What They Say
Samsung held its Unpacked event and announced new smartphones and a tablet. Full infographics are here and here. The key points from a display perspective were:
- S22 has a 6.1″ 1080 x 2340/1,300 cd/m² peak display, 3,700 mAh battery and costs $800 in the US. Cameras are 50MP, 10MP telephoto and 12mp Ultrawide.
- S22+ has a 6.6″ display with 1080 x 2340/1,750 cd/m², 4,500 mAh battery and costs $1,000 in the US. Cameras as S22.
- S22+ has a 6.6″ display with 1440 x 3080/1,750 cd/m² 5,000 mAh battery and costs $1,200 in the US. It includes a stylus (with low latency) and has 108mp + 12mp ultrawide and dual 10mp telephoto cameras
All have Dynamic AMOLED 2X displays with 1-120Hz support and HDR10+and protected with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+ on the front and back of each model. The displays have small holes for the camera and the Ultra has curved edges to the display, whereas the others are square. (see image). There are under display ultrasonic fingerprint recognition. Video capture is up to 8K 24fps or 4K 60fps. Processors on all of them are Exynos 2200 (4 nm) – International/Qualcomm SM8450 Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (4 nm) – USA/China/India.
The new tablet is the Galaxy Tab 8 which comes, also, in three versions. Infographic of all specs is here.
- S8 11″ 2560 x 1600 LTPS LCD 13mp + 6mp ultrawide main camera and 12mp ultrawide front, 800mAh – from $700
- S8+ 12.4″ 2800 x 1752 Super Amoled – same cameras as S8, 10,090mAh – from $900
- S8 Ultra 14.6″ 2960 x 1848 Super Amoled with 13mp + 6mp main camera and dual 12mp wide/ultrawide front cameras using a notch,11,200mAh – from $1,100.
All the displays support 120Hz operation and the S8+ and Ultra come with a new S Pen that has lower latency. The 8+ and Ultra have fingerprint on display support, while the S8 has fingerprint on side key.
What We Think
So the Note series is, as expected, now the S series. The S22Ultra does look like a longer term replacement for my venerable Note 9, but not quite yet!
Pushing the Tab 8 out to 14.6″ is bold as it is firmly in the middle of the notebook size range. I’m impressed with the size (if not the weight) and great video performance of my 12.9″ iPad. I’d have to use it a lot for productivity to want a bigger display. However, whereas the iPad has good support for graphics (Affinity etc), video (Adobe Premiere Rush) and music (Garage Band et al). (BR)
