Samsung silently releases an updated Galaxy Tab S2

Without so much as a whisper, Samsung has begun selling an updated version of its Galaxy Tab S2 tablet in Europe this week. The company’s usual tablet refresh cycle would have suggested that we were due for an announcement in July or so, but German retailer Cyberport.de appears to already be selling a refreshed model.

Diving into the specifications section posted on the website reveals that the new Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 and S2 9.7 variants come with a new octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor, which is an upgrade over the octa-core Exynos 5433 though not considerably so. The Snapdragon 652 features four newer and more efficient Cortex-A72 CPU cores than the Exynos model,  but it is built on a larger 28nm manufacturing process. The reason for this type of hardware change isn’t quite clear. Perhaps it has something to do with the price of the processors, multi-core performance improvements, or maybe Samsung’s is looking to make use of the chip’s faster modem capabilities.

Other hardware specifications remain unchanged from last year. There’s still a Super AMOLED display with a 2048 x 1536 pixel resolution, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage with a microSD card slot, an 8 megapixel rear camera, and a fingerprint scanner on board. However, the new Galaxy Tab S2 comes with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow out of the box, offering up the latest Android and Samsung software features too.

The website is currently selling the LTE Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 for €479, while the Tab S2 9.7 is available in WiFi and LTE variants with price tags set at €449 and €549 respectively. We will likely see the tablet refresh pop up in other European countries soon as well.