Samsung

Samsung

Samsung

Samsung

Samsung today announced the Galaxy Book2 (sic; the company has not put a space between the word and the number), a 2-in-1 tablet running Windows 10, powered by a Snapdragon 850 processor.

The first generation of Windows 10-on-ARM machines were roundly criticized for the performance of their Snapdragon 835 processors. The second generation of machines, however, uses the Snapdragon 850, a variant of the Snapdragon 845 that's designed for the bigger batteries and higher power dissipation of laptops and tablets. This is widely hoped and expected to bring performance up to respectable levels.

This new tablet follows Microsoft's Surface Pro design: a tablet with a kickstand, a detachable keyboard, and a pen. Similarity extends to the screen, too: the 12-inch AMOLED display uses the same 3:2 aspect ratio as Microsoft does, with a resolution of 2160×1440. The internals are the real point of this machine, though. There's a Snapdragon 850 (quad 2.96GHz cores plus quad 1.7GHz cores) with 4GB RAM, a Snapdragon X20 LTE modem supporting up to 1.2 Gbit/s download and 150 Mbit/s upload, 802.11ac, and 128GB storage. There's an 8MP rear camera, a 5MP front-facing camera, a microSD slot, and two USB Type-C slots. Biometric authentication is supported with a fingerprint reader.

The big point of interest for these ARM machines is that they're intended to offer smartphone-like battery life and connectivity. Even when idle or in standby, they can be online enough to retrieve emails, instant messages, and similar materials, they have long battery life (20 hours according to Samsung), and they transparently switch between Wi-Fi when available and LTE when necessary to ensure that they're always online.

The new Galaxy Book2 system ships with the pen and keyboard as standard and will cost $1000 from AT&T, Microsoft, and Samsung on November 2. Later in November, it will also ship from Verizon and Sprint.

Listing image by Samsung