Samsung Galaxy Tab S unveiling in New York: What to expect

After showering love on its smartphone flagship, Samsung has turned its eye to the tablet market. At the company’s Premiere event in New York tonight, the new range of tablets will be unveiled and they are expected to be direct competition to the Apple iPads, as far as specs and user experience are concerned.

The event is scheduled for 7PM in New York City, so you can catch our live blog at 4:30 am IST. We will be on the ground in NYC for the big launch, but first let’s see what we know about the tablet so far.

Display

The Galaxy Tab S will be the world’s first ever device to feature a WQXGA (2560×1600) Super AMOLED display. This is the first time we are seeing Samsung make such a large SAMOLED display, so we can expect deep black and vivid colours. Hopefully, Samsung has worked its display calibration magic this time to present a more neutral and less oversaturated picture. The Tab S is also expected to be Samsung’s first tablet device to feature a fingerprint sensor.

Processor

Just like the Galaxy S5 in India and some other markets, the Galaxy Tab S will have an Octa-core Exynos 5 (5420) SoC with ARM’s big.LITTLE technology i.e a quad-core1.9GHz Cortex-A15 CPU and four 1.3GHz Cortex-A7 cores. It’s also expected to have a 6-core ARM Mali-T628 GPU with a clock speed of 533MHz, along with a very healthy 3GB of 32-bit dual-channel 933 MHz LPDDR3e RAM. All that power should be more than enough to draw pixels and triangles on the high-res display. We would like to see Samsung expand its ecosystem arsenal too by tying up with game developers for games that run perfectly on the new tablet. This would be a crucial factor considering Apple has revamped its graphics prowess recently.

Software

Samsung would also need all that processing power for running its customised Android UI. The Tab S will have Android 4.4.2 KitKat, but Samsung’s Magazine UX is likely to mask much of the stock UI. Tab S will also include software features from the S5, such as the Ultra Power Saving Mode, and could also get a Remote PC for Apple’s like Handoff features.

Imaging

Tablets are not meant to be cameras, but Samsung is packing in an 8-megapixel (3264×2448) camera sensor with 1080p Full HD video recording. The 2.1-Megapixel front camera should also be able to shoot full HD video.

Connectivity

In terms of connectivity, the Galaxy Tab S will offer Wi-Fi 802.11 ac support on top of the usual a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0 LE / ANT+ for connecting to the Gear wearables; GPS, GLONASS and an IR blaster will also be seen, according to the rumoured specs.

We will be bringing you live coverage of the launch event from New York, so keep an eye out for our live blog. In addition, Samsung will be streaming the launch live, so we will be updating you guys with the live stream link closer to the event.