Samsung Galaxy Note 8 lands in UK

Samsung's Galaxy Note 8 tablet is now available to buy in the UK, but is currently only being offered in one location.

The 8-inch tablet device made its debut just ahead of Mobile World Congress 2013 in February and is now available to buy from the Samsung experience store in the Westfields Stratford City shopping centre in east London. Samsung said it would also be available through other channels but did not specify exactly when other retailers would be offering the device.

The model on sale from today is the Wi-Fi only version with 16GB of internal storage and is priced at £339. A customer service representative from the Samsung Experience store in Westfields Stratford City told ZDNet that he did not think higher capacity versions would be making their way to the UK, citing the microSD expansion slot as a solution for extra storage needs. He did, however, say that a mobile data-equipped version should go on sale in "around one month".

The tablet will also be bundled with a host of software and services at no extra cost. Included in the deal, which is active "for a limited time from 15 April 2013", is a £20 voucher to spend in the Samsung Learning Hub, a two month free trial to The Times newspaper, one month free access to the Samsung Music Hub, AVG Anti-virus Pro and 50GB of DropBox storage which is free for two years. There are also two games (Need for Speed Hot Pursuit and Sonic the Hedgehog 4 episode 2) included in the bundle.

Other key specs and features of the device include a 1.6GHz quad core A9 processor, a 1280 x 800 pixel 8-inch display, 2GB RAM and microSD support for cards up to 64GB.

It also includes Samsung's now well-established S Pen stylus and the S-Pen oriented apps such as S Note, S Planner, Air View, Popup Note and Popup Video, as well as features like Smart Stay, ChatOn and Samsung's Allshare Play and Cast apps.