[Galaxy Note 8.0 (Tablet) General] biketronicnz:
My experience

I bought the 4G note 8.0 a couple of months ago because:

1/ I want an SPEN

2/ 5.7 inches is too small for A4 pages (lets be honest)

3/ I want a phone not a tablet

4/ 10 inches is too big (must fit in a pocket)

5/ I don't want 16:9 or 4:3 as I want to read documents.

The competition:

Samsung makes a 4:3 tablet with a pen called the tab A. It's awful, lower res than the note 8. And it can't make phone calls.

Other people make 8" tablets with pens but they can't make phone calls (e.g. older windows tablets).

Everything else doesn't have a pen.

So I caved and bought one as it's quite unique.

Yes it has a huge bezel but it actually makes sense when you hold with one hand and the pen in the other.

It fits in modern pockets.

It's great. But the battery life. Some people on here claim 16 hours or other ridiculous numbers. Thats not power on hours, that's impossible.

I modified the boeffla kernel source so you can get battery milliamp use, and support a standard 4.2V lithium ion battery and replIaced it. (obviously a bit of a one off mod). I also fixed a few bugs in the boeffla kernel around overclocking/undervolting. Basically you can't change some settings.

Anyway with a readout, I found that the tablet uses up to 2 amps at full brightness and overclocked at 1920Mhz. Minimum is about 300mA.

A note on governors. The CPU saves maybe 10mA by using 2 instead of 4 cores. It uses almost no extra power running at higher frequencies.

E.g. at idle: forced 200Mhz = 300mA, 1100Mhz =315mA 1500Mhz = 320mA 1920Mhz (OC) = 380mA+. So the governor saves almost no power unless you OC.

My advice is to just use pegasusq (fastest, default) and limit the top frequency to save power (I recommend 1500Mhz). Anything else is a waste of time, you get lags and virtually no power saving. The only governor that will limit time spent at OC frequencies is the zzmove governor using a frequency-temperature limit e.g. 55 degrees.

Given the above information, the only reason I get a longer battery life with a slow governor is:

1/ rogue apps wasting battery in the background

2/ False economy: if it takes 12 minutes to load enough web pages to find something, vs 8 minutes for the same task, yet doing it in 12 minutes uses slightly less power per minute, the slow governor battery lasted (say) 12 hours, and the fast governor only 10 hours. So the statistics show the governor lasts 2 hours longer!! But you spent 50% more time waiting for web pages to load. So you wasted 4 hours. It's not that bad but it's a bit like that.

Also the boeffla kernel removed samsung speed hacks and so you need to manually force the cpu to 1200Mhz for games, or you get stuttering.

With my new lower capacity battery: (Kernel/fuel gauge chip reports ~3000mAh)

I got about 6 hours of gaming (bards tale) because it uses only 400mA.

Firefox uses more like 700mA+ so it drains in about 4 or 5 hours. I recommend ghostery browser as a practical alternative although it uses a lot of data compared to firefox.

For reading documents, it is mostly idle so you can get closer to 300mA.

Watching video uses very little power. I think 10 hours may be possible.

Maximum brightness (VERY bright) add 400mA.

With a hack to one of the library files miracast works on android 4.2. Otherwise it doesn't. Also the miracast dongle I used is practically lag free. But there are black bars as it is 16:10.

4.2 uses little ram compared to 4.4. I found 4.4 crashes whereas 4.2 is rock stable. There is the old mediascanner bug present in 4.2, so this can drain the battery. Also MS word needs 4.4. I couldn't get miracast working in 4.4.

NOTE: I didn't upgrade the bootloader beyond 4.2: YMMV.

I have a 128gb microsd, works fine.

I was a bit worried 1280x800 is not enough but it is absolutely fine.

Also the display is absolutely fantastic. One of the brightest I've ever seen. Beats my note 3. And it won't burn in! Yes it's not full HD, but it's only 8 inch and it's not pentile. Full HD would be nice but in practice I don't notice it.

In summary, this is a great all rounder.

Apart from the obvious pros and cons:

Pros

Ridiculously bright screen is usable outdoors 16:10 is perfect for A4 documents.

Battery life is better than my note 3 at typ 4-5 hours continuous or a whole day before being charged. If you replace the battery of course. A genuine battery may be even better.

Weight is reasonable.

Cons:

Going above android 4.2 is not practical IMHO. Main issue I found is MS word needs 4.4. Otherwise I didn't notice any difference.

Needs some hacks. E.g. to make miracast work and fix mediascanner

Firefox is sluggish. On my note 3 it is noticably faster. There are alternatives e.g. ghostery browser.

It's an old tablet. You will need to replace the battery. (remove microsd and sim card, lift the plastic back, remove screws holding battery in, reverse process, pretty easy)

Highly recommended tablet.