 350g. Both have stereo speakers enhanced by SonicMaster technology.

Under the hood, both tablets are powered by the same SoC. ASUS hasn't told us any details, except that its a quad-core 1.6GHz processor, and based on that data alone it's hard to speculate which exact SoC is it. At any rate, ASUS claims 9.5 hours of usage for the MeMO Pad 10 and 9 hours for the MeMO Pad 8. 

ASUS Transformer Pad (2013) Officially Announced at IFA 2013

The awaited successor to the Transformer Pad Infinity that ASUS announced back in Computex 2013 is finally unveiled. The new flagship 10-incher, named just "Transformer Pad", codename TF701T, is encased by a stylish signature aluminium design and weighs just 585g and is 8.9mm thick. Svelte as it is, it packs a lot of power with a 5 MP rear camera capable of 1080p HDR video, a 1.2 MP front camera, and a top-notch 10.1" IGZO LED-Backlit IPS panel with a crisp 2560 x 1600 resolution (299ppi). The device will be powered by a very powerful NVIDIA Tegra 4 SoC, which, if you don't remember, consists of four Cortex-A15 cores clocked at 1.9GHz plus a beefy 72-core GeForce GPU. Tegra 4 gives the device the privilege of 4K output through an HDMI connection.

As the Transformer branding implies, this tablet will have an optional keyboard dock that attaches to the tablet and turns it into a Android notebook of sorts. The dock itself is very similar to its previous-gen counterparts, but replaces the single USB 2.0 port for USB 3.0 and the SD card slot for SDXC. The dock also contains a secondary battery built in, juicing up the Transformer Pad's battery all the way to 17 hours of usage when docked, according to ASUS.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014) Announced at IFA 2013

Along with the awaited Galaxy Note 3 phablet, Samsung also announced a new iteration of the Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet. Preferring to just call it the Note 10.1 2014 Edition (but we're in 2013...), the new 10-incher Galaxy Note will be available in black and white colors. The rear camera will be of 8MP resolution and is capable of recording 1080p video at 60 fps, and the 10.1" display will have a top-notch resolution of 2560 x 1600 (299ppi). The tablet will be available with 16, 32 or 64 GB of storage and 3 GB of RAM. Like the Note 3, the Note 10.1 2014 will make use of a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC (four Krait 400 cores @ 2.3GHz and Adreno 330 GPU).

As the Note designation implies, the tablet will be coupled with an S Pen stylus, which can prove to be very useful if you want to use your tablet for content creation. 

The tablet is expected to be released sometime this year, and will come with Android 4.3 out of the box with TouchWiz customizations. 

HP SlateBook x2 Review: A Good Tablet Plagued by Too Many Design Flaws

HP hasn't had many shots at making tablets yet. Their previous release, the Slate 7 was rather disappointing, but I must admit I felt excited when they announced their 10-inch Tegra 4-powered, Full HD Android tablet/notebook hybrid. It was especially exciting for me to see that both the tablet and keyboard would sell for a reasonable $479.99 price tag. Unfortunately, though, the SlateBook x2 turned out to be good only in theory, because while the device looks great on paper, it turned out to be plagued by so many design flaws it ruined my expectations for the device, making it not worth the $480 price tag.

I actually quite like the industrial design HP used here. The back of the tablet is made of a nice-looking plastic, and is available in two shades of grey (* wink *), light and dark grey. A rather large Hewlett-Packard logo is etched on the center, and on the top-center of the back is the 1080p-capable rear camera. HP did a rather odd thing here: they opted to place the power button and volume rocker at the left and right edges of the back of the device. This makes the buttons considerably easier to reach when you're holding the tablet in landscape, but it still looks a bit awkward.

On the front, the 10-inch 1920 x 1200 display is surrounded by not too large nor too narrow bezels. I actually think that this is the ideal bezel size for a 10-incher. Above the display is the 720p-capable front-facing camera and the ambient light sensor. Below the display is a small, centered HP logo (why do OEMs usually insist on putting two logos on their devices?), and below it, on either edge of the device is a speaker grille. Overall, I like their design language, at least for the tablet only.

