Samsung Won't Let Android Tablets Die, Announces the Galaxy Tab S6 (arstechnica.com) 96
Samsung is one of the only companies still producing tablets to rival Apple's iPad. Today the company announced the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6, its latest high-end tablet, for $649. Pre-orders start August 23, and the device ships September 6. Samsung says there will be an LTE version available later. Ars Technica reports: The Samsung Tab S6 features a 10.5-inch 2560x1600 OLED display, a 2.84GHz Snapdragon 855, and a 7040mAh battery. The base version has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, with a higher tier of 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. For cameras, there's an 8MP front camera, while the rear gets a 13MP main camera and a 5MP wide-angle lens. The device is down to 5.7mm thick and weighs 420 grams. This is Samsung's first-ever tablet with an in-screen fingerprint reader. Interestingly, it's an optical reader instead of the ultrasonic tech that the Galaxy S10 uses. Somehow, on a 10-inch tablet, Samsung couldn't find room for a headphone jack. Even Apple, which ditched the headphone jack two years ago, still puts a headphone jack on iPads. Samsung is apparently declaring war on the headphone jack with this round of updates -- the Galaxy Note 10, launching next week, is expected to dump the headphone jack, too.
The S-Pen comes with the tablet but doesn't stow away inside the body; instead, a groove on the back of the tablet gives it a spot to magnetically attach to. Of course, don't expect the tablet to sit flat on a table with a big pen attached to the back. As with other newer Samsung devices, the S-Pen now comes with a battery and some Bluetooth functionality, allowing it to do things like work as a remote shutter button for the camera. A new "Air action" gesture system lets you do things like change the camera mode or scroll through pictures with a flick of the pen.
The S-Pen comes with the tablet but doesn't stow away inside the body; instead, a groove on the back of the tablet gives it a spot to magnetically attach to. Of course, don't expect the tablet to sit flat on a table with a big pen attached to the back. As with other newer Samsung devices, the S-Pen now comes with a battery and some Bluetooth functionality, allowing it to do things like work as a remote shutter button for the camera. A new "Air action" gesture system lets you do things like change the camera mode or scroll through pictures with a flick of the pen.
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Re:At this stage.. (Score:5, Insightful)
because for many the headphone jack is important. Myself i'm dongled out. I have great traditional headphones and just want to plug them in a use them.
Re:At this stage.. (Score:5, Informative)
You seriously still have a wire dangling around when you listen to music?
Yes. And quite happily, I might add.
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Basic 40 dollar a piece Koss PortaPro headphones don't need charging and sound better than fancy millennial wireless headphone brands like Beats or Bose. No need to carry stupid dongle, no need to charge. Bluetooth protocol basic functionality SUCKS ASS with every second device I have tried. Chirping, connection drop outs, and other lameness is the usual reality of anyone who uses bt audio frequently. Wired headphones are cheap, and just work.
Another reason not to buy mobile devices with no headphone jack i
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So get some hardware capable of more than basic bluetooth?
Better codecs than SBC have existed for a while now, which bring the fidelity up massively. Unless you're plugging in an expensive pair of studio monitor headphones you will be very unlikely to notice a difference other than the battery, and most bluetooth headphones that support better codecs have 30+ hours of battery life.
You're correct that bluetooth headphones of 5 years ago were garbage. That is not the case of today if you buy something that
Re:At this stage.. (Score:4, Insightful)
So if I bought bluetooth headphones 5 years ago I need to buy an new set today so that I can get sound that is as good as wired headphones that were bought 20 years ago.
The nice thing with wired headphones, the "codecs" in them haven't changed in at least 20 years and the "batteries" last at least that long too. 8^)
Re:At this stage.. (Score:5, Insightful)
what do you do when the batteries run out in your headphones?
The nice thing about a headphone jack is you don't have to charge the headphones
Re:At this stage.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bluetooth audio also has shit lossless quality (doubly so if the source material is already lossily compressed).
I'll stick with audio jacks and full quality audio.
