Samsung Announces Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 13-inch Productivity Tablet At CES

Speculation is building about an Apple iPad Pro rumored to be under development, but such a machine won’t likely debut until fall 2014.

However, Samsung has beaten Apple to market with a “Pro” tablet — the new Galaxy Note Pro 12.2.

According to Engadget’s Brad Molen, the Android-running Note Pro 12.2, which will be available in LTE, 3G and WiFi flavors, to launch sometime this quarter in various parts of the world.

The Note Pro 12.2 weighs 1.66 lbs and features a 2560×1600 WQXGA LCD panel with a pixel density of 247 ppi. It runs Android 4.4 KitKat, has a 9,500mAh battery, an 8MP rear camera paired with a 2MP front camera, IR support, dual-band WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac MIMO, USB 3.0 and Bluetooth 4.0.

A Marquee feature is Multi-Window, which allows not just two windows opento manage simultaneous tasks, but you can have up to four — not counting the ability to add pop-up windows on top of that. If Apple is serious about flogging iPads to productivity users, something similar absolutely has to be added to the iOS to support at least two simultaneously open windows side-by-side, although up to now requests for such a feature have fallen on deaf ears. True multitasking worthy of the name means having multiple windows open.

the LTE version of the Note Pro2.2 is powered by a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 SoC, while the 3G and WiFi-only options are fitted with the same Exynos octa-core processor as the Note 10.1 and either comes with 3GB RAM.

“What we always hear consistently is that people want to do more with their tablets,” The Register’s Rik Myslewski cites Samsung Telecommunications America VP for tablets and emerging business Nanda Ramachandrar telling a press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Monday afternoon