Every once in a while I review a device, and I see design flaws that are so obvious that I realize how little effort some OEMs make to produce a decent product. The SlateBook x2 is once such victim of its OEM's carelessness, because when you dock the tablet into the keyboard, the microSD card slot and the headphone jack become inaccessible, because the dock connector is in the same side of the tablet as these two ports. You can probably get past the microSD slot's positioning quite easily, but c'mon, I'd like to be able to plug in my headphones and have the keyboard docked at the same time. Additionally, the speaker grilles, also located on the bottom end of the tablet, also get hidden when the keyboard is docked. Thankfully, this doesn't affect the sound quality too much, but come on HP, it's common sense. However, the keyboard dock is otherwise well designed. It looks nicely crafted, and the multi-touch pad is slightly wider than what we usually see in 10-inch keyboard docks. Typing on it should feel more or less the same than it would on any other 10-inch hybrid (cramped, but still usable).

HP didn't offer any numbers on weight and thickness of the tablet only and, probably to emphasize that the dock is an essential part of the product, only gave us the numbers referring to the tablet plus the dock. With the dock on, the device weighs an OK 1.29 kilograms and is relatively thin, at 0.81". 

On paper, you'd think the device's display is pretty good. After all, the LED-Backlit 10.1 inch unit has a respectable resolution of 1920 x 1200 (224ppi). But the display's sharpness isn't the problem, it's the color accuracy that's way off. Basically, the SlateBook x2 can't reproduce anything close to white. When rendering web pages with white backgrounds, you'd see a distinct yellow tinge instead of white. And I'm not saying the display's white temperature is a bit warm, I'm saying it's a distinct yellow. The color inaccuracy basically ruins the display for most uses. 

Under the hood, the device is, again on paper, a very capable one. That's because the SlateBook x2 houses NVIDIA's state-of-the-art Tegra 4 SoC, accompanied by 2 GB of DDR3L-1600 RAM. If you don't know/remember, the Tegra 4 is a 28nm SoC consisting of a quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 CPU clocked at 1.9GHz (this tablet is limited to 1.8GHz though), plus a power saver Cortex-A15 companion core which is limited to 825 MHz and is designed to handle light tasks, increasing battery life. The powerful CPU is accompanied by an equaly powerful 72-core GeForce GPU and dual-channel DDR3L @ 1899 MHz. With such powerful specs, you'd expect the SlateBok x2 to be blazing fast, but if Android Jelly Bean and Project Butter taught me something, is that software is as important as the hardware for a device's speed, and the SlateBook x2 further proves that, because despite having a very capable processor, the tablet still feels slow at times. For example, apps take longer than usual to open. If it's not a software issue, I'd say that the problem is slow storage transfer rate (they were rather mediocre in benchmarks). Gaming performance is not as bad in the SlateBook x2, as it can produce very similar benchmark results to other Tegra 4 devices (the NVIDIA Shield is still ahead, though, probably because it has a cooling fan), hence gaming performance shouldn't be a problem, especially at 1080p (Tegra 4 can handle 2560 x 1600 resolutions well, so it can handle 1080p even better). 

The SlateBook x2 runs on stock Android 4.2.2 (the only customization is a couple of HP ultilities installed). The $480 price will get you the tablet, the keyboard, and 16 GB of storage (expandable through the microSD card slot). I think its nice that the $480 price tag is for the keyboard included. But still, the truth is that HP's tablet has potential; it has a crisp screen, a nice looking industrial design, just about the fastest SoC available and that useful keyboard dock, but it has so many design flaws that ruin the user experience of the device. The saddest part is that these flaws are very obvious and pretty easy to remedy, which shows that HP didn't care much about making the device good. Due to its flaws I strongly recommend other tablets at the same price point, even if they don't have a keyboard dock included, for example the Sony Xperia Tablet Z, the iPad 4 or the even cheaper Google Nexus 10. 

Google Nexus 7 (2013) Review: Aggressively Specced, Aggressively Priced

When Google announced its first Nexus 7 tablet, built by ASUS, back in mid-2012, it was clearly destined to make the budget tablet market skyrocket. For a very low $199 price tag, the Nexus 7 offered excellent performance, good built quality, and virtually immediate Android updates. It was a cost-performance paradise, so unsurprisingly it quickly became extremely popular. Now, one year later, when the OG Nexus 7 is growing long in the teeth, Google and ASUS took cost-performance to a whole new level again with the new Nexus 7.

