In addition to the Galaxy Tab S9 flagship tablet series, Samsung appears to be working on a new Fan Edition tablet for 2023. Scratch that. Samsung is seemingly developing two Fan Edition tablets this year! And they were both spotted in an online benchmark rocking the same Exynos chip.
First, an unannounced Samsung tablet carrying model number SM-X516B was found in the online benchmark Geekbench. It is believed to be the Galaxy Tab S9 FE. But then, our colleagues at GalaxyClub discovered another tablet, SM-X616B, which strongly suggests that Samsung may release at least two Fan Edition tablets this year.
Given that the high-end Galaxy Tab S9, Tab S9+, and Tab S9 Ultra should have model numbers SM-X716, SM-X816, and SM-X916, it's logical to assume that the newly discovered SM-X516B and SM-X616B are less powerful versions of the flagship tablets. In other words, they likely belong to the Fan Edition series and may both hit the market under the Galaxy Tab S9 FE brand.
Galaxy Tab S9 FE tablets borrow from the A54 5G
The online benchmark reveals that the two mysterious tablets have at least one thing in common with the Galaxy A54 5G. They both use the Exynos 1380 chipset, as denoted by the “s5e8835” motherboard and “energy_ware” governor.
This is the same solution Samsung employed for its new mid-range Galaxy A54 5G smartphone. It has four Cortex-A78 CPU cores clocked at 2.4GHz, four Cortex-A55 cores operating at a frequency of 2.0GHz, and a Mali-G68 MP5 graphics chip.
If Wi-Fi-only versions of these two Galaxy Tab S9 FE tablets exist, they haven't shown up in the benchmark yet, and it's unclear whether they'd use the same Exynos 1380 chipset with disabled 5G capabilities, no SIM slot, no 5G antennas, and so on.
The two benchmarks that do exist show that single-core and multi-core performance is similar across both devices. They also reveal that the SM-X516B tablet, which should be the smaller Galaxy Tab S9 FE variant with a lower price, has 6GB of RAM, whereas the SM-X616B, which may have a larger display and a higher price, carries 8GB of RAM.
Samsung will probably unveil the Galaxy Tab S9 FE tablets alongside the regular high-end Tab S9 trio at Unpacked in August-September or even before then, given that it announced the original Galaxy Tab S7 FE in the month of May. But the naming scheme is unknown, so it's unclear whether both tablets will be called the same or have their screen sizes in their names, or if one Fan Edition variant will also have a “Plus” designation. For now, it's anyone's guess how Samsung will differentiate between them, but one will certainly be more affordable than the other.
