The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 is a fantastic tablet. It boasts a Snapdragon 855 processor, it has a 7,040 mAH battery, and it has an impressive 10.5-inch screen. On paper, this is the perfect tablet for me as it’s plenty powerful enough for scrolling the internet, and it can also handle quite a bit of game emulation. The problem is that this tablet was released back in 2019.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing by any means. I love that my 2019 tablet is still kicking today, but that can’t be what Samsung wants. Tech is meant to be upgraded, but it feels like tablets have sort of been stagnant for many years now. Yes, the chipsets keep getting more powerful, but what good is that power if it’s not needed for anything that I do.

What’s ended up happening is that I’ve held on to this tablet for far longer than I thought I would, and it doesn’t feel like something I’m going to upgrade any time soon. I still charge it once every two days, it has access to any app I want, and I’ve managed to keep the screen relatively damage-free — I did get one small scratch on it. I made the mistake of getting rid of my OnePlus 8 Pro too soon, but I won’t do it with my Galaxy Tab S6.

Storage

128GB / 256GB + microSD

CPU

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy

Memory

8GB / 12GB RAM

Operating System

Android 13, Samsung One UI 5 Tab

Battery

8400mAh

My tablet is still performing great

No need to upgrade

I used to be one of those people who got a new phone every year, but now I can see that it was just a marketing tactic, and there’s really no reason for that. I’ve been holding on to my technology for far longer now, and it hasn’t been a big deal. The thing that finally led to me upgrading my phone was the lack of security updates. For my tablet, I don’t need such things, so I’m going to keep using it until it can no longer hold a charge. Software support ended back in 2023, but the performance is still there.

The Galaxy Tab S10 looks like a great tablet as well, and with the Dimensity 9300 chip powering it, it looks like I’d be in store for a massive performance jump. The issue is that I don’t need to make a performance leap. I browse through Twitter and Reddit just fine with what I have, and while something newer would be snappier, I don’t feel like dropping a few hundred dollars on an upgrade that I don’t need.

This has become a common trend among many of my devices. I still have a first-gen Apple TV 4K, and I have a graphics card and TV both from 2021. It’s good that tech can last that long and still be relevant, but it does mean I’m spending less money on new gear. That’s good for the consumer and bad for the company. I guess what I’m waiting for is some more innovation because it almost feels like we’ve plateaued in performance, at least for what I want to do with things.

Good for my wallet, but sort of boring

I want to be excited again

There used to be a time when I’d get excited about Samsung or Apple events, but now they show up and don’t really move me anymore. With so much of the focus being on AI, I’m really tuned out, and I hope companies are able to cook something up that catches my attention again. The problem is that performance has reached a point for me where I’m not really interested in what’s next. My phone can play all the games I want, and it’s not like I need more performance to run Balatro or Pokémon Pocket.

I can only foresee marginal gains if I upgrade my tablet, and in the case of going from my OnePlus 8 Pro to a Google Pixel 9a, I actually saw a drop in performance. The thing is that it doesn’t matter. I don’t notice any performance differences in moving from a Snapdragon chip to a Tensor one. Phones are plenty powerful for what they need to be, so I need to find something else that moves the needle. I’m not sure what that is, but I’d like to find it soon. It feels like there used to be a lot of innovation, and now the only time I feel like I need to upgrade to something new is just to get updates again.

There’s no reason I should be perfectly content using my first-gen Apple TV 4K, for example. It still gets the latest tvOS updates, although nothing of note actually arrives on my model. Of course, there’s the question of what I really need my Apple TV 4K to do. All I have it for is to stream TV shows and movies, and the first-gen model does that just fine. It doesn’t have Liquid Glass like the newer models, but does it really matter? For me, it doesn’t, and that’s what I’d like to see change across the board for tablets, phones, and streaming boxes.