The refreshed 7-incher offers one of the fastest processors and a 1080p display, while keeping a very slim profile and record-breaking weight, all for just $30 more. Of course, competitors are in a catch-up state, but for now, the new Nexus 7 is clearly and by far the best budget tablet, and is also certainly the best cost-performance tablet ever made. 

	(2013) Google Nexus 7	Apple iPad mini	ASUS MeMO Pad 7 HD
Body	200 x 114 x 8.65 mm, 290g (299g with LTE)	200 x 134.7 x 7.2mm, 308g (312g with LTE)	196.8 x 120.6 x 10.8mm, 302g
Display	7" 1920 x 1200 (323ppi) LED-Backlit IPS w/ Corning Gorilla Glass	7.9" 1024 x 768 (163ppi) LED-Backlit IPS	7" 1280 x 800 (216ppi) LED-Backlit IPS
Storage	16/32 GB, 2 GB RAM	16/32/64 GB, 512 MB RAM	8/16 GB, 1 GB RAM
Connectivity	Wi-Fi only version and Wi-Fi + GSM (2G) + HSDPA (3G) + LTE (4G) version	Wi-Fi only version and Wi-Fi + GSM (2G) + HSDPA (3G) + LTE (4G) version	Wi-Fi only
Camera (rear)	5 MP w/ autofocus, face detection, 1080p video	5 MP iSight camera w/ face detection and autofocus, 1080p video	5 MP w/ autofocus
Camera (front)	1.2 MP	1.2 MP with 720p video	1.2 MP
OS	Android 4.3	iOS 7	Android 4.2.2
Chipset	Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro (28nm): Quad-core Krait @ 1.5 GHz + Adreno 320 GPU	Apple A5 (32nm HKMG): Dual-core Cortex-A9 @ 1.0GHz + PowerVR SGX 543MP2 GPU	MTK 8125: Quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 @ 1.2GHz + Mali-400 GPU
Battery	Li-Polymer 3950 mAh (15Wh), up to 9 hours usage	Li-Polymer 16.3Wh, up to 10 hours usage	Li-Polymer 15Wh, up to 10 hours usage
Price	$229 for Wi-Fi 16 GB version	$329 for Wi-Fi 16 GB version	$129 for 8 GB version and $149 for 16 GB version

Design

The new Nexus 7 isn't radically different from the old iteration, but the differences are notable and much appreciated. The back design gets a makeover, since it changes the textured rubbery back of the OG Nexus 7 for a plain, still a bit rubbery plastic, resembling the Nexus 10's feel, which makes the back look cleaner. Strangely, Google didn't make it clear whether they wanted the new Nexus 7 to be used more in landscape or in portrait mode. The vast majority of smaller tablets, including the 2012 Nexus 7, are tailored for use in portrait mode, but the new Nexus 7 gives some indication of wanting to be used in landscape. For instance, the Nexus logo on the back is oriented in landscape (but the smaller ASUS logo beneath it is in portrait.....hmmm weird), and the stereo speakers are both positioned on the tablet's top and bottom sides (when in portrait).

Apart from that, the back contains the 5 MP shooter at the top left corner. Aside from that orientation shortcoming, the back of the new Nexus 7 does look significantly more premium than its older counterpart.

The front of the device is very similar to the OG Nexus 7, with the exception the the vertical bezels are slightly thinner, and there is now a notification LED below the display. The tablet's dimensions are impressive for a device with its price, and indeed, the new Nexus 7 does feel much thinner and lighter than its older version. The thickness comes in at 8.7mm; not as thin as the iPad mini (7.2mm), but still a significant improvement over the OG Nexus 7's 10.4mm girth. Impressively, the new Nexus 7 sets the record as the lightest tablet ever, weighing just 290g (299g for the LTE version), it's lighter than the iPad mini (308g, 312g with LTE) and much lighter than its predecessor (340g, 347g with 3G). Especially for its price, the new Nexus 7 is one very svelte device. 

Display

People have been wondering how long it would take for Apple to release a Retina iPad mini. Well, Google beat them to it. The new Nexus 7's display has a pixel density that sits squarely in the Retina range, and is actually the tablet with the highest ppi ever. 1920 x 1200 pixels in that 7" IPS display results in an extremely crisp 323ppi pixel density. It blows the iPad mini's mediocre 163ppi and the OG Nexus 7's 216ppi out of the water, displaying razor sharp text and bright, crisp images. The LED-Backlit IPS technology also means that the new Nexus 7 will have excellent viewing angles and vivid color reproduction. There's no question about it; the new Nexus 7 has by far the best display in the 7/8-inch tablet market, and quite possibly the best display in the entire tablet space.

