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Here’s everything we know about the Galaxy Tab S8 so far, including all the latest news and rumours around the incoming Android tablet.
Samsung launched the Galaxy Tab S7 and the Galaxy Tab S7 Plus in August 2020 and wee were especially impressed by the latter, crowning it the “most accomplished high-end Android tablet” we’ve ever used in our review and naming it one of our seven best tablets available right now.
The S7 Plus left us with high expectations for its successor – which the latest reports indicate could be along much sooner than we expected.
Read on to discover everything we think we know about the Galaxy Tab S8 so far, including when it will be available and what specs it’ll pack. Make sure to bookmark this page too as we plan to update it as more news rolls in.
Release Date
It’s been around a year and a half since the S7 made its debut, but fortunately it seems that we won’t have to wait much longer to see its successor.
According to a couple of reliable sources, including Twitter tipster FrontTron (above) and posts on the Korean message board Clien.net, the Galaxy Tab S8 is expected to be released at the same time as the Samsung Galaxy S22 series, the manufacturer’s flagship smartphone line.
Samsung has since confirmed that an Unpacked event is scheduled for February 2022, and this is thought to be when the new devices will make their grand arrivals. Though the specific date has yet to be officially confirmed, it is widely expected to be 8 February based on a report from South Korea’s Digital Daily which quoted an anonymous Samsung spokesman as saying “We have confirmed that the event will be held on February 8 and we are discussing the timing of invitations to be sent out at the end of January.”
Price
The first thing to bear in mind when considering buying a new Tab S8 is that there are potentially different models in the range, including a first-ever Ultra version that is likely to be quite expensive.
At launch, the Galaxy Tab S7 cost £619 and the Galaxy Tab S7 Plus cost £799, so the corresponding S8 devices may have similar prices, while the Ultra will surely eclipse them both.
Currently on Samsung’s US website, “the nest Galaxy Tablet” is available to pre-order, and doing so will net you $50 credit towards other Samsung products.
Design
Tablet designs are rarely all that exciting at the best of times, and frankly they don’t need to be. However, there’s one feature on the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra that is bound to divide opinion amongst the fans.
The standard and Plus versions of the tablet are said to resemble the above image, which was published by the well-known Twitter source @evleaks, and you can see that it has a relatively thick bezel but is otherwise fairly unremarkable.
However, the Tab S8 Ultra seems to have ditched a larger bezel in favour of a small screen notch to house the selfie camera. While some customers may find this an acceptable compromise, there are bound to be many who will feel a bit let down by the interrupted display on this high-end tablet.
Specifications and Features
The three devices in the range have been the subject of a thorough run-down by German website WinFuture ahead of the big launch event next month.
The standard Tab S8 will apparently have an 11-inch LTPS TFT screen with a 2560 x 1600 resolution, and an 8,000 mAh battery. The Plus version has a larger 12.7-inch Super AMOLED display with a 2800 x 1752 resolution, and will be powered by a 10,090 mAh battery. Both of these models are said to be available with maximum RAM of 8GB, and maximum storage of 256GB.
By contrast, the Tab S8 Ultra’s screen is a Super AMOLED that will span 14.6 inches, with a sharp resolution of 2960 x 1848p and a 120Hz refresh rate for smoother scrolling; that controversial notch will house a pair of 12-megapixel cameras. The battery size is though to be 11,200 mAh, and it will boast a maximum of 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Could this be Android’s answer to Apple’s iPad Pro?
As for performance, it is thought that the trio will run on the Snapdragon 898 chipset — and Dutch website SamMobile seems to have acquired benchmark scores for the base model of the new series. According to the source, it scored 1211 in the single-core tests and 3193 in the multi-core tests of Geekbench 5.
In less encouraging news, YouTuber The Galox has alleged that Samsung will be downgrading its fast charging tech from 45W to 25W. We found the 45W charging was able to charge the Tab S7 Plus fully in around 2 hours, so we’re interested to see how long this would take with its rumoured successor.
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