The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 Review
by Brandon Chester on October 15, 2015 8:00 AM ESTCamera: Photos and Videos
The number of users that use their tablet as their primary camera is far larger than anyone ever could have predicted when the tablet market was emerging. However, there are some obvious reasons why someone would opt for their tablet. It may actually be the best camera they own, and older users with aging eyes can definitely appreciate the fact that their tablet display turns into a giant high resolution viewfinder. The cameras themselves have also improved significantly from the dark days of the 1.2MP rear camera on the iPad 2.
Since the Tab S2 is extremely thin, Samsung has needed to allow for a camera hump in order to fit their 8MP sensor. The hump isn't very large, and although it's larger than that of the iPhone 6, it's not near as large as the camera hump on the Galaxy S6. It's honestly not really an issue, but some customers who are very serious about the design of their devices may take issue with it.
Below you can view the known specifications of the Tab S2's rear and front-facing cameras. Unfortunately I don't have data on the specific model of the rear-facing sensors used in the original Tab S series, so that info is omitted on the chart.
| Camera Specifications | ||||
| Galaxy Tab S1 Series | Galaxy Tab S2 Series | |||
| Front Camera | 2.1MP (1920x1080) |
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| Front Camera - Sensor | S5K6B2 (1.34 µm, 1/6") |
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| Front Camera - Focal Length | N/A | 27mm eff | ||
| Front Camera - Max Aperture | F/2.4 | F/2.2 | ||
| Rear Camera | 8.0MP (3264x2448) |
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| Rear Camera - Sensor | N/A (1.12 µm, 1/4") |
S5K4H5 (1.12 µm, 1/4") |
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| Rear Camera - Focal Length | 32mm eff | 31mm eff | ||
| Rear Camera - Max Aperture | F/2.4 | F/1.9 | ||
While Samsung hasn't made any radical changes to the camera sensor specifications with the Tab S2, they have significantly widened the rear-facing camera's aperture. Changes to image processing and ISP improvements will also have an enormous impact on image quality.
As always, my photo testing begins with a scene during the day, followed by that same scene at night to test low light performance. While the low light test is still pretty brutal on current tablets, it's a very good indicator of the quality of an OEM's image processing.
During the day the Tab S2 performs very well. Detail is on par with the iPad Air 2, which isn't surprising given the similar sensors and Samsung's large improvements in image processing quality this year. My only complaint is that there is a bit too much sharpening going on which exacerbates the artifacting on the wall of the building caused by the limited effective resolution of the camera system. What's interesting is that the Galaxy S6 Edge processes the image with less sharpening, which is likely intentional on Samsung's part as the S6 has a much larger sensor with a higher resolution. Overall, I'm happy with the Tab S2's camera quality, and I'm glad Samsung decided to give the tablet a bit of a camera hump instead of crippling the camera quality to fit in the 5.6mm profile of the chassis.
Low light photography is where I started to have some issues taking photos with the Tab S2. For some reason it simply refused to run the autofocus, and I had to try and manually focus by tapping which is difficult on such a large device. Once I was able to focus and take the shot I took a few, and the best result is the one you see above. For a tablet it's actually a pretty good photo, although as you can see from the street lamps the photo is definitely overexposed to a degree. Compared with the iPad Air 2 there's actually not much more visible in the frame despite the overexposure, and the Air 2 has a better rendition of the grassy patch on the right side as well as the no parking sign. Both photos are still very good as far as tablets go, but I do think the iPad wins out by a little bit because of the exposure and slightly better detail preservation.
The Tab S2 can record video at 1080p30, and also at 1440p30 although the latter disables video stabilization and so I've opted to just use the 1080p recording mode. Looking back at all the tablets I've evaluated, it's clear that the Tab S2 has the best video recording quality by far. It's definitely not perfect, with some jiggle to the frames caused by the EIS and a bit too much saturation to the colors, but the overall quality, sharpness, and consistency of the frame rate is better than any other device I've tested.
WiFi Performance
Like the original Tab S, the Tab S2 ships with a 2x2 802.11ac WiFi implementation. I actually haven't been able to track down exactly which WiFi chipset they're using, which is unfortunate. The original Tab S actually had strangely slow WiFi performance given its peak theoretical bandwidth of 866Mbps, and I was hopeful that the Tab S2 would fare better.
