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I have a bunch of possibly naive questions. I have an Android tablet (Samsung Tab Pro - the 12" beast). An experiment at replacing a laptop on some outings.
by Jedd 10y ago
I have a bunch of possibly naive questions.
I have an Android tablet (Samsung Tab Pro - the 12" beast). An experiment at replacing a laptop on some outings. I bought the A$140 Logitech keyboard / cover, which is good but not great, with some keys being a bit recalcitrant.
Some UI features are frustrating (example: alt-tab brings up the alt-tab switcher - you need to alt-tab twice to move to the most recent process, and toggling between two or three apps on the top of the stack is a common use case for me if I'm trying to do Real Work). An Android problem, I concede.
Given that context - how good is the keyboard, and how are you shipping keyboard + screen at less than a Logitech keyboard - I know, retail, scale, brand mark-up, two years later, etc ... but nonetheless?
Does the app smooth out some of the frustrations (f.e. the alt-tab problem) of working with Android with a keyboard & mouse as though it's a real grown-up DE? Is the app going to offer an increasingly customisable experience, or does it defer to the phone's native Android (and skins) features?
How does it feel - I know you're biased, but have you tried some phones that it just doesn't work on, and/or have some benchmarks or recommendations? I'm on an original Nexus 5 - which still performs adequately, but with low expectations on a phone interface - how well would it drive the Superbook?
- ajiang 10y agoYea totally - trust me when I first started on this, I had a lot of the same question. Keyboard: Think of the keyboard of your standard Chromebook. That's the keyboard. We have to use off the shelf, component parts that are fairly common in order to keep costs low. Screen: Basic screen is a TN 768p. It's not fantastic, but at a 11.6" screen size, it's fine. For an extra $30, you can get the IPS 1080p upgrade. They're pretty solid. Keyboard / Mouse / Alt-Tab frustration: Yep. Our software mainly spends a lot of time making the experience of using keyboard and mouse decent. We do take on a number of the phone's native features, but desktop experience optimization is why we built our app - it's the missing software link. For those of you with tablets and usb mouse / keyboard that want to give it a try, test out the beta: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andromium.os&hl=en Phones that don't work: Yea, definitely lower end phones, phones with <2GB RAM run a little rough. There are still a bunch of software features to add / fix / optimize. It still has a bit to go before we hit full desktop parity. We see this as a software problem that we just need to spend a bunch of time on.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- fsiefken 10y agoHi Jedd, I don't think it's possible yet but RemixOS is an Android based OS running on both intel and arm that makes Android usable with keyboard and mouse. The same goes for ChromeOS. Both are running on Arm hardware. Another option is to install Linux Deploy on Android, install a Linux distro and view the display by connection with vnc, X or framebuffer to localhost. Even though pricey, an Acer Transformer T300 (wintel) as tablet and computer gets the job done as well.
- ajiang 10y agoYea totally. I'm actually on board with this. If you're trying to turn a tablet or laptop into an Android laptop, use Remix. We aren't trying to do that - we believe that device convergence (a world where they only computer you'll have / rely on is your smartphone) will happen and will happen on Android.
- thanatropism 10y agoI have to tell you 'Yea totally' is probably a better name for your company than 'Andromium', which sounds like fake ``natural'' Viagra.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]