Wifi or wait for LTE?

kmeleon77 said:

I'm pretty set on getting the 10.5 S. I'm currently running an ATT LTE Note 8.0 but the lack of updates is way past annoying, especially with the input freezing bug. I like having LTE, I certainly don't want to be completely without it. I'm also still locked in a contract on the Note for another year, the good news is it only costs $10/month so its a minimal issue. So my plan at the his point is to buy the wifi only 10.5 S and keep my note 8 and basically use it as a hot spot. To purchase a hotspot would cost me $20/month so it does make sense to just keep it and use it that way. That can certainly cut down on some portability but I really only use my tablet on LTE in my truck during work so keeping the Note there for for hotspot use is no biggie. And if I do want to take a tablet with me I can always just take the Note 8. Oh, and I cannot use my phone as a hotspot because its a work phone and is locked from doing so.

I guess my point in all of this is that I dont want to enter into another LTE tablet with potential problems that will never be fixed by the cell provider and be handcuffed with a locked bootloader in the community. Atleast when you go wifi only you know Samsung is going to take care of issues and you will stay closer to the front of the line of Android development.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I467 using Tapatalk 2

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Personally I'm just going to get the wifi version since there will be wifi at the places I mainly go to and in worst case scenario I can tether using my S4. I really don't see a need to get the LTE version and pay more monthly (unless when the devs here find a way to make calls with this and you want to make calls and stuff?)

Why not just tether it to your phone? Tethering to another android device usually doesn't count against a tethering limit.

It has tended to be the case in my Samsung tablet experience that there tends to be more options when it comes to rooting and custom ROMs with the wifi varients vs. carrier tied lte variants. A personal example: I first got an lte AT&T Note 8 due to a promotion that they had at the time. That tablet ended up getting stolen, and I replaced it with the wifi version. Looking back, while it sucked shelling out extra cash for a replacement tablet, my experience with the Note 8 was MUCH better due to the ability to easily root it and a couple of really nice custom ROMs that are immeasurably better than the stock ROM, while I don't think there even are any ROMs that can be flashed to the AT&T locked-down version. I think it's rootable, but that's a relatively recent development for a device that's been out as long as the Note 8 (I think, there's a thread on the subject but I haven't looked at it).

Of course, the my take on the matter is really only relevant if you plan on rooting / modifying the device, or at least having the ability to do so, the wifi variant (or international lte version, I guess) seems to generally be the way to go.

I'm lusting hard after the Tab S 8.4, but I'm going to wait a while and keep an eye on this subforum mostly to see how development goes, and a price drop or sale would be nice when that starts to happen for these. If I end up getting this tablet (seems likely, the specs are pretty much exactly what I was hoping for in the TabPro 8.4), I anticipate that I'll end up getting the wifi version, even if I have the opportunity to get the lte version for the same price (I'm on T-mobile now and they had a promotion where they were selling the lte variants of the Samsung tablets that they had (which sucked when I checked it out) for the same price as the wifi variant with 2 GB free data or something, but not sure if that's perpetual). I now have a Note 3 and Note 8, and I really only use the tablet at home, but if I wanted to use it elsewhere I would just tether it to my phone with unlimited data, and all is right with the world

tl;dr IMO the wifi variant is the way to go so that your device isn't tied to any carrier and likely more modifiable, if you care about that. If this was a major decision that you were making that I completely solved and/or you're ridiculously generous, PM me for my address for pre-ordering purposes

I'd wait to see if the devices are rootable. I imagine that if the specs are close enough, I'd go with a Nexus 8 for the dev support. Failing that, go for the GPE version of Galaxy S.

bigbrown said:

I'd wait to see if the devices are rootable. I imagine that if the specs are close enough, I'd go with a Nexus 8 for the dev support. Failing that, go for the GPE version of Galaxy S.

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I would love to see a GPE version of the Galaxy Tab S LTE. I don't know why it's so hard to find an Android tablet with LTE that isn't owned by the carriers so I can get decent updates. All the international versions never support the proper LTE bands. The Nexus 7 LTE is the exception. I also have the AT&T Note 8.0 and the lack of updates is more than annoying.