As you can see, the WiFi performance on the Tab S2 is miles ahead of the previous models, and ends up having the highest peak bandwidth on record for a mobile device. Samsung did a great job improving on last year's WiFi implementation, and if there's going to be any bottleneck over WiFi it's not likely that t it will be the Tab S2.
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poopsmith - Wednesday, October 21, 2015 - link
I have, and regularly use, the previous Galaxy Tab S.There have been a lot of problems with it, I think fundamental design issues with either poor components or poor cooling. I basically only use it for Netflix and occasional browsing, so I am not pushing it heavily or anything.
But it crashes surprisingly often, and you have to get familiar with the methods to hard reset it (hold power and volume down button) which are obscure given how often they are necessary.
Lately I had an issue with the screen flickering and then it freezing after unlocking and I have had to factory reset it twice. (hold power, volume up, and home button on boot).
The initial user experience is 15 minutes of dodging email signups for creating accounts for the bloatware they install that I have gone through three times now. They also don't let you uininstall much of it. All this mandatory bloatware is probably why it crashes so often in the first place.
elindalyne - Thursday, October 22, 2015 - link
Grab a Surface 3... Not a Surface 3 Pro, not a Surface 4 Pro but a 3. Great battery life and you still get full blown Windows 10. You don't even need to get a cover or pen, but having the option is still fabulous. Not to mention the same price as the larger Tab.Also, once you use a device with a kickstand, you'll never want to go back.
UtilityMax - Sunday, October 25, 2015 - link
I have never seen my Tab S 10.5 crash. I use Netflix, Uverse, and Mx Player regularly. I am guessing you have some kind of hardware issues. I'd recommend to wire cache and return all to factory state, reinstall Netflix and see how it goes.R. Hunt - Thursday, November 26, 2015 - link
I've had my Tab S for about two months now, it's yet to crash on me. Battery life is not bad at all either. As for the bloatware, it can't be uninstalled but it can be disabled easily.UtilityMax - Sunday, October 25, 2015 - link
Once again Samsung and its mediocre tablets. Poor performance, poor battery life. Highly inconsistent benchmarks. The only positives are a good screen, an sd card slot, and a discounted price. However, don't fool yourself into thinking that you're getting some kind of a diamond in a rough type of tablet. With this one, you're getting what you're paying for.ayejay_nz - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
I bought a Tab S 8.4 about 6 months ago and have been really disappointed with the performance. Not as disappointed as I am with myself for not researching the purchase properly though. This new generation looks just as bad on the performance front : lolibill - Saturday, December 19, 2015 - link
I have a Galaxy S2 10 and every time I plug in the original charger I get a message saying "Device charging slowly. To charge faster, use original charger " !! Does anyone know why this is, or what I can do about it?Thanks a lot.
Nightsd01 - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
I've been an Apple guy for a long time. I have been using iOS since before it was even called iOS (first iPhone in 2007). I recently purchased the Galaxy Tab S2 8.0" and it is an amazing tablet. I absolutely love it. The display is stunning and the performance is snappy and fast.I purchased it so that I could have an Android device for writing Android apps, as up to this point I've been an iOS-only developer. But I'm ending up using it way more than my iPad, because it's simply more useful. There's just so much more I can do on it than on my ipad. The software isn't so strict and locked down. For example, let's say I want to scan my house WiFi to see what channels my neighbors are using (to avoid interference). On ios the WiFi hardware is very locked down and developers don't get access to it. But on android I can use WiFi scanner apps just fine. I can torrent, etc. And I am loving every minute of using this tablet. Subjectively, the display in my opinion just looks better.
Nightsd01 - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
But most important of all, the storage. I bought the 32GB version for $350. Applet is still selling 16GB tablets in the year 2016, which is a JOKE. If Apple had moved to 32GB I might be a little bit less angry. But as it stands, there is NO excuse for Apple to gimp their tablets with ano unbelievable 16GB storage. It's just inexcusable.Thinkubuntu - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
Bought this tablet to watch HVEC encoded movies, despite the CPU ostensibly being capable of doing so it isn't implemented. As a result it struggles to decode even 720p x265 encoding and forget 10 bit! All decoding had to be done in software which kills the battery really quickly.For such a otherwise decent tablet this makes it a waste if money and a huge missed opportunity.