back to article Samsung 11.6in 'retina display' tablet spied

Are ten-inch tablets too small for you? Rumour has it Samsung will introduce an 11.6in Galaxy Tab during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) show next month. Details are inevitably vague. German-language site TabTech gives the screen size but doesn't provide a resolution. The Samsung tablet will run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich …

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  1. Tom 7

    How much?

    So thats what, 6 RaspberryPI's and a screen +battery +disk

    £300 ish + MS tax and legal costs fighting apple over who owns the 3 dimensions and a bit of profi

    £750?

  2. hitmouse

    It's getting closer to a useful device for sheet music display. One generally wants something about A4 for practical purposes, so still a way to go.

    1. Blank Reg

      Yup, for many documents, magazines etc. you'd want something around 13-14 inches to replicate the size we're used to. I'd buy one at that size, I've already got smaller tablets for use when the big one is too much.

  3. Ian Ferguson

    10.1" or 11.6"? Meh. I'll wait for a 11.2" form factor.

  4. Shagbag

    Go Samsung! Stick it up those Apple fanbois.

  5. Mondo the Magnificent
    Thumb Up

    Bigger and better

    So Samsung have stretched it to 11.6", does this hail the beginning bigger tablets? I have to ask at what screen size do tablet systems cease being classified as tablets? 13" perhaps? Or is this indefinite?

    Good to see the CPU's been ramped up too, right now it's a buyers market if they keep the prices realistic.

  6. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Size doesn't matter

    > an 11.6in screen is pushing it a bit for a handheld display

    Once a device gets bigger than a convenient size to stuff in your pocket, then whether it's 10 inches, 12 or more becomes less important that how much it weighs. At those sizes (i.e. laptop-sized) it needs a bag to carry it around in, so it's lost the convenience factor. All that is up for discussion is how big the bag needs to be - and if you've got to carry a bag, why not have a proper laptop in it, instead?

  7. NoneSuch Silver badge
    Meh

    Tabs are limited by their processing power and battery so larger form factor usually means a larger battery. You won't see any additional runtime, but that extra power will be appreciated to run the additional cores for long docs and spreadsheets.

  8. Fuzz

    resolution madness

    So Samsung are quite happy to produce a tablet with an 11.6" screen and a crazy high resolution but their "ultra"book is limited to a paltry 1366x768 on a larger 13.3" screen.

    They obviously see the need for larger resolution screens and they are producing them, how about a bit of joined up thinking to put the two together. This screen in an ultrabook would be worthy of name.

  9. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    re: Fuzz

    You are totally right. Why haven't the resolutions of laptop displays improved in recent years?

    I have a Dell Inspiron 8600 that dates from around 2003 with a 1600x1200 screen. At the time, it was the top of the range display.

    These days, pretty well only Apple make anything with a vertical size greater then 1080.

    The majority of laptops on sale today seem to be 1366x768.

    Perhaps this and the iPad 3's rumoured similar sized screen is a taste of things to come?

    Paris because size is everything

    1. Chris Miller

      I'm sure it's been possible to put (say) a 2560x1600 screen on a laptop for a few years now, but what would be the point, apart from bragging rights? HD movies won't look any better and native resolution icons on a x1200 laptop screen are already somewhat smaller than optimal.

      1. Fuzz

        your are the problem

        You are exactly the problem, the manufacturers are listening to you because your opinion is cheaper. I don't think I need a 2560x1600 screen in my laptop but I do need more than 768 vertical pixels.

        If the icons are too small for you you just need to set the OS dpi to match the screen dpi and the icons will be the correct size but there will be more detail available where you need it. I couldn't care less about watching HD movies on my laptop. I want resolution for editing photographs, I want it for writing code, I want it for viewing spreadsheets.

        It's your lack of understanding and that of people like you that has caused this situation. Up to around 200dpi more resolution is better, beyond that it gets debatable.

        1. Chris Miller

          @Fuzz

          What an accurate handle. Yes, I actually know how to adjust the icon size, but (to put it in terms you might be able to grasp) WHAT WOULD BE THE FUCKING POINT? If you want to edit photos, buy a great big screen with the resolution you need (you did know you can adjust the size of photos as well, I assume). Just because one person thinks they have a need for something (but probably wouldn't buy it) doesn't mean the industry has to build it. And how does higher resolution assist you to code?

          If there were a huge, pent up demand for higher resolution laptop screens, I assume they would exist by now (at a price, anyway). The fact that they don't proves my point.

