With the iPad 5 just around the corner, Samsung has announced the pricing and availability of the Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition. The pen-enabled tablet will go on sale October 10th for $549, $50 more than Apple's current slate.
What do you get for that premium? A smaller and lighter design with a textured and stitched back cover, a high-resolution 2560 x 1600-pixel display and an quad-core Exynos processor for serious multitasking. But the main differentiator continues to be the S Pen, which gets a bunch of new features.
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As we shared in our first hands-on with the Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition, Samsung has done a lot of work on making the S Pen more useful. A new Air Command gesture, activated by pressing a button on the pen while hovering just above the screen, gives you quick access to multiple features. Action Memo lets you take notes and act on them quickly because it recognizes things like phone numbers and addresses. You'll also find a Scrapbooking feature, Screen Write and S Finder, which lets you search handwritten notes.
The second-generation Note 10.1 also runs circles around the iPad when it comes to multitasking. An enhanced Multi Window feature lets you run two apps side by side and drag content from one window to the other. With the new Pen Window, you can even run a third app on the screen by drawing a shape on the screen and then selecting the app you want to run in that window, such as the calculator.
By working with Flipboard, Samsung is also introducing a new interface called My Magazine. By swiping up from the bottom of the screen (with the pen or your finger) you can access your news and social feeds. Its similar to HTC's BlinkFeed but even more robust.
