Samsung Debuts Thin Galaxy Tab S With Super AMOLED 2560X1600 Display

MojoKid (1002251) writes Samsung unveiled its latest flagship tablet, the Galaxy Tab S, at an event in New York City tonight, and the new device is thin, lightweight, and sports a killer Super AMOLED display. Samsung boasts that the Galaxy Tab S's 2560x1600 display has 73% better color reproduction than conventional LCD displays and can match colors up to 94% of "nature's true palette" with deeper blacks and a 100,000:1 contrast ratio. The 10.5-inch device weighs just 467g and measures a mere 6.6mm in thickness (and there's an 8.4-inch version, too). Under the hood, the Galaxy Tab S features Android KitKat 4.4, 3GB of RAM, 16GB or 32GB of storage with a microSD slot that supports up to 128GB. The front camera is 2.1MP and the rear 8MP camera has an LED flash. No word on the exact processor on board just yet, other than it's a quad-core SoC. It's likely a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 though an Exynos variant or perhaps even Tegra 4 wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility.

Comments

Units!

[SuricouRaven]

"The 10.5-inch device weighs just 467g and measures a mere 6.6mm in thickness" ...

Re:Units!

[fractoid]

The 0.267m device weighs just 0.467kg and measures a mere 0.0066m in thickness.

Happy now?

Re:Units!

[Racemaniac]

well, screens are even in metric countries still mostly measured in inch. a 10.5 inch screen is clearer than a 27cm screen.
It's indeed strange and stupid, but unless there is a sudden movement to get rid of this convention, it's rather convenient to keep it that way. Everybody knows the sizes in inch of the screens they have, so if a new screen then also measures it in inch, it's easy to compare it to what you currently have.

If i read somewhere the screen diagonal measured in cm, it's most of the time a tiny TV they're trying to make it sound bigger than it is...

Re:Units!

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer my units rounded.

The 0m device weighs just 0kg and measures a mere 0m in thickness.

Re:Units!

[fnj]

See? Imperial is no different from metric.

The 0 mile device weighs just 0 hundredweight and measures a mere 0 miles in thickness.

Re:Units!

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer my units rounded.

sorry, Apple has the patent on that.

Re:Units!

[AmiMoJo]

a 10.5 inch screen is clearer than a 27cm screen.

It's really not though, at least to me. When you say 27cm I immediately have a firm idea of how big it is, but 10.5" is a bit vague for someone living in a (mostly) metric country. TV sizes are much easier to visualize in centimetres as well.

Re:Units!

[fractoid]

Because it's not. The kilogram is the base SI unit of mass (unintuitive as that may seem, given the included scale prefix.)

Re:Units!

[Blaskowicz]

Actually the unit of weight is newtons

Re:Units!

[fractoid]

Metric isn't as perfectly logical as we'd have you believe.

I mean, um, METRIC IS AWESOME.

Re:Units!

[Gibgezr]

*Older* Canadians understand inches...my 4 kids all have no clue about them, they prefer centimetres.

Re:Units!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's a good thing that weight isn't the force experienced by mass via gravity then. Otherwise you'd look really stupid.

Re:Units!

[OhSoLaMeow]

Why doesn't slashdot allow the <sup> tag?!

What's <sup>?

Differences to TabPro?

[Anonymous Coward]

These tablets sure look nice. The main downsides seem to be (i) price and (ii) Samsung's customized TouchWiz UI (so you gotta wait for custom ROMs).

But the question in my mind is the following: how do these differ from the TabPro tablets? They look quite similar to me... Thoughts?

Re:Differences to TabPro?

[CastrTroy]

Personally, I find android to be not so great for tablets. I can understand Samsung wanting to use a custom UI as the stock one doesn't allow multiple apps onscreen at the same time. Personally, I really like the UI on my Surface 2. My only major complaint is the lack of apps.

Re:Time for an upgrade

[by (1706743)]

I think parent was merely pointing out that this seems like a legitimately cool product, as opposed to, "here's our existing product with a new name!"

Re:Time for an upgrade

[JaredOfEuropa]

I want... similar drool inducing screen specs to make it into the bigger screens, where ultra-high resolutions actualy make sense. The choice in TVs and monitors with resolutions that exceed HD is still decidedly poor. On tablets, a high resolution helps especially when reading for longer periods of time, but I couldn't care less about black levels or color reproduction. Again, such features are more important for bigger screens.

What about tetrachromate women ?

[advid.net]

If it can match colors up to 94% of "nature's true palette" , maybe it could be used to display a test for tetrachromate people ?

I always wanted to make such a test, but I was quite difficult with real pigments.