Performance

Guess what? Google also gave performance a huge upgrade with the new Nexus 7. The refreshed 7-incher doesn't have a particularly new SoC, but it's definitely one of the fastest. The SoC in question is Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 Pro SoC, which consists of a very fast Quad-core Krait CPU clocked at 1.5GHz and a very juicy Adreno 320 GPU. With that kind of performance, the new Nexus 7 will definitely be one of the fastest tablets in existence, and will be quite the gaming machine, especially with the crisp, bright display. 

Pricing and Conclusion

I may be wrong, but from my point of view, there is absolutely nothing to complain about the new Nexus 7. As it's a Nexus device, it will be the first to receive Android OS updates for many years to come. It offers an improved build quality with better looks, it's much lighter and thinner, placing itself as the lightest tablet ever. It has an outstanding display, probably the best display ever seen in a tablet, and it's performance is excellent, making it a good gaming machine. I may be getting ahead of myself here, but the new Nexus 7 is basically one of the, if not the, best tablet ever made. And to make it almost perfect, it's also very budget friendly. It's a bit more expensive than the OG Nexus 7, but it's still significantly cheaper than the much more lackluster iPad mini. Starting at $229 for the Wi-Fi only version with 16 GB (pricing for the LTE version is still unknown), the Nexus 7 is the bargain of the century. Well done, ASUS and Google!

Acer Iconia W3 Review: 8.1-inch Windows 8 tablet

Ever since the OG Kindle Fire, smaller 7/8-inch tablets have been growing at a very fast pace. Today, Google's Nexus 7 and Apple's iPad mini even threaten to outsell their larger counterparts. Seeing how lucrative this form factor has become, the eventual launch of a Windows-based 7/8-incher seemed inevitable. Windows RT/8 running tablets so far only employed the largest form factors in the tablet industry due to its productivity-oriented nature, ranging from 10.1" and 11.6" to an unbearable 13". Well, today we are finally being introduced to the world's first 8-inch (8.1-inch actually) Windows tablet. And it's not even Windows RT, it's full blown Windows 8 (at this point RT seems practically dead to me). Acer's Iconia W3 8.1-inch tablet puts the complete Windows experience in a very small form factor.

C'mon, it's a Windows 8 tablet, it should have a keyboard dock! Well, an 8-inch keyboard dock would be almost impossible to comfortably type on, so Acer did something very unusual, yet effective. They designed a keyboard dock for the W3, but it didn't turn the tablet into a hybrid laptop, instead it was just.... a dock you fitted the tablet into. The dock is actually larger than the tablet itself, so it looks very weird, but it's at least user-friendly.

Strange as it looks, it is the only way of designing a keyboard dock for a smaller tablet. Which, by the way, makes the Iconia W3 the only small tablet to offer a keyboard dock. 

	Acer Iconia W3	Google Nexus 7	Apple iPad mini
Body	218.2 x 134.6 x 10.2 mm, 499g	198.5 x 120 x 10.5 mm, 340g	200 x 134.7 x 7.2 mm, 308g
Display	8.1" 1280 x 800 (187ppi) LED-Backlit TFT	7" 1280 x 800 (216ppi) LED-Backlit IPS	7.9" 1024 x 768 (163ppi) LED-Backlit IPS
Storage	32/64 GB, 2 GB (LRDDR2) RAM	16/32 GB, 1 GB (DDR3L) RAM	16/32/64 GB, 512 MB (LPDDR2) RAM
Camera	Front and rear HD webcams	1.2 MP front camera w/ 720p video, no rear camera	1.2 MP front camera w/ 720p video, 5 MP iSight rear camera w/ 1080p video
OS	Windows 8	Android 4.2 Jelly Bean	iOS 6
Chipset	Intel Atom Z2760 (32nm HKMG): Dual-core Saltwell (4 threads) @ 1.5GHz + PowerVR SGX 545	NVIDIA Tegra 3 (40nm): Quad-core Cortex-A9 @ 1.3GHz + 12-core GeForce GPU	Apple A5 (32nm HKMG): Dual-core Cortex-A9 @ 1.0GHz + PowerVR SGX 543MP2 GPU
Battery	Li-Polymer 6800 mAh, up to 8 hours usage	Li-Ion 4325 mAh, up to 10 hours usage	Li-Polymer 16.3Wh, up to 10 hours usage
Price	$379 for 32 GB, dock: $79	$199 for 16 GB	$329 for 16 GB

