Samsung has confirmed final pricing and release details for the new Galaxy Tab S3 tablet.
The long-awaited tablet will be open for pre-orders starting at 8am tomorrow (Friday, March 17) in the UK. However, the tablet won’t become truly available until March 31.
The new Android tablet is a successor to 2015’s Galaxy Tab S2, and will set you back at least £599 for the base model. If you pre-order before March 31, you’ll also be eligible to receive an optimised keyboard book cover worth £119 – subject to stock availability. Still, the £599 charge seems a hefty sum, especially considering the fact that the Tab S3’s predecessor costed just north of £300.
You’ll be able to place pre-orders directly through Samsung.com, but the tablet will be on sale at “select retail partners” at the end of March.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 was announced on February 26, 2017 at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress tradeshow. It features Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 processor, along with 32GB of storage, 4GB of RAM, and a surprisingly small 6,000mAh battery. The display is a crisp 9.7-inch Super AMOLED panel with a 2,048 x 1,536 pixel resolution.
The tablet runs on Google’s latest Android 7.0 Nougat software, and comes with a “new and improved” S-Pen too.
We haven’t fully reviewed the tablet yet, but here are Reviews Editor Alastair Stevenson’s first impressions:
“The Galaxy Tab S3 is one of the first exciting Android tablets I’ve seen in a long time. The device plays to Samsung’s strengths and has a great-looking display, alluring design and solid set of extra features – the best of which is the S-Pen stylus.”
He continued: “My only concern is that it may also be repeating a couple of Samsung’s past mistakes. The biggest of which are its slightly undersized battery and use of Samsung’s TouchWiz skin.”
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What do you think of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S3? Let us know in the comments.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
