As reported on TechCrunch.
by DARRELL ETHERINGTON
Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 is rumored for an official unveiling at Mobile World Congress next week in Barcelona, but this week it’s been the subject of a lot of rumors and speculation ahead of release. Today, there’s a new leak from Italy’s DDAY.it that purports to show the Galaxy Note 8 in action in the hands of an actual user. The pics are a lot more convincing than the SamMobile leak of a brochure shot of the same from earlier in the week, with a design that’s reminiscent of Samsung’s most recent smartphones.
The Galaxy Note 8 that’s apparently depicted in these photos looks essentially like a blown up Galaxy Note II, with a rounded rectangle shell framing an 8-inch display. Down at the bottom of the bezel you see a physical home button, framed on either side by a back button and what looks like a multitasking button as touch-sensitive keys. You can also see a front-facing camera, as well as a rear camera without a visible flash. There’s also an S-Pen holster integrated into the bottom right of the rear casing, as you can see in the first image above.
The Galaxy Note 8 is supposedly going to arrive with 2GB of RAM on board, with the front camera pegged at 1.3 megapixels, and the rear at 5 megapixels. The display is supposed to be around 1280 x 800, which, while not mind-blowingly dense, still beats the iPad mini with 189 ppi vs. 132 ppi for Apple’s smaller tablet. A report from earlier this week suggest it will have a 1.6GHz quad core processor under the hood.
A MWC unveiling makes sense for this device, since Samsung showed off the Galaxy Note 10.1 with S-Pen at the event in Barcelona last year. And this design, while different from the SamMobile leak from Tuesday, bears a striking similarity to that device, meaning one or the other likely represents a slightly different pre-production design.
