Performance and battery life
But according to the Android purists would
like to see the OEM interfaces separated from the hardware, a combination of
Jelly Bean, TouchWiz and an Exynos 4 Quad clocked at 1.6GHz combined with 2GB
RAM to make a harmonious marriage. Indeed, we have seen this setup before - you
just need to take a look at the Note II to find the evidence for that – which
means we do not have any complaints related to real-life performance. The UI is
quick, navigation is swift, animations are smooth, and applications launch
almost instantly. In fact, everything runs so smoothly that it is easy to
acknowledge that the Note 8.0’s performance is excellent.
In
fact, everything runs so smoothly that it is easy to acknowledge that the Note
8.0’s performance is excellent.
What you might complain about is battery
life of 4,600mAh of the Note 8.0. To be honest: it's good but not great. While
it helped us through the weekend holiday (a total of about 2 and half days) in
one single charge, which was mainly related to the careful battery management
on our side - and that's always with WiFi open and connected. Instead of
damning it with the heavy, unusual use, we got more realistic approach with the
Note 8.0 by using it for light web and Twitter browsing, reading e-books and
occasionally watching a few YouTube or Netflix videos. Most likely, this is how
any future owners will use the tablet, so an average of two days is what you
should expect.
Now, when it comes to the standard test,
the Note 8.0 does not do its job well. Under the duress of our typical battery
test, which includes looping a video until the device dries its battery, it
created seven hours 18 minutes. That is with WiFi and Bluetooth activated,
Twitter is set up to sync every 15 minutes, a push email account and brightness
at 50 percent. If you look at the list below you will see that the Note 8.0 is
on par with the Galaxy Tab 7.0 and ThinkPad Tablet - the two products at the
end of 2011.
Tablets
and their battery life
·
Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0: 7:18 (WiFi)
·
Apple iPad mini: 12:43 (WiFi)
·
Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7: 12:01
·
Apple iPad (late 2012): 11:08 (WiFi)
·
Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime: 10:17
·
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1: 9:55
·
Apple iPad (2012): 9:52 (HSPA)/9:37 (LTE)
·
Google Nexus 7: 9:49
·
Lenovo IdeaPad K1: 8:20
·
Motorola Xoom: 8:20
·
Acer Iconia Tab A200: 8:16
·
Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus: 8:09
·
Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet: 8:00
·
RIM BlackBerry PlayBook: 7:01
·
Acer Iconia Tab A500: 6:55
·
Toshiba Thrive: 6:25
·
Samsung Galaxy Tab: 6:09
The tests are entirely another matter.
Unfortunately, we are unable to draw a precise picture of the raw performance
compared to the iPad mini or Kindle Fire HD – our application suite of the
tests does not have compatibility with Apple's iOS-based iPad mini or the
modified version of Android on the Kindle Fire HD. Instead of that, we look for
the next best Android competitor of the Note 8.0, Nexus 7, for a direct
comparison. The tablet was made by that Asus may have been in ages, but the mix
of price and performance has proven to be a hot item for Google. But as you can
see from the scores below; its Tegra 3 and 1GB of RAM cannot compare to the
Exynos 4 Quad and 2GB of RAM of Samsung. The Note 8.0 lets the Nexus 7 inhale
smoke (except that the frame rating results are not consistent), even gets
close to 1,000ms SunSpider scores.
Galaxy
Note 8.0
·
Quadrant: 6,830
·
Vellamo: 1,766
·
AnTuTu: 17,687
·
SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms): 1,005
·
GLBenchmark Egypt Offscreen (fps): 17fps
·
CF-Bench: 15,128
Nexus
7
·
Quadrant: 3,501
·
Vellamo: 1,650
·
AnTuTu: 8,954
·
SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms): 1,785
·
GLBenchmark Egypt Offscreen (fps): 63fps
·
CF-Bench: 11,807
Asus
Transformer Pad Infinity TF700
·
Quadrant: 4,685
·
Vellamo: 1,475
·
AnTuTu: 12,027
·
SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms): 2,012
·
GLBenchmark Egypt Offscreen (fps): 75fps
·
CF-Bench: 7,874
Camera
The
Note 8.0 features a 5MP rear camera and has no flash included. The camera must
be present for it has to be, not because it's special, but it's not so bad.
We have resisted as hard as we could, but
the people have said and used their tablets as cameras. We know since we have
seen it a lot in New York City (mostly around the tourist places). Even we have
seen it in the press events. Therefore, we will dominate ourselves from its odd
criticism and only comes to the main point. The Note 8.0 features a 5MP rear
camera and has no flash included. If you ask us, that deficiency on Samsung’s
part will suggest how the company considers the imaging problem on the tablets.
The camera must be present for it has to be, not because it's special, but it's
not so bad.
The Note 8.0’s camera software loses the
sophistication and comprehensiveness of the Galaxy S4, but it is not entirely
lacking. The usual suspects are all present here - scene and shooting modes,
filters and switches for ISO, exposure and white balance - but you will not see
much demand for them. The default shooting mode of the Note 8.0 does a good job
of shooting scenes, no matter what landscapes, portraits or even macros they
are. The same is true with the autofocus, which you are able to tap to adjust,
although we found that there was no need to do so. In general, the color
reproduction seems to be balanced with only a tiny loss of fine detail in the
pictures with a greater depth of field. As you might expect, the photos that
were fully enlarged brought up the extremely blurry images, but set the focus
to macro and you will be satisfied with the extreme close-ups.
The
default shooting mode of the Note 8.0 does a good job of shooting scenes, no
matter what landscapes, portraits or even macros they are. The same is true
with the autofocus, which you are able to tap to adjust.
Our 720p video samples seemed to be diluted
and delivered choppy playback with low significantly frame rate. Towards the
end of the clip, you can even see the Note 8.0 jumps several frames caused by a
moving taxi to suddenly pop forward. On the other hand, the audio quality is
noticeable clear, especially based on the surrounding traffic situation at the
time of recording. So even though you cannot see the precious moment you
intended to record, of course you will be able to hear it.
