Skip to main content

Samsung announces full range of Android tablets with Windows 8-style home screen

Ars at CES 2014

  • New Oculus prototype features positional tracking, reduced motion blur
  • Video: Our first reaction to the Steam boxes, Steam OS controller
  • CES before the storm: Booths in progress, acrobats, and a septocopter
  • Gallery: The 13 Steam Machines and all of their glorious variety
  • Intel debuts a host of "smart" devices, including a "charging bowl"
View all…

Samsung has finally come clean about its next generation Android tablets, the Galaxy NotePro and TabPro. The Note Pro is a 12.2-inch tablet sporting the usual Note-series stylus, and like the rumors said, the TabPro comes in a whole range of sizes: 12.2, 10.1, and 8.4 inches.

The Galaxy NotePro 12.2

  1. The Galaxy NotePro 12.2

Despite running Android, the devices come with a Windows 8-style tile interface called "Magazine UX," which Samsung says is better optimized for large screens. The usual Samsung accoutrements like split-screen apps and floating windows are present, which should be even more useful on such a huge screen. It looks like the "Pro" moniker here is all about the bundled software (and marketing), as Samsung is pre-loading a remote desktop app, Cisco WebEx Meetings (a video conferencing app), Samsung e-Meeting (a content sharing service), and "approximately $700 worth of the premium pre-paid, long-term subscription offers from best-selling news, social media, and cloud storage providers," like a subscription to The New York Times and Dropbox storage. Samsung's Knox security software will also no doubt be a selling point, as Samsung looks to push into the enterprise and fill the hole left by the cratering BlackBerry.

The Galaxy TabPro 10.1

  1. The Galaxy TabPro 10.1

The 12.2 and 10.1 inch devices are meant to be used horizontally, with Samsung's hardware buttons located on the horizontal edge. The 8.4-inch version has the buttons and branding in a vertical orientation. It looks like Samsung is sticking to its traditional motto of "bigger is better" as, for now, a new 7-inch tablet is out of the question.

The Galaxy TabPro 8.4

  1. The Galaxy TabPro 8.4

The Wi-Fi versions of the devices use the Samsung 1.9GHz Exynos 5 Octa CPU (four 1.9 Ghz cores and four low-power 1.3Ghz cores), and the LTE versions use a 2.3Ghz Snapdragon 800. Everything runs Android 4.4 KitKat on a 2560x1600 LCD (even the 8.4-inch model) and has 16 or 32 GB of RAM, an 8MP rear camera, a 2MP front camera, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, and a microSD Slot. The big internal differences between devices are the battery and RAM. The 12.2-inch device has 3GB of RAM and a 9500 mAh battery. The 10.1-inch TabPro has 2GB of RAM and an 8220 mAh battery, and the 8.4-inch version has 2GB of RAM and a 4800 mAh battery.

The software is the real star of the show here, which unfortunately doesn't come across in a press release very well. We will do our best to play with this at some point tomorrow and grab some video when the CES show floor opens.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Samsung is building a revolutionary ROLL-UP smartphone

GETTY • US PATENT OFFICE Example of a flexible display, LEFT, and the illustrations filed with the Samsung patent, RIGHT Samsung has been awarded a US patent for a brand-new foldable, rollable display to use across its smartphone and tablet ranges. The South Korean technology firm recently used its flexible display technology in the award-winning Galaxy S6 Edge, which has a dual curved QHD screen. However this latest patent, which was published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, shows the company has bolder ambitions for its curved displays. The illustrations filed with the approved patent reveal a cylindrical hub, which houses the rolled display – which unfurls like a pair of window blinds. US PATENT OFFICE The US patent contains a futuristic cylindrical smartphone with a roll-up display Users then pull a tab at the end of the multitouch display to unroll it from the hub and use the full screen real estate available on the tablet or smartphone. To achiev
Post a Comment
Read more

The Samsung Galaxy Note7 (S820) Review

This year has been difficult for smartphones, which is a bit of a paradox when you consider just how much better things have gotten compared to last year. With Snapdragon 820, 650, 652, and 625 we've finally moved past the shadow of the Snapdragon 810, 808, and 617/615. While there were Android devices that shipped with the Exynos 7420, they were often paired with a modem that was not necessarily the most power efficient. Despite all of this, there seems to be a general disappointment with smartphones. People are increasingly finding it hard to justify phones like the HTC 10 or Galaxy S7 with competition from OnePlus, Xiaomi, and even Apple with their iPhone SE. In this context the Galaxy Note7 brings much of the flavor of the Galaxy S7 edge, but blends it with the S-Pen of the Note line and a few new features like the iris scanner. If you were paying attention to the industry with the launch of the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note5, it's very much more of the same rather than the m
Post a Comment
Read more

Why do Android fanboys hate admitting that Samsung copied Apple?

It's impossible to cover the mobile market without diving into the good ol' "iOS vs. Android" debate from time to time. These are the two biggest mobile platforms on the planet, so they're constantly being compared. Likewise, Samsung and Apple are the world's top two smartphone vendors, so their phones are constantly pitted against each other as well. Of course, there's another reason Apple and Samsung are often mentioned in the same breath: after entering the market, Samsung quickly grew to become the top mobile device maker on the planet thanks in large part to Apple. First, Samsung did everything it possibly could to copy Apple's iPhone and iPad. Then, it spent billions upon billions of dollars belittling Apple products in TV, online, and print advertising. Samsung spent years positioning its own devices as the cool alternative to Apple's iPhone, and its efforts paid off big time. Even now, Samsung continues to copy Apple all the time acro
Post a Comment
Read more