Samsung’s existing slate of Android tablets is one of the finest hardware of its kind, and it appears that the company doesn’t want to stray from the winning formula any time soon. Leaker @OnLeaks has shared renders of the Galaxy S9 Plus, and they bear a striking similarity to its Galaxy Tab S8 series predecessor.
The sleek metallic build with sharp edges is here to stay, and so is the contrasting magnetic strip at the back. The bezel size also remains familiar, while the horizontally positioned selfie camera is once again positioned at the same spot.
The only notable change is the camera lens aesthetics. Samsung is abandoning the pill-shaped camera island design in favor of the floating lens look that can be seen on Samsung’s current crop of Galaxy S23 series flagship phones.
The screen size is said to be 12.4 inches with a resolution of 1752 x 2800 pixels. Assuming Samsung doesn’t make a regressive move, this is most likely an OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate.
The tablet is just 5.64mm thick, which is quite a notable difference compared to the 10th Gen iPad, which commands a thickness of 7mm. The Galaxy Tab S9+ is also said to feature a quad-speaker array, and it is most likely the stereo output type.
Once again, there’s no 3.5mm headphone jack to be seen here, and neither is there support for storage expansion via a dedicated microSD card slot. Overall, the Galaxy Tab S9 Plus looks cleaner than its predecessor, without making any alarming changes to the overall design language.
We don’t know much about the innards yet, but if one were to take an educated guess, Samsung will equip it with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip that also powers its existing flagship phones — like the Galaxy S23 Ultra. It would be interesting to see if Samsung can bump up the battery capacity and also raises the fast charging output.
As for a tentative launch date, the best bet would be the upcoming Unpacked event in 2023’s second half, which could also witness the launch of Samsung’s next-gen foldable phones. Unfortunately, we haven’t come across any credible leaks so far regarding an expected asking price for the Galaxy Tab S9 Plus.
But it’s not just the hardware that is worth waiting for. By the time the Galaxy Tab S9 trio hits the shelves, Android 14 would hit the public beta release phase. It would be interesting to see what changes Samsung makes on top of Android 14’s foundations to design its next major One UI update.
One UI 5.1 is already quite a rewarding experience on the Galaxy Tab S8, which beats the iPad and iPadOS in a lot of ways. I can’t wait to see Samsung delving deeper into tablet-centric customizations for One UI, especially after the promising changes that we’ve seen so far with Android 14’s planned changes for foldable and large-screen devices.
