Samsung refreshes the Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 and Galaxy Tab S2 9.7
It has long been suggested that Samsung's Galaxy Tab S2 line of tablets would be getting an upgrade. Talk of two new Galaxy Tab S3 devices, featuring 8.0 and 9.7-inch displays as with the pre-existing Tab S2 duo, has been fairly constant over the past few months. Earlier on this year, it was offered that the Tab S2 family may not be getting a full-on upgrade, but rather a set of modestly bumped interiors. Now, both Galaxy Tab S2 variants have been treated that refresh, which also indicates that a near-future Tab S3 is improbable.
Rumor had it that the tweaked Galaxy Tab S2 models would sport Qualcomm's octa-core Snapdragon 652 SoC under the hood, and so has proved to be the case. German retail website cyberport is already selling the new Tab S2 with the 64-bit chipset, which offers a small CPU performance bump over Sammy's own Exynos 5433 processor found in last year's version. Graphics performance takes a slight hit, but overall, the change is unlikely to prompt noticeable difference during real-world usage.
The new device retains the 3 gigs of RAM and the same 1536 x 2048 display of 2015's Tab S2. The 8-megapixel rear-facing camera is allied to a 2.1-megapixel shooter for selfies, and there's 32 GB of expandable storage. Indeed, for both the new Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 and Galaxy Tab S2 9.7, the specs are largely unchanged from the last models, save the processor.
The arduous, often painful business of waiting on Android software updates is avoided with the new Tab S2, which gets the very latest version of Android 6.0.1 Lollipop out of the box.
The Wi-Fi-only Galaxy Tab S2 9.7 (SM-T813N) is retailing for €449 ($513), and there's an LTE edition (SM-T819N) costing €549 ($627). Only the LTE version of the Tab S2 8.0 (SM-T719N) is currently available at the price of €479 ($547).
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