Design

It's hard to tell what orientation the Iconia W3 is meant to be used in. The Acer logos are placed in landscape mode, but the Home button and the front facing camera are in portrait orientation. But since this is an 8-inch tablet, it's more comfortably used in portrait mode. The plastic back cover is made of a silver plastic, which gives a false metallic look to it. The rear camera is placed in the top right corner, and below it is a slightly large Acer logo. The front of the device consists of the awkwardly positioned Acer logo to the right of the 8.1-inch display, above which is the front-facing camera. Under the display's bottom bezel there's a white, tablet-wide strip housing the centered Windows Start button.

Except for the bottom one, the bezels around the display are very thin, which is the only good thing in an otherwise strange-looking design. The tablet is reasonably thin at 10.2mm, on par with the Nexus 7 (10.4mm), but its a bit too heavy for its size, weighing 499g versus the Nexus 7's 340g and the iPad mini's 308g. Even the 10-inch Sony Xperia Tablet Z weighs the same, at 495g. It shouldn't make one-handed use something impossible, but it will feel less comfortable in hand. 

Display

Acer got a variety of details either right or wrong with the Iconia W3's display. They weren't stupid enough to use a 16:9 display, for starters. As small tablets are used primarily in portrait mode, and 16:9 is far too narrow and long in portrait, Acer made the good decision to use a 16:10 display, unlike all other Windows 8 tablets. 8.1" is a perfect size for holding the device in one hand, the size being on par with the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 and the iPad mini.

The resolution of 1280 x 800 is not bad for its size. A pixel density of about 187ppi, on par with the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0, and definitely better than the iPad mini's 163ppi, should provide pretty sharp text and images. The only problem is the display technology Acer picked. A TFT display doesn't usually provide very good colors, and don't expect viewing angles to be good either. The iPad mini's and Nexus 7's IPS enhanced display will definitely provide much more saturated colors and better viewing angles.

Also, Windows 8 was never seen on a 8" package before, but I expect that, while the tile-based interface and its apps will scale very well, any desktop apps, and the desktop itself, will be practically unusable, as text will be probably too small to even read. 

As desktop apps a) don't have their interface optimized for use in small devices and b) will probably display text that is far too small, I think Acer should've gone with Windows RT for this one.

Being able to run legacy apps is only useful if you can actually use them, which generally isn't the case with the Iconia W3, so they would be better off with Windows RT. The ARM-based OS would even give Acer a wide variety of SoCs to choose from, as opposed to the Atom, which is the only option for (portable) Windows 8 tablets. 

Performance and Battery Life

I've gone over the Intel Atom's performance many times, since it's the only x86 SoC with a TDP low enough for ultra-portable devices. Basically, it's an SoC built on 32nm HKMG process, consisting of two x86 Saltwell cores @ 1.5GHz (make it four threads thanks to HT), plus the old, weak PowerVR SGX 545 GPU core @ 533MHz. The average CPU should allow for all basic tasks to be executed fairly quickly, although I wouldn't expect any smoothness with legacy apps. 

The weak SGX 545 GPU, while being enough to render the Windows 8 UI smoothly, won't perform very well in any of the few games in the Windows Store. The GPU core is miles behind the best current mobile GPUs.

Acer claims up to 8 hours of video playback with this tablet, and while this doesn't sound very good compared to the Nexus 7's and the iPad mini's 10 hours of video playback, it's pretty good compared to other Windows 8 tablets. 

Pricing and Conclusion

For $379 you can get the 32 GB Iconia W3, and an extra $79 will get you that weird keyboard dock. In comparison, the 32 GB Nexus 7 costs $249, while the 32 GB iPad mini costs slightly more, at $429 (the same price for the 64 GB Iconia W3). For an 8-inch tablet, it's not overpriced, really. 

The Acer Iconia W3 is unique, in the sense that it has all the features of a productivity-oriented tablet, as in, it runs Windows 8, and offers a keyboard dock, in a small, 8-inch package. It distinguishes itself amongst the other 7/8-inchers, which are all about entertainment and media consumption. Commendable as Acer's attempts are, I still think that 8-inches just isn't right for productive uses. 

