Technology

The Android tablet market isn&t exactly a hotbed of excitement and activity, which makes it all the more impressive that Samsung continues to iterate its own tablet lineup in smart, meaningful ways that push the technology forward and deliver a stellar experience. Samsungnew Galaxy Tab S6 (starting at $649.99) is no exception, and this latest offering expands the definition of what a tablet can be while retaining or refining everything thatbeen its predecessors.

Thin, light and luxe design

Samsung has been delivering outstanding body design on its tablet lineup since the introduction of the all-metal and glass Tab S4, and the Tab S6 continues this tradition with a full metal back and glass front thatlighter and thinner than its predecessor. The look and feel is more reminiscent of the Tab S5e, which was released after the S4 earlier this year and which acts as a more economical alternative to Samsungflagship lineup. The S6 manages to feel just a touch more premium than the S5e, though both are class-leading in terms of their industrial design.

The brushed finish of the back looks great, and feels nice in the hand, and if you have larger hands you can even one-hand this device when reading for limited periods of time. Samsung has also shrunk the bezels, giving you a more front face-filling screen than on any previous tablet, which does a very good job of putting the gorgeous sAMOLED display in focus. More than ever, this feels like one big sleek, metallic hand-held display — the future, in your hand, reduced to the essentials in an awesome way.

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Display and cameras

The display on the Tab S6 isn&t much changed from the one used on the Tab S5e and the Tab S4 — but thatactually great news, because Samsung has the best tablet display in the business when it comes to watching media. The 10.5-inch 2560 x 1600 pixel Super AMOLED display gives you true blacks that are outstanding, and impossible to replicate on any LED-based display, and Samsung offers a range of color options from which to choose, including &natural& settings for photo-accurate editing, and enhanced saturation modes for getting the most out of eye-popping movies and videos.

That display now comes with a neat new trick on the Tab S6: an integrated fingerprint reader. This authentication and unlock method is new for this generation, and replaces iris/face scanning as the only biometric unlock option on the Tab S4. It performs very well in my testing, and has the added cool factor of being just an amazing bit of whiz-bang tech magic, especially if this is your first time encountering an in-display fingerprint reader.

The great display makes a fantastic editing surface for photos and videos, and thatwhy itsuper interesting that Samsung went out of their way to upgrade the cameras on the Tab S6 — adding dual camera options, in fact. Therenow a super-wide-angle lens in addition to the standard one, which gives you a lot of creative options when it comes to both still photography and videos.

While the Tab S6 is great for editing, I still wouldn&t lean too heavily on the built-in cameras for actually capturing content. They&re fine cameras, augmented by Samsungbuilt-in software, but the super-wide has a fair amount of distortion and not the best resolution, and in general I still think you should avoid shooting too much with tablet cameras. Still, itnice to have the option in case you&re in a pinch.

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Your pen pal

I mentioned editing above, but the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 has an added advantage over other tablets in this area: The S Pen. Samsungstylus is updated in this version, with Bluetooth connectivity that gives it additional superpowers like the ability to act as a remote for the camera, presentations and other software.

The S Pen still performs best as an actual stylus, however, and it excels in this capacity. For pressure-sensitive applications, including sketching and painting, itfantastic, but where it really shines in my usage is in editing photos using software like Lightroom from Adobe. Stylus input means you can get super specific and accurate with your edits. This applies to editing video, too, where the stylus works well for making concise trims to video timelines.

You also can easily create handwritten notes with the S Pen, and if you do so using Samsungbuilt-in Notes application, you get automatic OCR and search indexing. In my testing, I found that this worked really, really well — surprisingly so, considering how bad my handwriting is. For printed characters, the Samsung Notes app had no trouble at all identifying words accurately in my scrawl and retrieving the right results when searching by keyword.

Because this S Pen uses Bluetooth, it now has a built-in rechargeable battery. Like ApplePencil, it charges wirelessly, attaching magnetically to the tablet to power up. Samsung has designed a groove in the back of the tablet to receive the S Pen for charging, and while this isn&t sturdy enough for you to trust it to hold the stylus when you throw them in your bag unprotected, the Tab S6 cover accessory nicely wraps the S Pen with a fold-down flap for easy storage.

A true workhorse

Samsungofficial case options include a back panel protector/detachable keyboard combo that are probably the best accessory of this style available on the market for any tablet. The back cover includes a reusable sticky surface to ensure a solid fit, which will be more reliably fixed than a magnetic attachment, and it has a multi-angle kickstand that works wonderfully to support the tablet on any table or even on your lap.

As mentioned, therea top flap that provides protection and easy access to the S Pen, which is a very clever way to keep that stored without complicating matters. The cover has a finely textured surface that increases grippiness, and it has proven resilient in terms of not picking up dirt or grime so far.

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The keyboard attaches via magnets to one side of the tablet, folding up to protect the display when not in use. Itslim, but it still had defined keys with actual travel that feel really good to type with, and theresomething you probably weren&t expecting to see on an Android tablet keyboard — a built-in trackpad.

All of this is designed primarily for use with DeX, Samsungdesktop-like software experience thataimed at boosting productivity (though you can use the trackpad in the standard Android interface, too). When it works well, the DeX experience truly makes the Tab S6 feel like a mini desktop, giving you the power to tackle tasks in multiple windows — including in multiple windows for the same apps. Itgreat for things like seeing Slack open and working in multiple browser windows, along with your email client, for instance.

