After a hiatus of a few months, during which it's been re-tooled on the inside and outside, the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 looks to finally be upon us. As such, we've got the first proper pre-release leak today, in the form of an early unboxing report from South Korean site The Brave Post.
Superficially, it's the same Note 10.1 that we first saw at Mobile World Congress back in February -- a Galaxy Tab with Wacom stylus support. But under the hood and around the back, there are a few changes to be found on the final shipping Note 10.1 hardware. First up (and most obvious) is the inclusion of a slot for the S Pen, something lacking on the Note 10.1 prototypes we've previously seen. And the tablet's spec sheet has been freshened up for the third quarter of the year -- it's now sporting a quad-core Exynos chip at 1.4GHz (same as the Galaxy S3), along with 2GB of RAM (up from 1GB). Screen resolution is an unremarkable 1280x800 pixels, but apparently image quality is impressive regardless. The tablet's rear houses a 5MP camera, which is backed up by a single LED flash. If you're concerned about the Note's general heft, then you'll be relieved to hear that it weighs in at 580 grams (compared to the new iPad's 652 grams).
Software wise, the Galaxy Note 10.1 looks to be running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, though that's not specifically confirmed anywhere in the report. We'd be surprised, though, if Samsung had managed to cram Jelly Bean onto there in the couple of weeks since the code dropped. As ever, Android comes liberally decorated with the latest version of TouchWiz for tablets, which seems to have been updated with a few Galaxy S3-style widgets, including AccuWeather.
The most interesting inclusion is phone support, allowing you to text from the Note 10.1 or use it as a giant speakerphone. It's unclear how this works at this stage, though -- whether the device connects to other phones over Bluetooth, or if it makes calls using whichever SIM card is directly plugged in, like some earlier Galaxy Tabs.
The Galaxy Note 10.1 is expected to make its debut at a special Samsung Electronics U.S. event on Aug. 15, though Samsung's not saying for sure what'll be announced there. We also imagine it'll rear its head at the IFA show in Berlin a couple of weeks later. We'll be at both, naturally.
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