Samsung appears well-primed for its upcoming Unpacked event – scheduled for August 23 – as yet another device from the company has hit the FCC, this one bearing the model number SM-T3785M. If previous rumors and leaks are to be believed, the FCC listing, which was filed on August 10 under FCC ID A3LSMT385M, appears to be linked directly to a brand new member of the company’s Galaxy Tab A 8.0 series of devices. More specifically, the filing seems to confirm earlier reports that the model number points to the LTE variant of the device. The assumption can be made because the testing documentation filed with the FCC identifies the device as being capable of supporting “850/1900 GPRS/EDGE, 850/1700/1900 WCDMA/HSPA,” and “Multi-band LTE” networks.
Samsung hasn’t revealed a new member of the device family since 2015 and this tablet should be a respectable update from that last on several fronts if previous reports bear out. The 2015 variant of the Galaxy Tab A 8.0 came with only 1.5 GB of RAM and a quad-core 1.2 GHz processor. Although there isn’t a whole lot of information to be had from the new FCC filing itself, previous leaks have suggested that the 2017 version of the 8-inch class Android 7.0 (Nougat) tablet could arrive with a quad-core SoC clocked at 1.4 Hz. That would be backed by 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. It would also come packed with a 5-megapixel selfie camera and an 8-megapixel shooter on the back. The use of newer, more efficient components should also mean that the improvements would be more impactful than the numbers might seem to imply.
Unfortunately, as of this writing, there is still no word on the Wi-Fi variant of the Galaxy Tab A 8.0. That device is expected to bear the model number SM-T380 if the company follows its previously used model designation standards for the new versions. With that said, Samsung’s big event is just short of a couple of weeks away and any devices the company plans to unveil at that time will probably be hitting the FCC before then if they haven’t already. So fans of the series or of Samsung’s products, in general, shouldn’t have to wait too long to see what this device is.