As a standalone tablet, the Iconia W3 isn't very good. It basically brings Windows 8, and its sea of legacy apps, into a very portable form factor. Unfortunately, however, most legacy apps won't be properly operable, because they're tailored for larger displays, and the applications that would scale well to that size, that is, those on the Windows Store, are still scarce. Conclusion: Windows 8 is too much about productivity and too little about entertainment, and since 8-inchers are perfect for entertainment but too small for productivity, Acer's Iconia W3 is a very interesting attempt, but not even the larger keyboard will make it good for productivity, and it's not a good option until when Windows Store gets more entertainment content. 

Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 series announced; Budget tablets, at most

Samsung announced the third generation of its Galaxy Tab series of tablets, and guess what? they're all designed similarly to the Galaxy S4. The Galaxy Tab 3 7.0, 8.0 and 10.1 are all clearly budget tablets that don't carry any impressive specs. Since the Galaxy Tab 2 series also showed the same low-end trend, I believe Samsung intends to keep the Galaxy Tab line as a budget-conscious one.

Galaxy Tab 3 7.0

The Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 is Samsung's latest 7-incher, and it will be available for a very affordable $199, but even the low price tag doesn't justify its lackluster specifications. The display is specially poor, unfortunately, as it is a TFT with 1024 x 600 resolution, which results in a mediocre 170 pixel density (slightly more than the iPad mini's pixel density, but that's only due to the smaller display). So apart from not providing sharp text, the Tab 3 7.0's display looks like it won't offer vibrant colors and good viewing angles. Internally, this tablet is powered by a 4000 mAh non-removable battery. Almost nothing is known about the SoC at this point. All we know is that the Tab 3 7.0 will be powered by a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, so this tablet won't exactly be a good performer. The design concept is the same as the Galaxy S4, with a glossy plastic back and the 3.15MP camera (capable of 720p video recording) positioned in the top center of the device, and LED flash beside it. On the front there is, on the bottom, the home button and two soft buttons that nearly all Samsung devices have, and on top of the display is the Samsung logo and the 1.3MP front camera. The device isn't very thin, but not thick either, at 9.9mm and is very light at 302g

The Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 is expected to hit shelves later this year, and will be available in Wi-Fi only and 3G versions. The price for the Wi-|Fi only version with a poor 8GB of expandable storage is $199. Honestly, I can't think of any reason why someone would buy this tablet instead of the equally priced, albeit much better specced Nexus 7.

Galaxy Tab 3 8.0

The Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 is considerably better specced than the Tab 3 7.0, with a $299 price tag. Of course, the design, like the Tab 3 7.0, is very similar to the Galaxy S4. The difference between the Tab 3 7.0 and 8.0 is the 8.0 has much thinner lateral bezels to accommodate the larger display, which, by the way, is much more acceptable than the Tab 3 7.0. This 8" display has a higher resolution of 1280 x 800, which results in a 189 pixel density, which is not bad.  The TFT display doesn't sound like it'll boast particularly vibrant colors or wide viewing angles, though. The Tab 3 8.0 is considerably thinner than the Tab 3 7.0 (7.4mm vs 9.9mm), practically as thin as the iPad mini, and is also very light for its size, weighing 314g. This tablet is equipped with two cameras: a rear 5MP camera, with an LED flash and capable of shooting 720p video, and a 1.3MP front-facing camera. The Tab 3 8.0 brings back from the dead the old Exynos 4212 SoC (its only other appearance was in the original Galaxy Note), which is a 45nm based SoC containing two Cortex A9 cores at a slightly higher 1.5GHz clock and (naturally) a Mali-400MP GPU and an unusual 1.5 GB of RAM memory. The battery is slightly larger than the one used in the Tab 3 7.0, being a 4450 mAh unit.

The Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 is expected to debut at the same time as its 7-inch sibling in Q3, the 16 GB version shipping for a $299. It puts this tablet in a good position, as it is comparable to the iPad mini, yet $30 cheaper.