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Sounds like the wireless ones are cheap trash if you have to unpair / repair constantly between devices. Several units that have been on the market for some time now support multiple connections.
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The phone/tablet is still running the amplification circuits when you use bluetooth (otherwise you would only be able to adjust sound on the headphones) so you are actually using more power using bluetooth than you are using a cable and disabling bluetooth. I would say that you probably charge the phone more using bluetooth than you do using a wired connection.
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I plug in a $3 USB-C to 3.5mm part and do everything you just described in the edge-case situations you just described. And for all other times I have a larger display that is far more useful every single minute I'm using the device because the bezel doesn't need to be huge to accommodate the thickness of a 3.5mm plug housing.
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I plug in a USB-C to 3.5mm dongle, and then plug the optional audio cord into my headphones which can still operate with a dead battery.
This isn't 5 years ago where bluetooth headphones have shitty battery life, shitty codecs, and shitty little drivers that sound like tin cans. They now support CD quality fidelity over wireless, 30 hour battery life, and still can plug up and run passively if the battery goes down.
Re:At this stage.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly.
But they have the"Courage" to not make something I will buy.
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Not half as funny as you might think.
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Did you do the same with PS/2 ports back in the day?
Last December, my daughter purchased - with her own money - a desktop PC. It has PS/2 ports.
Laptops may have ditched PS/2 ports long ago, but seems like they aren't dead yet.
(Curiously, some laptops report their built in keyboards and trackpads as PS/2 devices, including my 3 year old HP ProBook.)
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This.
Even from other manufacturers not named Samsung, Android on a tablet is a miserable experience. Google has done jack shit to make Android more landscape-friendly - landscape orientation is used far more on tablets than phones. There are apps on Google Play that don't even bother rotating their UI so if you were to mount a tablet in a car to use as a navigation device, you end up with random apps rotated 90 degrees.
And it won't be getting any better any time soon, because Google gave up on tablets the
Amazon still makes tablets (Score:1)
Amazon fire tablets probably have overall largest market share at this point.
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They are also catering to a vastly different market segment - value media consumers. Fire tablets are not what anyone would consider a high performing piece of hardware on the level with an iPad Pro or this new Galaxy Tab 6.
Re: Equally bizarre... (Score:2)
Not necessarily. If you want to use a non-apple browser on a tablet you want an open mobile platform.
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Android isn't Open Source (tm) but it's far more open than Apple Phone OS. You can run lots of different browsers on it. Without doing anything to 'hack' it you can run arbitrary binaries. You don't need to get special approval from Apple. Just download one of the toolchains anonymously.
Re:$600+ dollars? (Score:4, Insightful)
Big screen is the whole point of buying tablets. Browsing the web, streaming videos, or reading something while chilling on a coach or in a bathtub is sure more enjoyable with a 9-10 inch screen compared to a phone. I have fine vision, but I can also imagine that people with poor near sight would certainly prefer tablets in this setting even more. And they still weight about 300-500 grams and very thin, so you can throw it into any travel bag or a backpack, or slip it right into your laptop sleeve.
But this brings us to the issue of the price, you don't need crazy expensive hardware for a media consumption device, and it's certainly not worth the MSRP that Samsung wants for the Tab S series. Even the base Apple iPad (2018) goes regularly on sale for 250USD, and Amazon's Fire HD for 100-150 bucks in many ways has better features and hardware than significantly more expensive Android tablets.
I don't know what's going on. Tablets certainly have their place and use, but most Android tablets are just fscked, probably thanks to Google abandoning this platform. I had the original Tab S, but have absolutely no interest in replacing it with another Samsung. If I go cheap, it will be Amazon Fire, and for slightly more cash I could get an iPad which will get only better with the iPadOS this fall.
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Amazon Fire HD 10 (Score:5, Interesting)
I have an Amazon Fire HD 10, and it does everything I need: it plays games and apps (both Amazon and Google Play), plays music and movies, and runs Firefox and Chrome. The interface is smooth and responsive, and it costs under $200.
The last Samsung I had was great for about a few months, then started bogging down.
