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The rise of phablets and the lack of regular upgrades are driving the decline of the tablet market. While the market continues to shrink, market leaders Apple and Samsung are launching new products aimed at ‘productivity’, understanding fully well that the fun bit has moved on to smartphones.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 is the latest attempt by the Korean giant to prove it can outdo its rival from Cupertino when it comes to tablets. So does the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2, with its ultra-light “world’s-slimmest-tablet” physique — the tablet is only 5.6 mm thick, a few shades slimmer than the iPad Air at 6.1 mm — live up to the hype?

Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 : 

Specifications:

• 9.7-inch 2048×1536(QXGA) Super AMOLED OS display.
• 1.9 Ghz Samsung Exynos Octa-core processor 5433.
• 3GB(RAM) + 32GB internal memory with microSD slot for up to 128GB.
• 8MP AF(rear), 2.1MP (front) camera.
• 5,870mAh battery.
• Android 5.0 Lollipop

Price: Rs 39,400

With the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2, the most noticeable thing is how light and beautiful it looks. The metal frame on the side, the speaker grill at the bottom, the micro-USB charging port placed a little on the side and the classy golden brown colour; this tablet is designed to kill with sheer beauty. Sadly, the metal finish is not good enough to hide the plastic. But given how chic this tablet looks, this should not bother you.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 weighs less than 400 gms, 392 gms to be precise. 

What’s good?

No doubt the tablet is designed to make heads turn. Anyone who came to my house and checked out the tablet was impressed by this aspect. Plus, the 9.7-inch Super AMOLED display is another strong feature. If you are used to watching videos, movies on your tablet, the S2’s screen will not disappoint you. You should not have trouble reading be it at night or under direct sunlight. I kept the display brightness at auto when using it in sunlight.The most noticeable thing about the Tab S2 is its lightweight design.

The screen is definitely the highlight of this tablet, although it is prone to smudges. If you are reading on this tablet, be it boring PDFs  or a Kindle ebook, it all looks good.

Samsung has pre-loaded the tablet with the entire Microsoft Office Suite, which should also be a boost for those who need a tablet for productivity purposes.

The Tab S2 will not give you any performance issues as far as multi-tasking goes, be it gaming or watching videos or even listening to music. It does not set any benchmarks on fire, but is still a top-tier device.

The tablet’s audio playback quality is also very good and you don’t have to worry about cranking up the volume or connecting to another pair of speakers.

What’s not good?

Samsung had a SideSync feature in the tablet whereby you can reflect the tablet screen on your PC or Galaxy device and vice-versa. No matter what I tried, this did not really work smoothly for me and the PC would keep trying to find the tablet. Even when I connected the two via a USB cable as SideSync prompted me to, the tablet screen would just not appear on the PC.

The SideSync feature didn’t work smoothly for us. On the battery front, the Tab S2 gives mixed results. At times it would last easily for more than two days with mixed usage which included reading, videos and surfing the web. But then on other days, I would find myself being forced to charge the tablet rather quickly because the battery levels would dip well below 10 per cent.

Given that Samsung is charging close to Rs 40,000 for this tablet, I expected a sharper front camera, definitely more than 2 mp. The current one does not enhance the Skype call/video calls experience, and for users who are focussed on productivity, this will be one of the shortcomings of the tablet.

More Image : 

While there is no “official” word from Samsung about the company working on a smartphone with a folding display, new rumours keep piling up month after month. Indeed, this indicates that the Korean smartphone maker is cooking up something that could be ready just in time for the Mobile World Congress next year.

Yes, news coming from a leakster via his Weibo account claims that Samsung is indeed working on a folding smartphone with a display that actually folds to change its form. The same source also mentions that the smartphone will be ready by January 2016 as well.

Dubbed ‘Project V’ or Project Valley, the smartphone has been showing up time and again, in the rumour mill since June this year.






What’s more is that the leaker actually has some more details about this device.

According to him, Samsung is testing the smartphone using both the Snapdragon 620 and the Snapdragon 820. We still do not know whether there will be two models, but the smartphone is said to come with 3 GB of RAM. The display of course is expected to be one of those bendable OLED displays (like the one below) that Samsung has been showing off for years.






Looks like folding displays are finally ready for show time. However, coming up with unique hardware ideas isn’t enough these days. We are pretty sure that Samsung’s UX team is scratching their heads to figure out how they can make the best use of the folding display.