That said, there are definite limitations to DeX, including the need to re-open all your windows when switching back from standard Android mode, for instance. Not every app behaves well in this novel mode, either, as third-party ones especially aren&t designed for it, and there are quirks to the windowing (like overflowing and weird-sized windows) that make it occasionally a little strange to work with. Still, all in all, itgreat to have the option, and can really increase your ability to do work on the road in the right circumstances.

Bottom line

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 is, without a doubt, the best Android tablet available. It combines top-notch hardware with Samsungevolving DeX approach to mobile productivity, and while DeX isn&t perfect in all settings, itat the very least not doing any harm, and you&re better off having it available versus not. Meanwhile, the Tab S6 working in standard Android mode is an excellent, super-fast media consumption and photo-editing powerhouse. If you&re in the market for a tablet, the Tab S6 is an easy choice.

As legacy industries make the migration to cloud-based digital solutions to run and grow their businesses, Salesforce is hoping that it will get a cut of the action when it comes to their IT investments. The CRM giant has been doubling down on building specialised solutions for individual industry verticals, and today, it is unveiling new business units dedicated to not one but two of them: manufacturing and consumer goods.

The Manufacturing Cloud and Consumer Goods Cloud, as the two new products are called, are the latest in a list of other vertical-specific products the company has created. Other verticals targeted to date include finance, healthcare, media, nonprofits and retail.

The idea behind Salesforce strategy to build industry-specific solutions is that while the CRM and sales processes that go into manufacturing and consumer goods do have some aspects in common with other industries, both also have relatively specific requirements, too, around how sales are agreed and clients are managed.

In the case of manufacturing and consumer goods, both are capital-intensive businesses where those working on the physical products might be very removed from those working on sales (not just in terms of job functions, but in terms of the software thatused to manage each operation), or those who are in the field who are helping to distribute those goods to the people ultimately selling them.

&In the manufacturing industry, changing customer and market demands can have a devastating effect on the bottom line, so being able to understand what is happening on the ground is imperative for success,& said Cindy Bolt, SVP and GM, Salesforce Manufacturing, in a statement. &Manufacturing Cloud bridges the gap between sales and operations teams while ensuring more predictive and transparent business, so they can build deeper and more trusted relationships with their customers.&

In both the cases of manufacturing and consumer goods, Salesforce is not creating these services out of thin air: the company had already been touting solutions for both sectors as part of its bigger push into specific industries. Past acquisitions of companies like Steelbrick — a specialist in quote-to-cash solutions, a cornerstone of how manufacturing sales are made — are likely to have played a contributing role in how the new clouds were built.

With the Manufacturing Cloud, Salesforce says that it has included a feature for sales agreements that link up with a companyERP and forecasting software to be able to better predict demand from individual customers as well as the wider market. The services are also coming with more analytical insights by way of Einstein Analytics, and more functionality to work with channel partners. Third parties working with Salesforce on joint solutions using Marketing Cloud include Acumen Solutions, Deloitte and Rootstock.

The Consumer Goods Cloud has some parallel with the Manufacturing Cloud, in that both are targeting businesses that are by their nature and by legacy very rooted in physical goods and are therefore not easily &disrupted& by digital innovation. Indeed, despite all that we hear about the might of Amazon and e-commerce, a full 95% of products are still sold in physical stores. That system has a lot of drawbacks, not least of them being challenges with consumer goods brands having accurate control over how products are distributed and ultimately sold.

&Retail execution remains one of the most important pieces of a consumer goods brands strategy, but so much opportunity is wasted if the field rep doesn&t have the data and technology needed to make smart decisions,& said John Strain, GM and SVP, Retail and Consumer Goods at Salesforce, in a statement. &Consumer Goods Cloud provides these field reps with the tools they need to be successful on the ground while helping build both business opportunities and stronger relationships with their retail partners.&

The company, citing research from PwC, claims that of the $200 billion thatspent in the U.S. by consumer goods companies each year on merchandising, marketing and sales efforts for in-store sales, some $100 billion of that spend is never used in the way it was originally intended. (Thatone reason so many consumer goods companies have jumped into social media: ita way of connecting better and more directly, at least with the customers.)

That represents a huge area to tackle for a company likes Salesforce, and the Consumer Goods Cloud is the start of that effort. The product covers software that addresses areas optimising visits to stores, improving relationships with retailers, using Einstein insights for analytics and ordering software. Partners in the effort include Accenture and PwC.

Another important thing to note here is that Salesforcemove into the area comes as a competitive strike: Not only are there companies out there that have built products specifically for these markets — Sysco for consumer goods, and Atlatl Software for manufacturing, for example — but Salesforce has to contend with general rivals such as Microsoft and SAP also targeting the same potential customers.

As of last quarter, Sales Cloud now accounts for more than one-quarter of Salesforcerevenues, but todaynews underscores how &sales& is becoming a more complex and nuanced topic for the company as its business continues to grow, and as cloud-based digital processes become ever more ubiquitous across all sectors beyond simply knowledge workers. As Salesforce builds out more solutions to meet every kind of enterpriseneeds, itlikely there will be more vertical-specific tools making their way to the platform.

The popular password manager LastPass has released a patch for a bug that would have allowed malicious websites to extract passwords that were previously entered using the service's browser extension.

The bug was first discovered by Google Project Zero researcher Tavis Ormandy who disclosed the vulnerability to the company early enough that it