Samsung Galaxy Tab S3: First Impressions

Design

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 is built of metal and glass, giving it a premium finish. It sports a 9.7-inch AMOLED display, but despite the large display, it maintains a compact form factor. It’s a sleek device at mere 6mm thickness and is extremely light. You will find a home button that also doubles as a fingerprint scanner, and two capacitive buttons. 

The right edge has volume and power keys, while the lower edge comes fitted with the magnetic connector for accessories, specifically the keypad. It gets a headphone jack and quad speakers. The quad speakers ensure efficient output, irrespective of whether you place the device vertically or horizontally. The Audio is tuned by AKG and you will see the branding right at the back of the device. All in all, it’s a light, extremely beautiful device with a mirror-like finish. 

SPen

The device comes bundled with SPen. The SPen comes in the box and isn't inserted in the device. This has ensured that the SPen is more comfortable to use, and the company also claims it to come with improvements. The Air Command gives you access to all SPen-specific apps. We used the SPen to create notes and with Smart Select, and it worked just fine. 

Display

It gets a 9.7-inch sAMOLED display with 1536 x 2048 pixels of resolution, amounting to 264 ppi pixel density. The display promises a wider colour gamut. For the limited time we used it, the colours looked stunning. 

Other hardware and features

Samsung has bumped the rest of the hardware, compared to its predecessor the Tab S2. It is now powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 and gets 4GB of RAM. The 32GB onboard storage is expandable up to 256GB and the battery has also been bumped to 6000mAh. The device also connects to a keyboard, which you need to purchase separately at Rs 8499. On using the keyboard, it had nice tactile feel to the clickable keys. On the camera front, it comes with a 13MP rear snapper and a 5MP front camera. the device supports Wi-Fi as well as LTE. 

OS

The device runs Android Nougat, and so you can expect all the goodies that come with it. The device gets a layer of TouchWiz. If you swipe downwards from the upper side, you will find easy shortcuts. This toggle section can be edited too. You will find the search option here and also the ability to control the display brightness. The company has also included blue light filter to ensure less strain on eyes. Besides, the Air Command gives quick access to the SPen-specific apps. You will notice that the display will detect the SPen if you simply hover over it, without the need to touch the device. We tried Smart Select and the Notes app, and it worked just fine. 

Battery

The device comes with a 6000mAh battery that promises 12 hours of video playback. However, we will be able to confirm this only once we've conducted the battery test.