Have to say I’ve really enjoyed using the S8 but I’ve really only used it for drawing / digital painting and Nomad Sculpt. I take on board there may be issues with Dex / keyboards etc etc having read the other S8 topics but as a portable creative tool - it’s been great.
It goes with me where I can’t take the zBook (due to weight) and paired with a zbook stylus (with felt tip) - I’m in love. I honestly can’t say I ever had the same experience trying an iPad or iPad Pro with Pencil (1-2)
Just a shame I previously paid for the Nomad Sculpt App on the iPad but you live and learn. (and it was only £13)
Why not the Ultra? For creative purposes I’d imagine a bigger canvas would enhance the experience. Granted my creative work is in writing, so what do I know.
Samsung were offering the most ridiculously cheap deal to get hold of an S8 and I couldn’t resist. My old £30 Amazon Fire tablet got me £150 off and then a £100 voucher just made the S8 the hardest impulse buy to resist.
A month ago, Samsung were offering a very cheap upgrade from the S7 tablet to the S8 ultra and if they do the same thing next year, there’s no way I can resist that either.
It’s giving me a chance to try the smaller tablet before I go all in on the full size if Samsung ever do an S9 ultra.
Mind you, I do have another Amazon Fire tablet lying around unused….
How is Nomad Sculpt running these days? I heard it’s such a CPU-intensive monster that it was draining the battery on 2018 and 2020 iPad Pros faster than they could charge. Maybe it was raw hyperbole. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t picked it up yet — I was going to either after hearing it was patched to be more efficient, or seeing how it fares on an M2 iPad.
Part of it is the acrimony between Japan and Korea, but also I don’t think I’ve ever seen sales/trade-ins anywhere near that in Japan for anything. Rhe acrimony seems to only be pressuring Samsung into only branding stuff ‘Galaxy’.
I love it, it’s surprisingly powerful and I’ve also done more and made bigger progress with it in 3-4 weeks than all the years I tried Blender sculpting on a Mac M1 Mini or on a PC. I even tried 3.18 on my zBook a few weeks ago and the completely disappointing performance forced me into looking at the S8 tablet.
I’ve not noticed any significant power drain on the S8 but I’ll also be honest and say that the feel of the Apple Pencil stopped me from playing with Nomad much on the iPad so I don’t know whether it drains battery on the iPad platform.
One thing I noticed though is the S8 comes with 8GB as standard and the older iPads before M1 came with only 4 - whereas the new M1 iPads (I think) are finally allowed to access more than 4GB memory. Could be the power drain was because of swapping memory while running.
Whatever it is - it’s incredibly responsive and there is a web demo version that I believe only runs on a desktop that I played with before plumping for a tablet and the tablet version of Nomad.
Oh yes. The Fold ended up getting dropped pretty quickly. But they then went and offered the 2 and 3.
Unsurprisingly, Sony and Sharp get the homegrown evergreen treatment. And I can’t blame them. In fact, I’m envious as my country has just sold off almost everything and consumer techwise has pretty much nothing to even be homegrown anymore.
I went to a local Au yesterday wanting to check out the Flip and the Fold, they had a cardboard Flip and the staff didn’t even know that Samsung made a Fold.
In our country, Samsung is the only company with a solid Android presence here ( That’s side by side with Apple on the upper market). Probably because they have factories here, most Samsung devices from Flagship to budget are available in our local stores ( Android only, no Windows unfortunately).
Mid-low range is also Samsung dominated, Xiaomi is popular with the budget conscious, Oppo, Realme taking up a small segment. No Sony here, Nokia and Asus handset is also disappearing.
As for tablet, other than Samsung’s offering, there’s a good number of Xiaomi Pad and Lenovo tablets, many of them support stylus for sub 300$.
Still loving my tab S7 FE, but the fact it’s too thin and big means it will never leave the house. I wouldn’t want to bend it in my bag or bike storage compartment ( we mostly travel by motorbike). If some day I can score an used S8 Ultra for a good price, it’s mostly going to be desk-bound too.
That is something that would worry me. I’m going to design and make a lightweight carry case though (been learning to use a sewing machine) with an inbuilt stiffener to prevent bending for any larger thin tablets.
So android 12l is finally rolling out broadly for the Tab S8. Our two lab units showed the update yesterday.
I do think it was worth the wait as it combined with the latest verion of one UI really does improve multitasking and brings more laptop like features if you want to try using the Tabs as your primary portable device.
So, this just in from Japanese web sites. Samsung is raising prices on the Tab S8+ and Ultra with up to 33%. That number is probably for a fully equipped Ultra. Still a steep price hike caused by the weakening yen.
@Desertlap I’m sorry, I had to ping you and ask if you’d heard anything about the Tab S9 series in your field. I just didn’t feel like I had enough thoughts/information to warrant making a new thread, other than “Well every time I check the news it’s still just the crummy rumors from around last October, saying they think it’s severely delayed over market conditions and not to expect it until August at the earliest.”
I ended up getting the S23 Ultra a few days ago, it’s working out extremely well for me thankfully, and just want to give it the ideal companion tablet (Snapdragon Gen 2 Tab S9 Ultra lol). I guess I’ll be in that slightly awkward spot for a while where I’ll have an iPad Pro and an Android phone, just hoping maybe it could be a few months and not 4-6.
I haven’t heard much if anything more than what you’ve likely heard except for two things. One is that they are not due until later this year, around the time of the updates to the Fold and Flip phones and that at least one model will incorporate the new more power efficient AMOLED display tech used in the S23 series.
Even more nebulous, but I’ve also heard that they may offer only two devices this time, dropping the 11 inch variant. That makes some sense in the context that the S8 + was hands down the best seller in this gen; though with the caveat that the S8 line allegedly underperformed expectations across the board sales wise.
That’s likely due to the fact that for all intents and purposes, the S8 was essentially a minor spec bump over the S7 and in fact we recommended to customers they seek out deals on the S7 unless they specifically could benefit from the 5G option in the S8 +
