Only recently, it looked like the possibility of seeing the Android Marshmallow update on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S line up would be highly unlikely.
Samsung had been concentrating heavily on smartphones in recent months. There have not been many high profile tablet launches especially considering that tablets have not been doing well in terms of sales. However, Samsung has just confirmed the availability of android 6.0 on the 10.5-inch LTE Galaxy Tab S models. An OTA update has been available for the devices in Germany and should be available throughout the world shortly.
The same update has now been made available for the smaller Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 with LTE. Once again, only German models have started receiving the update and it may be a few days or weeks before worldwide models also start to receive this update. Android Marshmallow brings aspects like doze mode for better battery life, Google Now on tap to search for results faster, and more clarity with regard to permissions being given to apps. Several other aspects of the operating system have been available for TouchWiz users for quite a while.
The update is unlikely to affect the performance of the device in a bad way since Android Marshmallow has been designed to work on devices with lower specifications. Launched in July 2014, the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 was an extremely promising tablet back then. Even though Apple iPad rules the segment, even this device has found it tough to keep up their interest amongst the general public. This has been partly down to the difficulties with regard to mobility and partly down to the smartphones catching up in terms of screen size.
Average smartphone sizes have increased dramatically in the last few years with almost all high end models starting to offer 5.5 inch displays. The 8.4 inch display on the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 is only slightly is larger in this regard, but it has significantly lower pixel density than the QHD screens found on smartphones today. It is still incredible to think that the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 shipped with android 4.4 out of the box. The snapdragon 800 or the Exynos 5 Octa 5420 processor (depending on the region sold) has made it possible for the phone to run smoothly even on this new OS. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 supports the processor with a more than healthy 3 GB of RAM.