In the past few hours, some rumors have emerged about the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, what should be the next-generation top-of-the-range tablet, heir to last year’s gigantic S8 Ultra (opening photo, here’s our review): according to the leaker Revegnus , the battery will be 10,880 mAh (therefore substantially unchanged from the previous year, nominally 11,200 mAh) while the chip will be one (and we report verbatim) “Snap Dragon 8 Gen2+“.
The problem is that this exact syntax, specifically the “+” at the bottom, is unclear. With the new name, Qualcomm has accustomed us that the “+” to indicate the mid-cycle refresh of the chips goes in the middle after the serial number, not at the bottom after the generation number, so if that were the case, the correct name would be Snapdragon 8+ Gen 2. However, this year there is another peculiarity to consider, and that is that there is a Samsung-exclusive variant of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which we have seen in the new generation flagship smartphones Galaxy S23; perhaps the source, with its “+” at the end of the name, meant that.
Which guess is correct will also depend a lot on time-to-market. Last year the Tab S8s arrived very early in February, so we can theorize that the launch of the S9 should be pretty close. The Qualcomm chip refresh, however, shouldn’t arrive until late this summer. It is also possible that Samsung is considering postponing the release of the tablet, perhaps in conjunction with the fifth generation of foldables; in fact an indiscretion in this sense had already emerged some time ago. Or who knows, maybe it was just a typo of the source and that blessed “+” simply shouldn’t have been there.
For the rest, the technical specifications of the device are still shrouded in mystery (and this is in fact in itself a hint that the launch may not be that close). So far, only a confirmation of the three-model strategy (Smooth, Plus and Ultra) and the possible arrival of IP67-certified water resistance have emerged. However, we expect a natural evolution of the previous model, a gigantic 14.6″ Super AMOLED with a resolution of 2,960 x 1,848 pixels and a 120Hz refresh rate.
