The Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra has been pictured, and it’s prompting far more conversation among the TA team than we’re used to seeing from a new tablet.
It’s not that tablet design has gotten boring or anything, but… actually yes, it’s exactly that. Some 15 years on from the launch of the original iPad, the tablet form factor has matured to a point where they all kind of look the same.
However, one recently leaked image of Samsung’s new premium tablet, the Samsung Galaxy S11 Ultra, has stimulated a fair amount of conversation. And not all of it is positive.
Arch leaker Evan Blass (aka @evleaks) has posted a press image of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra (along with the Samsung Galaxy S25 FE) to X. Here are three things that we noticed about this new tablet design.
What’s with the notch?
At first glance the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra looks a lot like the existing Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra, but there are some details on there that can’t help but promote a reaction.
Such as: holy moly, what have they done to the notch? And also, while we’re at it: why is there still a notch?
Both the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra (pictured below) and the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra featured a cut-in selfie cam notch, and we’re still not convinced it was a smart move. It’s as ugly as sin.
Luke Baker
But at least those protuberances had an apparent reason for existing, with a pair of front-facing camera sensors justifying the inclusion. This notch is smaller and rounded, suggesting there’s just a single front-facing camera this time around. It looks both weird and unnecessary.
This is a low-res image, of course, which means it’s possible Samsung has indeed been able to squeeze two sensors in here. We can’t be sure either way. In that case, however, you have to wonder whether the company could have omitted the selfie notch altogether, even if that meant a fractionally thicker bezel.
The S Pen strip is gone
Samsung has been scaling back its S Pen provision on both the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and (especially) Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 smartphones, so it’s good to see its stylus featured so prominently in this early press material.
Looking at the rear section of the tablet, however, we’re not seeing the customary S Pen strip, which previously indicated where you could affix Samsung’s powerful pen using integrated magnets.
Does this mean that you’ll no longer be able to attach the S Pen to the back of the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra? Or that Samsung has moved the attachment point elsewhere on the tablet? We can’t see most of the back cover, after all.
Luke Baker
Those cameras look bigger
The third point we note from this picture is that the cameras look a little bigger than before.
This could simply be a cosmetic flourish – manufacturers of smart devices routinely pump up the size of the external camera elements, especially on devices with less-than-stellar photographic capabilities.
The other option, which is obviously preferable, is that Samsung has actually fitted the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra out with superior cameras. Not that we’d ever recommend using your tablet as a camera, but better is better. Those scanned documents could look even sharper.
Samsung will likely unveil the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra in September, if the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra launch is anything to go by. Suffice to say, we’re now even more interested in it than we were before.
