The Galaxy Note 8.0 Courtesy of Samsung

The world’s top phone-makers gathered last week in Barcelona, at Mobile World Congress 2013, to show off their latest hardware. Well, most of the world’s top phone-makers, anyway. The iFalutin’ folks from Apple Inc didn’t deign to mix with the riff-raff, but pretty much everyone else turned up, if only to let attendees gawk at the size of their units.

MWC 2013 was a tawdry, size-obsessed affair event, you see. Everyone was gushing about five-inch this, eight-inch that. Indeed, we overheard things like: “Deary me, isn’t that an enormous piece of hardware!”, “Whoa, it dwarfs my face!” and “It’s, like, so girthy!”
Big, in other words, was the biggest trend at the show this year.

Samsung, for whom “Make the Gadget Bigger” has become a design mantra, took the wraps off its Galaxy Note 8.0. This is either a mid-sized tablet or a big-honkin’ smartphone, depending on how you look at it.

As its name suggests, the Galaxy Note 8.0 is kin to the 5.5-inch Galaxy Note II. Both devices run Android OS and come equipped with a stylus for extra-precise pointing and jabbing, a feature the sausage-fingered will appreciate. The Note 8.0 boasts a 1,280 x 800 TFT display, a 1.6GHz A9 quad-core CPU, 2GB of RAM and a five-megapixel rear camera. Samsung is also touting “efficient multitasking,” via a dual-view feature.

Techeye isn’t convinced by the Galaxy Note 8.0 – it’s hard to look anything but dumb with a tablet pressed against your face. But Samsung likes ‘em big and clearly isn’t worried about its bottom line these days. Indeed, the firm plans to reveal a fourth iteration of its cash-minting Galaxy S smartphone on March 14.

The PadFone Infinity Courtesy of Asus

The Open Courtesy of ZTE

Ever hefted new hardware and marveled at its girth? Let us know: techeye.wbj@gmail.com