Posted in: Android, Featured, Hands-on, Tablets

Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 stops by, poses for the camera

The budget 7″ Android tablet market has been enjoying quite a lot of attention from a number of manufacturers and the latest device to join in on the fun is a refresh of one of the very first small tablets – the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0.

The third-generation of 7″ Galaxy Tab has just hit the shelves and it feels nicely polished and put together. It’s not quite the performance champion, sporting the little known Marvell chipset with 1.2GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage, which fortunately is expandable by a maximum of 64GB.

The design of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0, unsurprisingly, is heavily inspired by the Galaxy S4 and features a physical Home button with capacitive menu and back keys on each of its sides. On the left side there are the SIM card and microSD card slot, while on the right we find the volume rocker, power button as well as an IR blaster, which our prototype didn’t yet have.

Built entirely out of plastic, the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 is quite prone to fingerprints, so it’d need an occasional cleaning to maintain its looks. On the positive side, Samsung has made the bezels thinner than the previous generation 7″ Galaxy Tab. It’s lighter as well weighing 300 grams, while measuring 110.9 x 187.9 x 9.9mm.

At the back, there’s a 3MP snapper sans LED flash, but that’s not such a drawback, since the camera on the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 should be used only as a last resort. However, at the front, there’s a 1.3MP one, that’s going to be great for video chatting sessions. Next to it are located the proximity and ambient sensors.

Unfortunately, the display is nothing to write home about. It’s a TFT unit with an uninspiring resolution of WSVGA (1024 x 600) and is basically the same as the previous generation of the slate.

We’ve thrown in a quick hands-on video to get wet your appetite until we finish working on our extensive

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 is already on sale in Europe for about €200 and is bound to hit the US in early July with a price of $199. Our preview should come some time this week so stay tuned.

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