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The 2017 Amazon Fire HD 10 has surprisingly good specs for a tablet that you can sometimes buy for just 100 bucks (with forced Amazon ads, and all). I mean, it's actually still better than the 2018 Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.5 (poor CPU, no DRM for FHD, +300 MSRP) or 2019 Galaxy Tab A 10.1 (no stereo sound in landscape orientation, and CPU pretty much on the level with A72 in Fire HD). I can't wait for the 2019 Amazon Fire HD 10, which is rumored to exist.
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Sheet music (Score:4, Interesting)
I use a tablet for my sheet music. All of my music is in PDF files and the tablet fits well on my piano.
It's wonderful to have all of my music in one place, immediately available, and I don't have a big messy stack of papers on my piano, on the floor beside it, and so forth.
"I'm sure it's in here somewhere"..... flick flick flick...
Now replaced by, "I've got it right here, filed under show tunes"..., or ballads, or wedding music or whatever else. I've got lots of categories. Getting a tablet for my music was actually a life changing event.
It's a Samsung Galaxy Tab S2; it works well and I like it a lot.
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That's cool, I've got a Tab S2 as well, and am a huge fan. It's more of a 'handy' device for me, for looking up stuff while watching a show (hello IMDB, what's this actor up to these days?) or playing a few games, or reading news sites and magazine PDFs. It's only got Android 7.0, but that seems to be holding up well, as well as the speed, battery, etc..
Bummed to see they're ditching the headphone jack in the newest model tho, another use is plugging into a portable speaker for music in other rooms or the b
Shame on Samsung (Score:1)
Brand new Huawei Mediapad M6 comes with similar specs, costs less, and have a headphone jack. (keep the jokes about chicoms to yourself)
One of the only (Score:2)
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Especially ironical if you count the companies that produce iOS based tablets.
Samsung Galaxy Tab - Best high-end tablet around. (Score:4, Informative)
I was never a Samsung fan, their UI variant was too shitty - but they've since updated their UI to a more lean, closer to Mint Android approach.
My daughter needed a tablet computer for studying medicine. Medicals fill a metric ton of paper each semester, so digital notes auto-synced and backupped make total sense. We made seeking out the right tablet for her a big project and took roughly half a year to evaluate, test and finally chose the right tabletcomputer for her.
The Samsung S5 won hands down.
Lightweight, powerful, excellent screen, big battery time, best-in-class stylus, neat ready-made software and a neat extra feature called Samsung DEX that does a good job at resembling a useful modern desktop computer and shows everyone how convergence looks like when you actually make it work.
It's nice to see they're actually pulling through and upholding their strategy.
If I needed a tablet now the S6 would lead my shortlist by quite a margin.
My 2 cents.
Re: Samsung Galaxy Tab - Best high-end tablet arou (Score:2)
Yes, make that the S4 if that's the last one supporting the non-battery pen.
Way too expensive (Score:2)
just want a vanilla Android tablet (Score:2, Insightful)
I just want a vanilla AOSP tablet.
A 7 or 10 inch, 16:9 aspect, so I can watch videos.
Not the ipad which feels dated to me, software and hardware, and Android is my preference.
Too bad there is no more Nexus/Pixel tablets.
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Yeah that's really the worst part about Samsung tablets. I have a galaxy tab S 8" and it's a wonderful piece of hardware. For that price I would have expected them to maintain it for way longer than they did. The hardware spec sheet is still totally relevant by today's standards, yet it's stuck with an old version of Android.
And really, that's what I buy when I go for a Samsung Phone : years of support. There is no point buying an expensive tablet with high-end HW specs if it doesn't last longer than a bas
Not dead yet, or even pining (Score:2)
I've been happy w/ ASUS tablets, and they're still available for reasonable prices. Zenpad.
BlueTooth is still not even analog audio quality (Score:2)
Most people don't know that BlueTooth still can't even deliver the same quality as the analog audio jack.
No matter the quality of whatever MP3, AAC+, M4A, or lossless FLAC you downloaded, your BlueTooth headphones reduce the quality far below even the most generic analog audio headphones.