Galaxy Tab S3 8.0 At TENAA Might Be An Omen Of Things To Come

Just recently, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy TabPro S, which, despite the "Galaxy" brand, is anything but an Android tablet. It was a Windows slate in the tradition of the Surface Pro line and aimed to rival the larger iPad Pro. With the TabPro S comes the question of whether Samsung actually has a premium grade Android tablet in the works. There is an upcoming Galaxy Tab S3, based on leaks, rumors, and this lone TENAA sighting. Despite having the "S" designation, however, this is clearly not the high end Android tablet you are looking for.

Samsung launched the first Galaxy Tab S, the first tablet to be named after its flagship Galaxy S smartphone line, with much fanfare. It was hard not to be impressed. Back then, it was definitely top of the line, and not just in specs. Samsung would be boasting of its screen, one of the highest resolution AMOLED displays, at a time when Apple was throwing around the "retina" qualifier left and right. The ultra thin profile truly rivaled the iPad Air in that aspect.

While the screen, albeit QXGA instead of QHD, and thinness would both make its way to the Galaxy Tab S2, the rest of the specs didn't. The successor was anything but premium, stuck with a lowly Exynos 5433 CPU. Now based on this TENAA entry, the next Galaxy Tab S tablet isn't going to fare any better. The CPU is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 this time, which marks it as a "higher" mid-range model. There's 3 GB of RAM, and an 8 and 2 megapixel camera pair. Other than that, most of the specs remain similar to the Galaxy Tab S2.

Sounds familiar? That's because it's pretty much the Galaxy Tab S2 "refresh" we heard about lately. In fact, the model numbers are the same: SM-T719. So the model number is pretty much settled. Now only the commercial name remains unknown. A "new" Galaxy Tab S2 would probably make sense, but a Galaxy Tab S3 isn't that unlikely either.

The thing is, call it by any name and it will still be disappointing as an "S" product. Although Samsung has released Tab A and Tab E tablets on the lower end of the market, it has been a long time since it launched anything for the higher end. Is this not so premium approach to tablets indicative of how Samsung views the consumer tablet market? Analysts have been lumping tablets in the same category as PCs, under the "dying" label. Some of those analysts do see some hope in the 2-in-1 sub-category, especially in professional use cases. Coincidentally, Samsung is actually in the perfect position to take advantage of that, with its version of TouchWiz that has been doing split and multi windows way before Android even supported it officially. It has the software, it just needs a good tablet to put it on. Sadly, this isn't it.

VIA; phoneArena