Unlike Android phones, tablets running Android never get the same level of attraction from the consumers. Lack of first party options (Google ditched the Android tablet lineup after 2015’s Pixel C), very few tablet optimized apps and obviously the sheer dominance of iPad are enough to choke the lifeline of this genre.
OEMs like Amazon or Xiaomi do release regular revisions of their existing tablet lineup, but the segment of premium, enterprise class Android tablets is practically vacant. Samsung is the only company there trying to generate some profit out of it, but the future is rather scary.
In 2018, the South Korean OEM released Galaxy Tab S4 – both Wi-Fi only and LTE variants. The tablet was inline with the Galaxy S9/Note 9 family, but Samsung decided to use (then) an year old Snapdragon 835 SoC inside the gadget.
Although launched with Android 8.1 Oreo, Samsung rolled out One UI update based on Android 9.0 Pie for the Tab S4 in April of this year. The US variant of the tablet recently got June security patches, while the Europea unlocked models are now getting May security patches.
The screenshot is taken from a UK Galaxy Tab S4 LTE (SM-T835) unit, although the same update is also available on the Wi-Fi only (SM-T830) model. We are not sure why they chose to deploy one month older security patches, but hey! It’s Samsung!
The size of the incremental OTA is close to 450 MB, and it’s obvious that the update contains something extra apart from the new security patches. As a matter of fact, Samsung updated the bootloader from v2 to v3 (like they did with Galaxy S10), so there is no way to flash back to older build after update.
The update is currently rolled out in waves, but you can use apps like Frija to manually download the firmware package and flash using ODIN.
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Kingshuk De
896 Posts
I came from a mixed background of Statistics and Computer Science. My research domains included embedded computer systems, mobile computing and delay tolerant networks in post-disaster scenarios. Apart from tinkering with gadgets or building hackintosh, I like to hop on various subreddits and forums like MyDigitalLife and XDA.
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