Galaxy Tab 3 10.1

Finally, there's the 10-inch Galaxy Tab 3. This tablet actually distinguishes itself from most Android tablets because it uses Samsung's usual hardware home button and the two capacitive buttons, hence there are no onscreen buttons displayed, which gives the display a cleaner look, and also allows for more screen real estate to be used. This could be a selling point for this tablet.
The Tab 3 10.1, unlike its smaller counterparts, is tailored for use in landscape mode, so its designed Galaxy S4 style, only in landscape. made of the same glossy white plastic, the Tab 10.1 is very thin for its size, measuring 8mm, and it's also extremely light, weighing 510 grams. So this tablet is 1.4mm thinner and an impressive 140g lighter than the latest iPad. However, such a minimalist design comes at a price, for instance, the lackluster display. I mean, 1280 x 800 pixels in a 10.1 inch screen (149ppi) is just far too low for today's standards. Even ASUS' $299 budget tablet has a 1920 x 1200 display. At any rate, in my opinion this is a great deal-breaker for this tablet. The trend has been that OEMs are realizing that tablets aren't good for taking photos, so some latest 10-inchers haven't put any emphasis on their cameras, and this is apparent with the Tab 3 10.1, as its rear facing camera is of 3.15MP with 720p video, and the front-facing camera is a standard 1.3MP. Internally, the Tab 3 10.1 consists of a 6800 mAh battery, which should be well suited for its specs, and in a weird move, Samsung ditched its own Exynos SoCs in favor of an Intel Atom Z2560 SoC, a 32nm based SoC with a dual-core Saltwell CPU (four threads thanks to HT) at 1.6GHz. A PowerVR SGX 544MP2 should offer very good gaming performance, especially with the low resolution of the tablet. The GPU's base clock is of 400MHz, which for this GPU should offer performance somewhere between the iPad 2 and 3 (but because of the lower resolution it could be actually in between the iPad 3 and 4). So this tablet won't win any benchmarks, but it's enough for a decent experience. The Tab 3 10.1 will ship with 1 GB of RAM (less than the Tab 3 8.0, how strange....).

The Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 should debut around Q3, like the rest of the Galaxy Tab 3 line, and it will be available in Q3. It will sell in Wi-Fi only, 3G, and LTE versions, with the 16 GB Wi-Fi only entry level Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 costing $399. Personally, I think Samsung's pricing is pretty bad here, because for $100 less you can get an ASUS tablet with a Full HD display, and for the same price you can get a top end Nexus 10. So, again, I don't see any reason to buy this tablet when there are better specced competitors for the same or even a lower price.

New ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity Announced At Computex 2013: 1600p Display and NVIDIA Tegra 4 on board

ASUS is announcing a wide variety of mobile devices at its Computex 2013 event, - innovative and quirky alike - together with its latest flagship 10-inch tablet, a refreshed version of the Transformer Pad Infinity. While it doesn't, so far, appear to bring any big change to the Transformer Pad line, and in fact is more of a refresh, as the new Transformer Pad Infinity brings with it a very competitive high-resolution display and what must be the fastest mobile SoC yet.

The new Infinity uses the same kind of display as the last-gen Infinity, that is, a bright Super IPS+ display, however, the new Infinity receives a significant bump in terms of resolution, as it has a resolution of 2560 x 1600 (vs the 1920 x 1200 of the "old" Infinity), and a pixel density of 299ppi (vs 224ppi in the old Infinity), which beats the 264ppi of the iPad 4 and is on par with the Nexus 10's display. There's no data to back this up right now, but based on previous Transformers with the same Super IPS+ display, the display will probably have the same excellent blacks, and also unsurpassed screen brightness which characterizes the Super IPS+ display, which results in very good contrast from these displays. However, ASUS' tablet displays tend to reproduce rather washed out colors. We can't be sure these characteristics of ASUS tablet displays will also be present on the new Infinity, but it's definitely a possibility. Like the old Infinity, the new version will also have its display protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 2.

It's clear now how tablet cameras are really not that important, since ASUS actually downgraded the camera from the old Infinity to the new one (8MP vs 5MP), hence (almost) all modern tablets have 5MP cameras, which only shows how tablets, especially 10-inch ones, aren't adequate for taking pictures and videos.

