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Samsung Launches $1,200 Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra With Thin Design and Revamped S-Pen
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I can't get my head around the awkward positioning of the pen. The one advantage you could have from not positioning it in the centre, would be to position it near the top in portrait mode, so it's easier to hold one-handed without removing the pen. But bizarrely, they seem to have placed it near the bottom, which makes it even worse in that context than having it in the middle. And it just looks wrong, my brain would not accept it.
Add to the inferior tablet app quality and selection, it's a no from me, even if it matches or slightly beats the iPad in some specs like battery life and cameras. It's less about the ecosystem for me at this point, if a tablet was really compelling I could switch from iPad, but this isn't it.
Add to the inferior tablet app quality and selection, it's a no from me, even if it matches or slightly beats the iPad in some specs like battery life and cameras. It's less about the ecosystem for me at this point, if a tablet was really compelling I could switch from iPad, but this isn't it.
And I bet it lags like crazy and has horrible JS performance, like every other Android device on the planet.
By Black Friday (2 1/2 months away) they will have a sale of at least 40% off...
The Dimensity 9400+ is faster than some people might think (we're a long way from the days when MediaTek was synonymous with "cheap and slow"). And yes, in real life it'll be more than fine.
However, charging $860 for an 11-inch tablet with a chip that has trouble matching an iPad Air M3, let alone an iPad Pro M4? That's a bit much. I do like that a pen is in the box, but someone shopping in that price bracket is a power user who may balk even if the chip technically meets their needs.
My theory is that Samsung is diversifying its chip suppliers so that it's not chained quite so tightly to Qualcomm (see also: wider use of its own Exynos chips). Good for the business, less than thrilling if you were expecting Samsung to offer the most powerful Android tablets possible.
Darth Tulhu
macrumors 68020
Over 10 years ago I had a Samsung's Note tablet which also served as a phone. I loved it but either software or hardware issue, sometimes when I tried to take photos or videos, the system rebooted itself.
I do. I don't think there is a significant difference between Samsung's and Apple's ecosystem nowadays
Yeah, no. Would hate to have a device the other way around, running a Desktop chip with a hamstrung half baked wanna be “desktop environment” that can't even run apps outside its locked down app store.
Yet the iPad Pro, running iPadOS, absolutely destroys any Android tablet when you need to get work done by the nature of having a vastly superior selection of Apps.
Android on tablets is still a joke. In 2025.
Anyone remember when Google had an “Android Tablet Optimized” section in the Play Store? If you blinked you might have missed it. There’s a reason they removed it shortly after launch.
I've got the z fold 7. It's like having a tablet and phone all in one. I've got an Amazfit Active 2 watch and a set of Soundcore Liberty ANC earbuds. Everything works well, some things I like better with Apple, some things I like better on Android. I've still got my MacBook but rarely use it since I can multitask on the Fold.
I have a ZF7 and a A9+. The A9+ was overall a very poor experience, a lot of the interface felt like just an enlarge version of its phone counterpart. Everything just felt awkward to use, slow and choppy. Worst of all Goodlock was also not available on their lower end models so for customization I ended up using a 3rd party launcher. Add to the fact that its running Android 13 from 3 generations ago makes it a very poor experience as a tablet. However for my use case which is just a quick way to access my home via the Ring and Sonos app it's
Now I'm considering trading it back to Samsung for the new S10 Lite which has a better processor as well as an under- display fingerprint reader but it also comes with worst speakers(2vs4 in the a+) and less memory(6GB vs 8GB in the A9+). The A9+ has a decent screen and great speakers but its terrible because it lacks the chip to run either very well. What's the point of a 90hz screen when the fps constantly dips below 60fps in the most basic tasks like web browsing or youtube?
Good device to store and watch photos on, and maybe edit too. SD slot is a big plus tbh, glad they didn’t remove it as in their flagship smartphones.
But honestly still kinda pricey to my liking, iPads are much cheaper at this point, but probably with this one Samsung is competing with iPad Pro lineup. But Android unfortunately has no apps, and that’s issue. Music making ecosystem is dead, photo apps are scarce, maybe good for video editing tho.
However knowing Samsung in half a year price will fall down to 700-800$, they have awesome deals
But honestly still kinda pricey to my liking, iPads are much cheaper at this point, but probably with this one Samsung is competing with iPad Pro lineup. But Android unfortunately has no apps, and that’s issue. Music making ecosystem is dead, photo apps are scarce, maybe good for video editing tho.
However knowing Samsung in half a year price will fall down to 700-800$, they have awesome deals
I feel you .. I really wish I could run Photoshop on my pretty looking Sammy Tablet … sigh
I’m still rocking a S7 and it still feels extra snappy. Wish I could run some power apps though … they forgot to make them for android os.
This btw is a feature that makes it stand out, not mentioned in the article though. I really appreciate that Samsung made first ever IP68 tablet, that means Apple will follow suit in next iPad Pro (would be foolish not to, they did same with iPhone 11 Pro and added third camera that was on Samsung much earlier)
I wonder how it does Dolphin.
It is not available on iOS and iPadOS due to lack of JIT (according to developer). Maybe three years ago not a single Android phone could run without lags any old Gamecube game. People on forums said Elite 8 will change that, tho idk if that happened. When I say “it runs” I mean it runs good and doesn’t overheat battery and run at 90% CPU and GPU, it will throttle for sure but will also hit battery life a lot.
Comparatively, MacBook M1 runs every Dolphin game in 4x resolution without even heating up. It would be a dream scenario if there was an Android tablet with such capability too
That's pretty much android tablets in a nutshell.
Hardware wise they're superb, but ipads (and by extension ipados) are even more of a "default" than iphones and as such native app support isn't anywhere near as good.
clearly this is aimed at photogs, not video editors, based on the SoC. that said, the 16:9 AR display is clearly not aimed at photogs.
it's a media consumption device pretending to be an iPad Pro competitor and a lot of people are gonna be fooled into never trusting Samsung again, again.
it's a media consumption device pretending to be an iPad Pro competitor and a lot of people are gonna be fooled into never trusting Samsung again, again.
There is a Beta/Early Access version of Photoshop on Android now which is getting there but still missing a lot of features.
I haven't used the iPad version for a while so I'm not sure if they're the same.
Dolphin ran fine on the 9300+ (S10 Ultra) at at least 3x res with no issues with heat, etc so I imagine the 9400+ would be even better. The Elite 8 CPU seems to have a lot of issues with lacking driver support; its just been announced in the new Odin 3 handheld which seems to be annoying a lot of people!