Samsung at Mobile World Congress 2013

Samsung at Mobile World Congress 2013

Samsung Knox

 

Samsung wheeled out its big new device a couple of days before the show officially got underway. The Galaxy Note 8.0, long rumored and extensively leaked, made its debut on Saturday evening. An 8-inch tablet powered by Galaxy Note 2 internals, the device drew praise for its thin, light design, some new S Pen tweaks and software enhancements including Peel TV support and a dedicated reading mode. Ultimately, though, the Note 8 is essentially just a big Note 2, and if you’ve used that device (or even its smaller sibling, the Galaxy S3) you’ll know exactly what to expect here. (And it’s also a freaking phone, as evidenced by this shot modeled by yours truly.)

We were also pleasantly surprised by the Samsung Homesync -- an Android-based TV streaming box running TouchWiz with a fully-certified Google Play app suite. The company also boosted its enterprise credentials with its new "Knox" security system for BYOD.

But at this point we’re eager to learn more about what’s new from Samsung, which leads us to the company’s other big announcement of the past week. On Monday morning we started to receive our invites to Samsung’s Galaxy S4 launch event in New York City, and that’s where Samsung’s 2013 story will really begin. We still know very little about Sammy’s next big thing, but we’ll be on the ground in NYC in a couple of weeks to find out what’s up with the S4.

It’s telling that the biggest Samsung buzz at MWC was around a device that wasn’t even there. On the phone side, the most interesting product on show was probably the Galaxy Grand -- a mid-range 5-incher with a dual-SIM option. Notably absent from the Samsung stable was the Galaxy Tab 3 series. That too had been rumored -- we were supposedly due to see a re-vamped Tab line with a Nexus 10-level screen. But that wasn’t to be, and we’re left wondering what the future holds for the Galaxy Tab in a Samsung tablet world dominated by Notes.