Samsung won't be revealing the Galaxy S4 at February's Mobile World Congress in Spain, but you can still get excited about other products set to debut there.
The South Korean electronics company is expected to show off the Galaxy Note 8.0, a smaller tablet intended to compete directly with Apple's iPad mini, and rumors suggest the price will come out along with a March release in Europe.
Surprisingly, the new tablet is actually reported to cost more than the iPad mini when it launches. According to a local Bulgarian retailer, the Wi-Fi-only version of the Note 8.0 will cost about 699 Bulgarian leva, which comes out to about $480 dollars. Meanwhile, the WiFi + 3G version will run about 869 leva, or $598.
As a comparison, the 16GB iPad mini retails for $329 and the 64GB model is $529.
If this proves to be true, it will mark the first time that a Samsung product retails for more money than its Apple equivalent.
The Note 8.0 isn't official yet, but it's expected to pack an 8-inch screen and 1280 x 800 pixel Super Clear LCD display (the iPad mini is 7.9-inches long and has a resolution of 1024 x 768). The new slate will reportedly also feature a 1.6GHz quad-core Exynos processor, 2GB of RAM, either 16 or 32GB of storage, a 5-megapixel rear camera and 1.3-megapixel front camera, LTE support, S-Pen capabilities and Jelly Bean 4.2.
Generally speaking, Samsung has been able to compete with Apple by offering a greater variety of products within its portfolio of smartphones and tablets. The iPhone, for example, has seen its dominance eroded by the multi-pronged approach Samsung has opted to go with, but tablets are an area in which the Korean company hasn't been able to make as much headway.
The introduction and blazing success of the iPad mini was a surprise to many; the smaller slate is even more popular than the regular-sized iPad, and its popularity has limited Samsung's ability to effectively compete with Apple in the tablet space.
Although the Cupertino giant's grasp on the market isn't as tight as it used to be, the company still accounted for nearly 80 percent of all tablet sales during the last fiscal quarter. Samsung's Galaxy tab, meanwhile, represented just under 5 percent of the market.