I hope some application will try to make such a test, it would be amazing !

Re:Time for an upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure! Who needs kids when there's 7 billion of us worthless fucks already here!

Re:73% better color reproduction than conventional

[fnj]

It doesn't even mean a single goddam objective thing.

Super AMOLED a welcome upgrade

[PSdiE]

I own the Tab 2 and it's a great device - but the poor black contrast lets it down, particularly when watching video. On my Galaxy S4 mobile the blacks (eg, dark scenes or fade to black in movie) are pure black, better than iPhone and others .. whereas on the Tab2 they're distinctly grey due to the LCD backlight. Super AMOLED is superb.

Re:Super AMOLED a welcome upgrade

[NormalVisual]

Super AMOLED is superb.

Agreed, as long as you're inside. My S4 is a bear to use outside because you just can't see the display worth a damn in bright sunlight.

Re:Super AMOLED a welcome upgrade

[Mr0bvious]

I own a Tab 1, 2 and Note (all 10" versions) and I must say that the Tab 2 is absolute rubbish compared to the other 2. It is amazingly non responsive (slow).

The Note is fantastic and the Tab 1 is pretty good - but what the hell did they do to the Tab 2? That thing was a step backwards from the Tab 1, I hate it.

Re:No word on cost

[wed128]

But without anything like iTunes behind it.

Not having iTunes sounds like a feature...they should charge a premium.

Don't believe the hype.

[Ecuador]

They say "94% of nature's true palette" yet it still cannot reproduce a single shade of octarine...

Concerned about all these ads

[2ms]

Why is there such an incredible number of advertisements for products like this on Slashdot these days? Surely no one actually considers it news that the latest model of some commodity consumer electronics product has a faster processor and more compact form factor than its predecessor.

Re:Time for an upgrade

[interkin3tic]

Samsung has been on a real kick lately with locked bootloaders.

Fuck any company that tries to limit what I can do with my possessions.

Until they prove that this new tablet is easily rootable, so that you can do what you want on it, no self-respecting nerd should buy this.

(And before any smartass pipes up with "customers are leasing it, not buying it" yeah yeah, you are very clever, but you and I both know that's horseshit.)

Removable battery?

[sremick]

Does this have a removable battery?

I've stopped buying consumer electronics that take the markedly ANTI-consumer and needless action of making non-removable batteries. I realize this eliminates most tablets* but I really have little use for a tablet (my job has provided several for me to use but I really couldn't care less about them, having tried them).

* - And all Apple hardware, but I'm ok with that too.

Re:Removable battery?

[Solandri]

I've stopped buying consumer electronics that take the markedly ANTI-consumer and needless action of making non-removable batteries.

That was true about 10 years ago, but I don't think it's true anymore.

• 10 years ago, devices typically used the full capacity of the battery and topped off when full. Consequently it would wear out quicker. After a year of use, it would probably only hold half the charge it did new. After 3 years it would probably only last 5-15 minutes. Being able to replace the battery was important then for the longevity of the device. Today most manufacturers do not use the battery's full capacity. They typically allow it to be charged only to 90% of real max capacity (the software just reports this as 100%), and discharged to 10% (reported by the software as 0%). The batteries on all my newer devices which are 3-5 years old are still lasting 70%-90% as long as they did new.
• 10 years ago, laptop batteries in particular would only last 1.5-2.5 hours on a charge. Anything over 3 hours was considered long. Today, 4-5 hours is typical, and many will operate 6-10 hours. So there's less need to have a second spare battery you can swap in.

I empathize with those whose usage patterns fall outside of these cases, and who could really use a second battery to swap in. But in general I think the extra capacity and smaller size that comes from molding the battery to fit in limited space and not having to encase the battery in a protective plastic housing are a worthwhile tradeoff. Bear in mind that when user-replaceable batteries were common, they were substantially overpriced and probably represented the biggest rip-off in the tech market after $100 for an extra 16 GB of flash memory.

Re:samsung hardware is good, software is terrible

[ArcadeMan]

The best hardware in the world is useless without software.

If the software sucks, the hardware doesn't matter.

My Samsung superamoled display got dim

[presidenteloco]

after only a few years of operation, there is a noticeable dimness to the screen, so that it is unusable in daylight.

I've read that AMOLED displays degrade quickly in their brightness.

Great for you if you are a company wanting to sell me a new phone every two years. Sucks for the consumer who might want to keep their phone 5 or even 8 years like I kept my last pre-smartphone.

Re: Screw this thin crap

[Anne Thwacks]

"features" and "bugs" may be the same thing in Microsoft's world, but to the rest of us, they are completely different things.