      2. Dan 55 Silver badge

        @Chris Miller

        I can't think of anything worse than a 16:9 display to use if you actually want to get some work done instead of stare at films. There's not enough vertical room, you're continually scrolling windows.

        1. Peter 48

          depends

          I actually prefer widescreen over 4:3 when it comes to the work I do, such as photoshop or sketchup, where you have loads of large tool boxes and info panels that sit perfectly to the left or right of your work area.

      3. Dazed and Confused

        @serval people

        I had a Dell 8500 (precursor to the 8600) and that had a 1920x1200 screen, which was one of the proposed screen resolutions for HD, I think it was Sony's proposal. I first used Sony Unix workstation with this screen res back in about 1991. There were a whole host of different proposal for HDTV, I think we end up with one of the middle ones with a paltry 1080 lines.

        ( I could be wrong here, but I think it meant they could transmit 1 HD channel or 4 standard US channels in the same space at this res, do think that any other market matter back then, it didn't)

        Now if your laptop life revolves about watching HD movies then there is probably no need to have a higher resolution. Then we have the fact that most people run MSWindows, and by default it assumes a fairly low res and so makes small icons and lots of apps' dialog boxes don't like you telling it to use non default font sizes. So it isn't always easy to use higher resolutions on smaller screens.

        Personally I use my laptop frequently as a glorified terminal. I need to be able to display remote sessions which then contain further remote session (don't ask) and so anything less than 1200 lines is of no use to me. A higher resolution would be useful for this, I could more easily display more session at once.

        I also find higher resolution useful when working on photos.

        The one the Dell had a 15.4" screen, so 1920x1200 worked out at about 150DPI, I personally found that fine and quiet comfortable to work on. Running PuTTY, say, with 10point fonts used to be fine, but then as your forties creep past you these things become more difficult and I need my bins to work on that size now.

        But doubling the screen res would allow the use of larger and therefore smoother fonts.

        Old fashioned dot matrix printers were used to used to print 66 lines on a 11" fanfold paper. You could read it OK, but you'd still choose to use a 1200dpi printer if it was on the network. The results are just more pleasing on the eye. Your eyes might not be able to resolve 300DPI, but you can tell the difference between something printed at 300DPI and something printed at 600DPI.

        So personally I'd choose a higher res screen.

        And as soon as 2K line screens reach a more reasonable price point I'll buy them. Hopefully it won't be long now.

        I'm a sad git so I'm not interested in "HD movies" and I don't use the laptop to play games, so I'm not worried at the frame rate dropping as the graphics engine runs out of power to render all those beautiful little pixels. But I am a pixel junky, and I'm yet to see an example of where I can have too many of them.

  10. Weeble

    Compromises

    If it's a phone, it has to be small enough go in your pocket (and be tough enough to be sat on).

    If not, it might as well be big enough to show a sheet of A4 at life-size.

    Anything in-between is just a trade-off between the two useful sizes.

    1. Blank Reg

      I agree except that I find 7" is also a useful size, it's the right size for reading novels as it pretty much matches the paperback form factor. It's stlll small enough to stick in a coat pocket or purse yet big enough to be useful for light web browsing, email etc. The typical 10 inch size is a poor compromise, go smaller and bigger, I'm willing to buy one of each.

  11. Simon Brown
    FAIL

    @Chris Miller - I have a great big screen for "editing photos"... and code... and proofing documents... and working generally. Unfortunately most of the time I am on the road and my great big screen doesn't fit in my hand baggage. Fail. Still it's not like I need to earn money from working or anything...

    Low vertical pitch screens exist because they are cheap. Cheap to produce, cheap to buy, cheap to fit. And if people want something bigger then can buy a premium product with a 1200 pixel pitch - a spec which hasn't changed appreciably in over a decade - in a drive for profit and cheap product.

    If the consideration was customer experience or technology, 1200 pitch would be the minimum. But as ever we live in a world where people are willing to put up with crap products because they know no better.

    1. Chris Miller

      You may be right

      Perhaps it's 'the man' sticking it to the little people again. But, given that the technology exists and that there is a market for very expensive laptops (Apple being the prime example, though many manufacturers offer a 'de luxe' range), you have to explain why no-one has thought to offer one. Is it because:

      (a) too few people would be prepared to pay the extra price for what they perceive as a very limited benefit; or

      (b) all manufacturers are clueless about the market requirements, despite spending millions on market research, and so risk averse that they decline the obviously profitable market that so many commentards seem to think exists?

      As lots of people have pointed out, x1200 screens have been around for many years, but there aren't that many sold. So instead of all the teenaged whining of "it's so unfair", perhaps a little thought about why that might be the case is needed.

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