Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 Hits UK Stores, 16GB Wi-Fi Price Revealed

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 has been in the spotlight ever since its official announcement at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona a month ago. The grand event portrayed an exclusive demo from trained Samsung employees on the features of the upcoming tablet.

Within a month of its official announcement, the new flagship tablet (16GB Wi-Fi only variant) is up for grabs at the Samsung experience store in the Westfields Stratford City shopping centre in east London. Although the company did not disclose any details about availability of the device through other channels, it did confirm the device would be gradually made available across the globe.

Price and Availability

As of now, the 16GB Wi-Fi only model is on sale at a retail price of £339 in the UK, while the other European countries are expected to get this model at a price tag of around €400. According to a recent ZDnet report, the customer support representative at Samsung Experience store in Westfields Stratford City had this to say: the higher capacity variants of the tablet would not be available in the UK and instead users will have to make use of the microSD expansion slot for additional storage needs. The store representative also indicated that a 3G version of the tablet will go on for sale in around a month's time.

Features

The Galaxy Note 8 comes with premium hardware features including 8in TFT capacitive display that runs at 1,280 x 800 pixels native resolution and a pixel density of 189ppi. The 8in tablet is powered by a capable Exynos 4 Quad chipset featuring four Cortex A9 cores clocked at 1.6GHz and supported by Mali 400MP GPU. It includes 2GB of RAM and ships in two storage variants: 16 and 32 GB internal storage. In addition, there is an external microSD card slot with support for up to 64GB storage expansion.

On the connectivity front, the next-gen Note supports 3G speeds of up to 21Mbps, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, dual-band, Wi-Fi direct, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0, microUSB 2.0, GPS and GLONASS.

The upcoming Galaxy Note comes with the latest Jelly Bean operating system (Android 4.1.2) out-of-the-box. It sports a five megapixel camera on the rear with autofocus, geo-tagging and support for full HD recording. The tablet also features a 1.3 megapixel front camera for video calls. Given the device's powerful hardware configuration, Samsung has aptly packed a heavy-duty 4,000 mAh battery for a longer battery-life. No wonder then the power-packed hardware ships in an 8mm thick case that weighs about 338 grams.

Free Software and Bundled Games

As SamMobile notes, the tablet bundles with a plethora of free software and services as part of the introductory offer from 15 April. The complimentary offers include: a £20 gift voucher for Samsung Learning Hub, a two-month free trial to The Times newspaper, free one-month limited access to Samsung Music Hub, AVG Anti-Virus Pro and free 50GB DropBox storage with a two-year validity. Mobile gaming fans can also enjoy a couple of bundled game offers: Need for Speed Hot Pursuit and Sonic the Hedgehog 4 episode on their new tablet.

On the software front, creative artists can try their hand on the popular S-Pen stylus and S-Pen oriented apps such as S Note, S Planner, AirView, Popup Note and Popup Video. Besides, users can enjoy the native tablet features such as Smart Stay, ChatOn, AllShare Play and Cast apps.