Even after several leaks, Samsung had plenty to share at its Unpacked 2020 event. The company officially unveiled its Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra, as well as the Galaxy Tab S7 and S7 Plus, Galaxy Watch 3 and Galaxy Buds Live. It continued to tease the Galaxy Z Fold 2 and let us in on new Notes and ultra-wide band features. We’ve rounded up the highlights below.
Designed to “combine the power of a PC, the flexibility of a tablet and the connectivity of a smartphone,” Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S7 and S7 Plus will be the first tablets to support 5G in the UK.
They’ll come with 11-inch (LCD) and 12.4-inch (AMOLED) displays and a high 120Hz refresh rate. The keyboard cover, which has an improved trackpad, and useful software make the Tab S7 and S7 Plus strong 2-in-1 devices meant to compete with your PC. Both have the Snapdragon 865+ processor that’s in the Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra and will run Android 10.
Like Samsung’s recent tablets, the Tab S7 and S7 Plus both come with the S Pen. This iteration reduces latency to just 9ms, making it a stronger Apple Pencil competitor. The S Pen now supports Air Actions, so you can use the pen as a remote control and do things like draw circles in the air, and updates to the Notes app allow you to mark up PDFs you import, tidy up your scribbles and more.
GALAXY WATCH 3
The Galaxy Watch 3 is the first new Samsung Galaxy Watch in years. The biggest changes are that the rotating bezel is back, the fitness companion is improved and there are new health features, like updated sleep tracking, an ECG, trip detection and blood oxygen monitor. ECG will only be available in South Korea to start, but Samsungs says the feature just earned FDA authorization, so it may arrive in the US and UK before too long.
Beginning August 6th, the Galaxy Watch 3 will be available in 41mm and 45mm options, $400 and $430 respectively.
GALAXY BUDS LIVE
The Galaxy Buds Live were no surprise at the event, as they’ve leaked several times. Now, the earbuds are official. The standout features are an “open type” design and active noise cancelation (ANC), which is designed to allow important background noise. The noise-canceling feature focuses on low-frequency noises, like cars, transit and voices, while cutting out the background noise you don’t need. How well that works is debatable due to the lack of a seal in your ears.
Like the Buds Live, the Galaxy Z Fold 2 was widely leaked before today’s event. Still, the changes compared to its predecessor are notable. For starters, it’s bigger. The cover display measures 6.2-inches and the primary screen is 7.6-inches.
Samsung is saving most of the device’s specs for its Fold 2 event on September 1st. But it did share that the Fold 2 has a 4,500 mAh battery and it’s thinner than the original thanks to improved miniaturization. New caps on the ends should prevent some of the trouble that the original Fold ran into, and Samsung has had plenty of time to work out some of the other kinks.
