Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 Preview – Good example leads to good follow
As a tablet manufacturer, it is difficult to distinguish yourself in 2015. Apple controls a large share of the market – for many people tablet is synonymous with iPad – and the more flashy tablets, such as those with stylus, or convertibles with Windows, don’t seem to have caught on with the general public.
Many users just seem to want a simple device; a touchscreen, good software and apps, and that’s it. That makes it difficult to stick out above ground level. As stated by Samsung a few years ago in a lawsuit filed by Apple about the Galaxy Tab series: aren’t all tablets alike? Aren’t they just screens with a border around them?
If that’s true, it means there’s one component where you can innovate and really make a difference: the screen, that part of the tablet that covers a large part of the front and forms a window to the software that runs on it.
Almost all manufacturers use LCDs, often from LG, Samsung or JDI, with high resolutions and increasingly better color reproduction. However, Samsung is the only manufacturer that has something in return: its Super Amoled technology, which delivers a much higher contrast than LCDs and therefore looks more impressive.
The manufacturer first did that a few years ago, with the Tab 7.7 from 2011. Last year, the Galaxy Tab S series was released, consisting of a 10.5″ and an 8.4″ model. The image quality of these tablets is indeed impressive, but they are held back by underperforming hardware where the user experience suffers. That should go better with the next generation, which will be released at the beginning of September. We were able to briefly test these new Galaxy Tab S2 models.
New sizes, new resolutions
We will come back to the new hardware later, more interesting to start with is the adjusted screen ratio and resolution. Where the first Tab S tablets have a 16:10 widescreen aspect ratio, the new Tab S models are 4:3 – just like the iPad, for example. The new sizes, with a smaller 8″ model and a larger 9.7″ model, are also reminiscent of Apple’s tablet lineup. The step from widescreen to a squarer format was made after extensive usage research, which, according to Samsung, showed that people use apps, browse and read more often than they watch media.
Along with that change comes a change in resolution, and somewhat against existing trends, Samsung has adjusted it downwards. Both the 8″ and 9.7″ models have a resolution of 2048×1536 pixels, up from 2560×1600 pixels of the previous generation. That is not a problem, because the pixel density is still fine and the image does not visibly suffer from sharpness. It does ensure that the GPU has to do less work and that is of course beneficial for performance.
Like the previous Tab S models, these new tablets also impress in terms of image quality. Especially when you watch video, often with dark tones and perhaps deep black, it is striking how much more beautiful and contrast-rich the image of an amoled screen is compared to an LCD. However, if you start reading text or doing other things with a mostly white background, such as web browsing, this wow effect largely disappears. Photos on web pages still look very nice thanks to the high contrast, but without a dark background the effect is less impressive.
The maximum brightness of the screen that you as a user can set yourself is fine, but not exceptionally high. Fortunately, the Tab S models, like the Galaxy S6, have a kind of ‘overdrive’ mode where the tablet increases the brightness further when a lot of light falls on the light sensor. As a result, the Tab S2 tablets can also be used outdoors, although you will always be bothered by reflections on a sunny summer day.
We were not able to measure the color reproduction during the short hands-on, but we know from previous Samsung devices that it is often a mustache. This is not the case in the standard dynamic mode selected, but it is in the Basic mode, which neatly corresponds to the sRGB color space.
Housing
In the last year, Samsung has been busy shaking off the ‘plastic’ image and building on a ‘premium’ appearance. That started last year with the Note 4 and Galaxy Alpha – both with a metal edge – and the manufacturer continued that in the Galaxy A phones and the S6 and S6 Edge. Samsung has also opted for metal for the Tab S2 line, although in this case it is only about the edge. The back of the tablets is made of plastic. The two materials connect well and match visually well, so that the tablets not only have a sleek look, but also feel sturdy. Compared to the first Tab S tablets, they indeed look more ‘premium’.
They’re also a bit thinner and lighter than both their predecessors and both of Apple’s iPads: the 9.7″ model weighs 389g and is 5.6mm thick, while the smaller 8″ model weighs 265g and is also a thickness of 5.6mm. Both tablets are available in a white and black version, with the black tending more towards dark blue. On the back of the tablets are two magnetic attachment points for an optional keyboard dock.
