Samsung’s follow up to the Galaxy Tab S2 was thought to be receiving an announcement back in the beginning of September, but as the month has now come and gone there is no Galaxy Tab S3 that has been revealed. According to a new report, Samsung will be launching the Galaxy Tab S3 sometime early next year. There is no specific date mentioned, but the report does highlight the first quarter of 2017 which gives a time frame of three months from the start of January as each quarter of the year is a three-month period. Having said that, three months can feel like a long time and the launch could be towards the tail end of the that time frame, which would coincide with somewhere around Mobile World Congress next year as well which typically happens at the end of February. This is also when Samsung usually holds their Unpacked event.
The Galaxy Tab S3 will come in two different available models, one which connects to Wi-Fi only and one which has LTE connectivity support for connecting the device up to carrier networks for data. The model numbers for each device are listed as SM-T820 and SM-T825, with the former being the model number for the Wi-Fi only version of the tablet.
Although a general time for release of Samsung’s next big tablet device seems to be out in the open now, one thing that is important to remember is that this should still be treated like a rumor as there is no confirmation from Samsung on a launch. The release as well as an official announcement should be somewhere in the near future though as the Galaxy Tab S3 design has already passed through the FCC as of back in March of this year. While there are no official hardware specifications to speak of, the rumored specs point to a 9.7-inch display size with a Quad HD resolution as well as a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 chipset to power the tablet. It’s also rumored to come with 3GB of RAM and come running on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, along with an 8MP rear-facing camera and a 2MP front-facing camera for the pictures and video chat. There is no rumored price for the Galaxy Tab S3 yet, but it’s unlikely that Samsung would price it too far away from the cost of the previous Galaxy Tab S2.