Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S12+ and S12 Ultra reach Europe on 7 October at 1,299 and 1,539 euros, roughly 180 euros above the model the first replaces, against a 100 dollar rise in America. The entry-level 11-inch tablet was not updated, which is what the memory shortage has been doing to cheap devices all year, while a new SmartTag tracker runs 790 days on a coin cell.
Samsung’s new tablets reach Europe on 7 October at €1,299 and €1,539. The Galaxy Tab S12+ costs about €180 more than the S10+ it replaces. There is no cheap model in the new range at all.
Samsung set the American prices at $1,200 and $1,399, each $100 above their predecessors, as Bloomberg reported. The European increase is roughly twice that, and a 5G version adds €200. A smaller, longer-running SmartTag tracker arrived alongside them.
The money buys a 3nm MediaTek processor with modest gains, 1,600 nits of brightness and IP68 protection. The S Pen is included and a keyboard is not. British prices are £1,199 and £1,399.
Samsung has not said why the tablets cost more. The 11-inch Galaxy Tab S11 was simply not replaced, so the range now starts where the old one had its middle.
That omission is familiar. The memory shortage has been killing the cheap smartphone all year, with LPDDR5 up 220% between the first quarters of 2025 and 2026.
Samsung is the world’s largest memory maker. Its head of global marketing warned in January that supply problems in 2026 would affect everyone, not only Samsung.
The pattern is established by now. Apple’s $599 Mac Mini was withdrawn rather than repriced, and a range losing its entry point is what this shortage does first.
Amazon took the other route. It raised device prices by up to 60% overnight in August, blaming memory and storage component costs, with no warning.
Fujifilm raised camera prices by up to €500 from September for the same reason, and expects the crisis to cost it about 11 billion yen this year.
European buyers were told this was coming. Memory can now account for half the cost of a budget Android phone, against roughly 15% before, and German DDR5 prices rose 414% over the same year.
Alex Baldock, the chief executive of Currys, warned in July that the squeeze would bring “some cost price inflation coming through later this year”. October is later this year.
The SmartTag 3 is 35% smaller and 33% lighter, and runs 790 days on a coin cell against 700 before. It costs $30, or $100 for four, from early November. It works only with Samsung devices, not Google’s network.
Apple is expected to show an OLED iPad mini within weeks. Whether it arrives with a cheap option is the thing worth watching.