The combination of a wide physical home button with two capacitive buttons on either side, so familiar to Samsung, can also be found in these two tablets. As with the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, the home button is also equipped with a fingerprint scanner and we know from experience that it works very easily and quickly. The speakers are incorporated into the edge at the bottom of the tablet. This ensures that you can still hear sounds well when the tablet is lying flat on the table, but if you watch a movie, the sound suddenly comes from the right side, which means that there is no stereo effect. Actually, according to us, speakers of a tablet should always be at the front.
There is little new to be found around the tablet: the on-off and volume buttons are on the right, below that is a micro-sd slot, and on the back is the 8-megapixel camera.
Hardware
Both models of the Tab S2 have an Exynos 5433-soc from Samsung’s own factories. We first saw that chip in the Exynos variant of the Note 4 and is closely related to the Exynos 7420 from the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. It consists of four Cortex A57 cores at up to 1.9GHz and four Cortex A53 cores at up to 1.3GHz. Those cores are linked to a Mali T760 GPU with six cores. That is two fewer than with the Exynos 7420. The whole is baked at 20nm and is connected to 3GB of lpddr3 memory. The 5433 is not as fast as the 7420, but on paper it is certainly not a slow thing.
| Exynos 5433 (Tab S2) | Exynos 7420 (Galaxy S6) | |
|---|---|---|
| Cores | 4X A53 @ 1.3GHz 4X A57 @ 1.9GHz | 4x A53 @ 1.5GHz 4x A57 @ 2.1GHz |
| GPU | Mali T760 MP6 @ 700MHz (206GFlops) | Mali T760 MP8 @ 772MHz (302GFlops) |
| Memory | LPDDR3 (13.2GB/s) | LPDDR4 (24.8GB/s) |
| Process | 20nm | 14nm FinFet |
It is always difficult to judge the speed of a smartphone or tablet during an initial unveiling because the devices have not yet been used and contain few apps. Still, Samsung seems to have taken a good step. When we held the first generation Tab S tablets, it was immediately noticeable that they were not speed monsters and that the hardware used had difficulty controlling all those pixels. We certainly don’t have that feeling with the Tab S2, so they are off to a better start. The models we saw still ran Android 5.0.2, but they must run Android 5.1 upon release. That should also provide some speed gain.
Also positive is that both models have 32GB on board as standard and that a micro SD slot is also present. For a moment we were afraid that this would be absent, just like with the Galaxy S6 phones, but Samsung fortunately sees the benefit of expandable memory in a tablet. Samsung employees present did not know whether the storage is the ufs 2.0 memory from the Galaxy S6. On a wireless level, the tablets have WiFi b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1 and GPS.
The battery capacity of the tablets is 4000mAh and 5870mAh. That is less than with the predecessors: they still had batteries of 4900mAh and 7900mAh respectively. Samsung probably hopes to make up for that difference by lower power consumption of the soc and the screen.
Conclusion
The first generation of Galaxy Tab S tablets stood out for their beautiful screens, but the rest of the components failed to reach that same level. Samsung’s second attempt seems to be doing better. The tablets are thinner, lighter and sturdier and – based on our first impression – also a lot faster and nicer to work with.
Those who watch a lot of video on their tablet may be disappointed with the change in screen size. We actually think it’s a good choice, the 4:3 format is a bit nicer to use in portrait mode and the black bars that you see when watching video are not very noticeable thanks to the deep black of the amoled screens.
With suggested retail prices of 399 and 499 euros, the Tab S2 tablets are not cheap, but they must compete against the market leader; Apple’s iPads. It is obvious that Samsung is targeting the iPad: with an 8″ and 9.7″ model with resolutions of 2048×1536 pixels and fingerprint scanners, the Tab S2 lineup resembles Apple’s. Samsung has a clear point with its amoled screens that sets it apart from all competitors and the hardware looks good on paper. We will find out whether Samsung beats the competition when we can test Samsung’s new tablets for an extensive review.