Samsung, through its Android Central website, recently announced the launch of two versions of its Galaxy Tab S2, both of which are set for launch this August.

Like Us on Facebook

The new S2 promises to be Samsung's "thinnest and lightest tablet of its size, ever." Both versions have an impressively thin body at only 5.6mm. The 8-inch version weighs approximately 265g while the 9.7-inch version gets a weight of 389g. Both versions use the Super AMOLED display technology, with a stunning visual resolution of 2048x1536.

With this new release, Samsung officially dispensed with including a much larger 10.5-inch version, which was the case in last year's Galaxy tab release. Most of its specs are clearly aimed to compete against Apple's flagship tablet, the iPad. Apart from size, it also shares the same screen orientation as its competitor, at 4:3. While the Korean tech company didn't mention anything specific to video quality, it did tout the Galaxy Tab S2's capacity to render excellent digital content including e-books, magazines, and even newsfeeds.

Both versions of the S2 will be sporting the latest Android operating service: Lollipop 5.0. As for the hardware, the S2 might have an octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM, 8MP rear camera, and 2.1MP front camera. Users are faced with an two storage limit options: 3GB and 64GB. Nevertheless, a microSD card slot enables the user to further expand the storage capacity to 128GB. Both the 8-inch and 9.7-inch version will be available in Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + LTE versions. This way, Android appears to have eliminated its tablets' biggest disadvantage in previous launches: the weak processors.

Android also touted its new Adaptive Display technology as this feature intelligently adjusts the display's sharpness, saturation, and gamma components based on a variety of factors, including ambient lighting and the color temperature of the viewing environment. This is aimed to optimize the viewing and reading experience. Furthermore, the S2 tabs also come with Reading Mode, which modifies the brightness settings on the screen, so as to allow users to keep reading or browsing web content for hours without having to strain their eyes.

Will this new Android tablet face up to the challenge against Apple's iPad? One thing is certain, the Galaxy Tab S2 is a big move towards innovation when compared to Android's recent string of less competitive tablet releases.

Tagsgalaxy s2, Ipad