“Samsung,” “tablet” and “interesting” aren’t words that often find themselves next to each other in a sentence, but the Galaxy Tab S4 that we’ve seen so much of in recent weeks has the potential to change that. According to everything we’ve seen so far, Samsung is planning on doing what Apple did with the iPhone X and killing all of the hardware buttons, replacing the space with extra screen real estate.
The all-screen notch design has become ubiquitous for smartphones virtually overnight, with nearly every flagship embracing the trend in 2018. But when you think about it, tablets are even better suited to lose the home buttons than smartphones. When you’re using a phone, much of your time is spent navigating between apps and jumping around. Tablets, on the other hand, are content consumption devices best suited to watching hours of TV, and the bigger the screen can be, the better the user experience is.
In other words, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S4 looks exciting. This purported hands-on video, spotted by SlashLeaks, doesn’t give us any explicit details about specs, price, or release date, but the 10-second clip does seemingly confirm that Samsung is going to ditch the home button in favor of more screen. The bad news is that in person, those bezels still look surprisingly beefy for a top-end tablet launching in 2018. With the bezels already more minimalist on the current iPad Pro and an even sleeker iPad reportedly DOA, the Galaxy Tab S4 might face stiff competition.
The other thing that the video hints at is a relatively near release date. Multiple units of the tablet are clearly set up for a presentation, like they would be for an analyst or retail partner demo show. That would mean a launch in the near future, and with Samsung set to do a media event on August 9th, all the stars seem to be aligning.
