Samsung Launches the 9.7-inch Galaxy Tab S3: Snapdragon 820 with 6000mAh and HDR
by Ian Cutress on February 26, 2017 1:11 PM EST
Along with the Galaxy Book parts being launched today, Samsung also announced the next generation of Galaxy Tab. The S3 is also an iterative design, with what Samsung believes is the premium Android tablet available in the market. Starting with the Snapdragon 820 SoC, featuring Qualcomm’s custom Kryo cores, the headline message for the S3 is support for HDR 8-bit content as well as a 6000 mAh battery and support for fast charging technology.
Aside from the SoC, the tablet is set to be offered in a 4GB DRAM and 64GB storage option, with a microSD card allowing for another 256GB. Wireless, aside from the 2x2 802.11ac inside, comes via an LTE Cat.6 modem, good for 300 Mbps downlink speed. There is also support for BEIDOU and GALILEO location detection services.
The 9.7-inch display uses Samsung’s Super AMOLED display technology, with a resolution of 2048x1536, and uses quad-stereo speakers tuned by AKG/Harman. Similar to the Galaxy Book, Samsung is promoting its latest ‘Flow’ technology, allowing biometric login for wirelessly tethered devices, and the new S Pen with ‘screen off’ note taking functionality. These are built upon Android 7.0, which along with the SoC is engineered for 4K60 video playback.
The camera setup is similar to the 12-inch Galaxy Book, with a 13MP rear sensor with auto-focus and a 5MP front sensor (other details should emerge on these. Samsung is listing the weight at around a pound for the S3 (434g in LTE mode), and the unit comes with a kickstand.
We’re awaiting more details on the hardware and the implementation, hopefully coming through the press event that’s starting as I’m writing this news post. We’ll hopefully get pricing and availability information too.
Edit: All Tab S3 units will come with the S-Pen as standard, and Samsung are partnering with Staedtler to provide a special S Pen called Noris Digital in the traditional school pencil style.
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lilmoe - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
How do I know? I'm almost certain that Android would keep an A10 running its CPUs at a significantly higher average clocks, significantly lowering its efficiency, compared with iOS. Android's rendering stuck is MUCH more CPU dependent, plus Android is usually doing more stuff in the background.In a media consumption device, its all about the additional cores and/or more offloading to dedicated co-processors. The "claimed" advantage of single threaded performance is a wash. No one cares for split second advantages in Javascript (provided the Javascript engine is the same). Browsers usually have a much harder time actually rendering the content and dealing with media/ads in web pages. If you want better browsing performance, get a browser that supports ad blocking.
In smartphones, the equation is different. But we're talking ARM tablets here.
ddriver - Sunday, February 26, 2017 - link
For single threaded performance it will likely have an edge, but overall I doubt it will be faster.C0S@ - Sunday, February 26, 2017 - link
Like going from the Samsung Exynos 5433 processor in the 2015 Tab S2 to the Snapdragon 652 in the 2016 S2 to the Snapdragon 820 in the S3?Meteor2 - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Yep, they're *finally* giving it the CPU it needs. Mind you, ever since the race to 64 bits and the car crash of the A57, we've been a bit short of decent CPUs for Android...UtilityMax - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
I think the SD820 and the subsequent SoCs fix a lot of issues of the previous generation SoCs. Don't also forget the Kirin 950, which is an A72 built on modern process. Samsung has put into Tab S, Tab S2, and Tab S2 2016 the best SoCs it could find at the moment.Diji1 - Sunday, February 26, 2017 - link
There appears to be almost no reason to be using updated processors at the moment other than small improvements in efficiency as far as electricity use.I cannot think of any Android application beyond a small number of applications, such as 3D games that few people play, that would meaningfully benefit from more CPU or GPU performance. Almost all apps are targeted to much less powerful devices because that's what's out there ATM.
Meteor2 - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
*Small* increases? The 808 in my Nexus 5X chugs electricity at a ridiculous rate. The second gen of 64 bit ARM cores -- A72, Kyro -- are far more efficient.UtilityMax - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
No one is saying that using A57 cores is still justified even in a tablet. We can recall that Tab S2 came out with the A57+A53 Exynos processor in 2015, and then the 2016 S2 was updated to use the SD652. As for the Nexus 5X, despite its flawed SoC, I think another problem is with the Android 7.X. When I updated from mine from Android 6.x to 7.x, the reduction of the battery life, specially at idle was pretty obvious. As more devices are updated to 7.x, I think we're going to see more of this.lopri - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Screen resolution is actually lower than their phones'. Running mostly same apps, performance per pixel should be higher than the last years phones.abufrejoval - Sunday, February 26, 2017 - link
Thanks God, no "edge" on this one!Now they only need to make it rootable and somebody needs to create a LineageOS Nougat for it, then I'd be pretty sure to buy at least one to replace my much loved Nexus 10 (running LineageOS 13).
Wouldn't mind an HDMI port (or DP), USB 3* etc. so it can drive a big TV without latency or overhead.