Why Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 3 might not be as boring as it sounds

Samsung announced the Galaxy Tab 3 today, and the new android tablet hasn’t enjoyed the same warm reception as the Galaxy S4. There are two big reasons why some folks are yawning. First, the third generation GTab sports the same 7-inch, 1024×600 display as the Galaxy Tab 1 and 2. Second, it’s only running a 1.2GHz dual-core processor.
But neither of those necessarily make this a boring tablet. Yes, just about every 4.5-inch or larger smartphone on the market is shipping with a 1080p display. And, yes, the Nexus 7‘s panel has a higher native resolution and pixels-per-inch (PPI). Then again, 1024×600 is pretty close to the iPad mini’s 1024×768 — and no one seems to have a problem with its display.

Samsung might have opted out of the PPI race here to keep the retail price of the Galaxy Tab 3 down. It’s not like shoppers that want a more premium version from Samsung don’t have another option — they can buy the Galaxy Note 8.0. If the goal here is to ship a tablet that can compete with the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire in terms of price while still offering a solid user experience, Samsung’s display choice makes sense.
As does that dual-core processor. Right now, a multitude of cores doesn’t necessarily yield huge performance gains on Android — the OS and apps just don’t take full advantage of multi-core chips. Clock speed doesn’t tell the whole story when it comes to performance, either.
Samsung hasn’t specified exactly which chip it’s going to use in the Galaxy Tab 3. If it’s an Exynos 5, then even at just 1.2GHz and with half as many cores as the Nexus 7 it will perform just fine. The Exynos 5 is an ARM Cortex-A15 SoC, and it can run rings around Cortex-A9 chips. It’s got a faster GPU and double the memory bandwidth.
If an in-house chip and a serviceable display let Samsung keep the price of the Galaxy Tab 3 down, it could be a big hit with consumers. If, however, it turns out that Samsung just phoned this update in and the GT3 is just another yawn-inducing me-too slate, well… let’s hope it falls flat and someone else (hello, Asus!) steps up with an awesome new 7-incher. 745TDBanty 130617