One very interesting aspect of the new Transformer Pad Infinity is its internals. In fact, it is one of the first devices to use NVIDIA's powerful Tegra 4 System-on-Chip. Basically, it is an SoC built on power efficient 28nm process, which supports an optional Icera 3G/4G modem (hence, we may see an LTE variant of the Infinity). The SoC itself consists of four powerful Cortex A15 cores ticking at 1.9GHz, with an additional low frequency Cortex A15 core for handling light workloads with very little power consumption, with a 2 GB of RAM memory and a memory interface of 32-bit dual-channel DDR3-1899 (17.1 GB/s) and a whopping 72-core GPU. Thanks to the powerful GPU and outstanding memory bandwidth, the Infinity will fare very well with complex 3D games despite its mind blowing resolution.

Last but not least, the new Transformer Pad Infinity, much like every Transformer device preceding it, will have an optional keyboard dock that essentially turns the device into an Android Ultrabook, plus enhances connectivity and battery life. In fact, Pad + Dock combined will have a total battery capacity of 18,000 mAh; much more than the iPad 4's 11,000 (ish) mAh battery.

The Transformer Pad Infinity will be released in the coming months (no specific dates were given though), and so far is confirmed to ship with 32 GB of storage (a 64 GB version is likely to be released too). Pricing is still unknown but the 32 GB version will probably cost $499, corresponding to the last gen Infinity and competitive with other tablets. On paper, the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity looks like it will place itself ahead of the current top tablets (specifically, the iPad 4 and the Google Nexus 10), or will at least be on par with them, in terms of display, design, performance, etc.

Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 preview

Samsung has been giving Apple a hard time with its increasingly popular mobile devices. For some time last year, Samsung's flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S III, beat the iPhone in terms of sales, and now Samsung is showing interest in competing with Apple's iPad series in the tablet market. Having already a competitor in the 10-inch tablet market (Galaxy Note 10.1), Samsung now prepares a tablet destined for competing with smaller tablets. The Galaxy Note 8.0 isn't supposed to compete in the budget-centered 7" market, which includes the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire, but is more destined to compete with the not so budget-centered 8"-ish Apple iPad mini. The Galaxy Note 8.0 was officially announced at MWC, and looks like a promising competitor. Check out the full specification sheet for both the Wi-Fi only and 4G LTE versions of the Note 8.0

The Galaxy Note 8.0 follows closely a kind of design that emerged with the Galaxy S III, and was present in most subsequent Samsung phones as well as the Note II phablet. The corners are very curved, and the back is made of plastic, with the 5MP camera, which can shoot up to 1080p video, situated at the top center of the device. Like every other small tablet out there, the Galaxy Note 8.0 is clearly oriented for portrait mode usage. On the bottom there is the usual centered home button, and on either side of the button there are two capacitive buttons. On the top we have a Samsung logo, and above it are the 1.3MP front camera and some sensors. The Galaxy Note 8.0, much like every other member of the Note family, comes with a nifty S-Pen, a stylus which is an excellent alternative to touch input. The display of the Galaxy Note 8.0 isn't exactly breakthrough, but on a lower-price market like the 7-8" tablet market, the display isn't shabby at all. The 8" TFT display has a 1280 x 800 resolution, the same resolution found on the Nexus 7. The pixel density, therefore, is a nice 189ppi, which is between the 216ppi display of the Nexus 7 and the 163ppi of the iPad mini. Not shabby at all, like I said. 

In terms of performance, the Note 8.0 isn't a benchmark champion, nor does it boast particularly new technology, but still, it is much better than both the iPad mini, with its aged Apple A5 (32nm version) SoC, and the Nexus 7, which has an NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor, (and pretty much every other small tablet). The Note 8.0, in fact, comes with Samsung's very own Exynos 4412 processor, which boasts four ARM Cortex-A9 cores clocked at a high 1.6GHz, as well as a higher clocked Mali-400MP GPU. This is actually the very same chip found inside the Note II, therefore, the Note 8.0 should provide nearly identical performance to the Note II (especially because they both have the same resolution). The Note 10.1, which has a similar SoC, only with a 1.4GHz CPU, should also almost equal the Note 8.0 in terms of performance. 

The Galaxy Note 8.0 comes with a 4600mAh battery, and comes in 16 and 32 GB versions, as well as Wi-Fi and LTE versions. The expected release date for the Galaxy Note 8.0 is somewhere around Q2 2013, and once it does, I personally take a good chunk out of iPad mini sales, but I think the Nexus 7 will still be the top seller of the small tablet market, due to its very good quality relative to its very low p