Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Neo Hands on And First Look: A Stylish Tab Which Lacks A Front Camera

| Updated: Friday, February 21, 2014, 19:08 [IST]

South Korea's most prominent smartphone maker released its latest devices for the Indian market including the Galaxy Tab 3 Neo, Galaxy NotePro 12.2 tablets and Galaxy Grand Neo smartphone. The official launch took place at the Samsung Forum 2014 in Bali, Indonesia.

While the market availability of the first two devices are yet to be announced by Samsung, however the mid ranged Galaxy Grand Neo has already hit the online retail stores in India at a price of Rs 18,399.

Among all the three devices, the Galaxy Tab 3 Neo, which was initially launched in the US market as the Galaxy Tab 3 Lite, has come to India as one of the cheapest premium 7 inch tablet along with a price tag of Rs. 16,490. It surely should be a feasible buy for Indian consumers. But there are certain things we would like to make sure you know about the Galaxy Tab 3 Neo in this concise first look.

Design and Display

Falling more in the line of the company's previous tablet, the Galaxy Tab 3 Neo comes with a similar design language. In fact, you could call it a successor of the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 as they not only share similar hardware, but also come with a similar visual resemblance. Of course, both are made of plastic, however the Galaxy Tab 3 Neo comes with a textured back-panel, similar to the faux-leather ones that we have seen featuring on a number of Samsung latest smartphone range, one being Galaxy Note 3.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Neo Hands on And First Look

The Galaxy Tab 3 Neo also retains the original Tab 3's physical home button, Menu and back touch keys a the bottom bezel.

Although the tablet comes with a fairly thin bezel, it is still a fat boy with 9.7mm thickness, which would surely fail to compete with Apple's iPad Mini tablets. However, the company has maintained its weight at just 310 grams, which makes it quite a lightweight device.

Moreover, with the competition increasing in the display technology and innovation, the Galaxy Tab 3 Neo's 7-inch display with resolution of 1024 x 600-pixel (170ppi) won't be much of a survival feature in the high-resolution eco-sphere.

Moreover, the tablet doesn't come with ambient light sensor, which means you'll have to manually adjust the brightness of the display every once in a while depending on the place you are using the device.

However, overall, keeping the price in mind, the display is apt for the first time user.

Performance (Processor, RAM and OS)

The 1.2 GHz Dual Core CPU and 1GB of RAM featured in the Galaxy Tab 3 Neo are also similar to what we have seen in the company's Tab 3 7 inch last year. The performance is quite better with the demo variant.

Since the advent of the Android KitKat version, more users are inclined to get it, thus the Android Jelly Bean 4.2 would be a thumbs down in this case. However, the company's proprietary TouchWiz UI which comes layered with the Android version runs pretty smooth in the tablet and offers a smart performance.

But we have not reviewed the device as a whole, thus the RAM and Processor performance need to be tested by via several means. This could be by flushing a number of apps into the device and seeing whether it will still maintain the swiftness and smooth swipes or not.

With a Dual Core processor and 1GB RAM, the tab functions smoothly. But again it depends a lot on how much load you are putting on the device, in terms of internal memory usage and more. For example over usage of multi-window feature may freeze the Tab 3 Neo at times. As most of the users could love this feature, as it makes things pretty easy in terms of multi-tasking and switching between apps.