A new render from noted leaker Evan Blass has given us our best look yet at the rumoured Samsung Galaxy Tab S4, its (optional) keyboard cover and its S Pen.
There’s nothing too surprising about the three images ( via Engadget), but they add yet more weight to the rumours that we’ll see a tablet announcement alongside the Galaxy Note 9 when it’s expected to be revealed at the beginning of August.
Sure, the bezels look slightly smaller, but we’re still looking at a very similar tablet design to what Samsung and Apple have been doing for years, including a single lens design on the rear.
Meanwhile the S Pen has moved a little closer to the Apple Pencil in design. It’s shed the pen clip and adopted a more glossy finish like Apple’s premier stylus.
That said, it still maintains the same nib design as the S3’s stylus, rather than the Apple Pencil’s crayon-style design.
Android has never really done that well as a tablet operating system, while on the iOS side Apple’s iPads have gone from strength to strength, and have more or less become the de facto standard tablets for most people.
It’s difficult to know what an Android tablet, even one produced by Samsung, could do to close the gap. There are so many iPads out there that there’s plenty of incentive for developers to make their iOS apps tablet-compatible, even if the hardware itself is rarely exciting.
Building a half-decent stylus would be one step forward, since the Apple Pencil is a little divisive as a drawing tool within the digital art community, but beyond that Android is an OS that’s been so well-optimised for phones that it’s difficult to know how much power Samsung has to change things.
