The Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.1 will finally hit the U.S. market on Oct. 28, bringing along an embedded S Pen with it, alongside a stronger processor and increased RAM.
Samsung first announced the Galaxy Tab A 10.1 in May, with the company boasting it as a budget-friendly tablet that can be shared across the family because of its multi-user capabilities.
Galaxy Tab A 10.1 Specs
The U.S. version of the tablet is similar in all aspects with the international versions, save for an upped 3 GB of RAM instead of the previous 2 GB configuration and 16 GB of international storage that's expandable up to 256 GB.
Also, a major difference with the U.S. version is that it comes with Samsung's S Pen, which Samsung claims to revolutionize the way users interact with the touchscreen. It lets users have a ballpoint pen-like experience for improved precision in sketching or simple note-taking. The S Pen can also translate and pronounce a certain word when hovered over.
For this tablet, Samsung has gravitated away from its high-end models and made an affordable mid-range offering that performs the basic functions one could squeeze out of a tablet.
The device is powered by an Exynos 7870 octa-core processor with a 1.6 GHz octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU. It rocks a 10.1-inch 1,920 x 1,200 touchscreen display. An 8-megapixel camera sits in the back of the device, and in the front is a 2-megapixel camera. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and an SD card slot are are also present.
There's a sizable 7,300 mAh battery for extended usage. Since the device isn't that power-hungry, expect a little more juice from this compared with other high-end, battery-intensive offerings in the market. Samsung claims that this model can offer up to 14 hours of internet time.
The tablet runs on android 6.0 Marshmallow, but hopefully Samsung can bring over Nougat in the future, though that seems unlikely, given the fact that Samsung's flagship phones' have yet to receive the software update.
Galaxy Tab A 10.1 Price
The Galaxy Tab A 10.1 will retail for $349.99 on Samsung's own website and select retailers on Oct. 28. For now, only a Wi-Fi variant of the tablet is available, with no official word yet from Samsung regarding an LTE version. Customers can either choose a black or a white model.
Despite Samsung's unfortunate plight with the Note 7 debacle, the company is intent on moving forward. Just last week, it announced the production of new 8 GB memory chips, keen on making it an industry standard in the future. Come mid-November Gear S3 will hit shelves, seemingly a way for the company to recoup losses. Hopefully, Samsung is able to regain itself and make a comeback once it continues treading forward.
