70 ms·

Google quits selling tablets

398 points by lando2319 8y ago

giancarlostoro 8y ago
My favorite tablet ever made is discontinued and I never got to buy it[0] and it had a design that made complete sense to me. It is the only tablet where the speakers are facing you and they're on the top and bottom (idk any other tablet doing this...) and they're really loud. My fiance has one because I recommended it to her, and her parents got it for her as a graduation present. It has it's funky moments, but I'm upset they never renewed it. It was slick and no nonsense. It's a gaming tablet, but a tablet is a tablet. Dear Nvidia, bring back the Nvidia Shield Tablet and market it better. Market it for everyone, not just 'gamers' and you could make a killing off it, if you QA it enough. I love Android and want a serious tablet, but instead I have an iPad. I just don't understand why nobody makes a decent (more competitive like the Shield) Android Tablet. [0]: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/tablet/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/tablet/
- Mononokay 8y ago
  There're a few used ones on Amazon, although that might not be something you'd want.
- sliken 8y ago
  Sadly the nvidia shield tablet CPU is pretty weak these days. Nvidia even filed with the FCC for a tablet with a better CPU, but never shipped it.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  From what I understand, the Nintendo Switch is pretty much a (newer) Shield reference system implementation with a different OS. There's also a working exploit to run Ubuntu on the Switch right now: https://gbatemp.net/threads/quick-tuto-how-to-boot-linux-on-your-switch.501918/ https://gbatemp.net/threads/quick-tuto-how-to-boot-linux-on-...
  - freehunter 8y ago
    I would love to be able to stream games from my PC onto my Switch like you could with the Shield. It's just such a convenient system to play.
    - kbenson 8y ago
      Steam link would be a pretty cool app to have on the switch. Unfortunately, I doubt that will ever happen, since it would undercut a lot of Nintendo's control of the system.
    - knuththetruth 8y ago
      It’s only a matter of time since the device has been completely hacked now. Check for updates on the related subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/switchhaxing https://www.reddit.com/r/switchhaxing Might want to pick one up in the near future though. Nintendo has a hardware update in the works to remedy the unpatcheable tegra exploit in current models.
      - bitwize 8y ago
        There's also the fact that if Nintendo detects that you have a hacked Switch, they will ban you from all their online services even if you log in from a different device.
        giancarlostoro 8y ago
        If you get a 2nd Switch for hacking purposes and never login but wipe the OS can they still really detect this? Would be cool to just have Android on a Switch honestly. I love the Switch but if I ever did any modding for mine I'd buy an entirely new Switch for that. I miss the PSP hacking scene and when the PSP was still fairly relevant so people were actively working on things for it.
    - MBCook 8y ago
      I’m guessing it would absolutely never happened, but I would happily pay money for the ability to have my PS4 stream games to my Switch. Like the Vita.
- freehunter 8y ago
  >the speakers are facing you and they're on the top and bottom This drives me crazy on my iPad. My phone came out in 2016 and has stereo speakers. My iPad came out in 2017 and despite being massive in comparison with tons of available space (and weirdly, a headphone jack) it only has one speaker. Yet I never watch movies on my phone and I do it all the time on my iPad, where it makes way more sense to have stereo speakers. Get your shit together Apple.
  - wlesieutre 8y ago
    The iPad Mini (2012) and iPad Air (2013) and all iPads since have stereo speakers on either side of the bottom edge. They're laid out for portrait though, since Apple treats that as the standard orientation. Not ideal for watching movies. The Pro versions have four speakers in the corners and adjust which pair are left vs right depending on whether you're in portrait or landscape.
    - garyclarke27 8y ago
      Yes how stupid to assume portrait, I (and everyone I know) have always used iPads in landscape mode! And why on earth do their crappy speakers face backwards ??
      - tinus_hn 8y ago
        Makes you wonder why Apple doesn’t hire you as their designer! Obviously you have got all the answers!
    - freehunter 8y ago
      Plus Apple’s official case (Smart Cover) only allows you to prop it up in landscape mode, not portrait mode.
      - wlesieutre 8y ago
        Especially with split screen modes making landscape more powerful I have to wonder if they’ll change their tune and go for a landscape-first approach in the next redesign. Ditching the home button in favor of FaceID seems like it would be the right moment to move the camera and other sensors to the long edge opposite the keyboard connection.
sliken 8y ago
I loved my nexus-7, and the 2nd gen nexus-7 even more. Inexpensive, pure android, decent hardware spec, and a usefully larger display than a phone. Anyone know of a current table that avoids the adware, crapware, and 3d contact managers where each card flies around in 3D? I just want android with the current security updates and 7-9" display.
- toomuchgov 8y ago
  Nvidia Shield from eBay?
- atomi 8y ago
  Nexus 7 2013 is still a great tablet.
  - Too 8y ago
    While the Nexus7 gen 2 was, and to some extent still is, a great tablet. I don't think i would recommend anyone to buy it today. It's stuck on Android 6.0 with known security vulnerabilities and the performance is starting to fall a bit behind the software "development".
    - phjesusthatguy3 8y ago
      True, but you can get a refurb unit for about $100 and put LineageOS on it. We've had five of them through this house (the kids use them) and I haven't seen anything they want to do that it can't.
- gruez 8y ago
  go over to https://download.lineageos.org/ https://download.lineageos.org/ and find a supported tablet. pros: no crapware (nearly stock android), weekly updates cons: needs unlocked bootloader, not the newest and greatest (manufacturers take their sweet time to release kernel sources), weekly rolling release
  - trumped 8y ago
assblaster 8y ago
I have a Pixelbook and I love it, more useful than a tablet because of the attached keyboard, and it still has a touch screen. I think hybrid tablet computers will be the way forward versus clunky tablets which are useful mostly for large format reading.
kelnos 8y ago
> ... few people see any reason to upgrade a device that was originally sold for its simplicity and ease of use, not its specs. I, for one, have been using the third-gen (1st Retina) iPad since its release approximately 500 years ago and have never felt any compulsion whatsoever to get a new one. This seems a little weird to me. Don't tablets age in a similar way that smartphones age? As in, the battery gets weaker over time (sure, often you can replace); OS updates, being designed for current hardware, cause slowdowns; apps written for the latest-and-greatest assume more resources and higher specs, etc.? I guess if all you use your tablet for is watching videos on YouTube, and don't care about OS updates (which you should, if you care about security at all), then maybe it's ok. I think a more plausible reason for sales numbers falling is that people just don't need or want tablets as much as they thought they did, especially with smartphone screens getting larger with every generation.
- FussyZeus 8y ago
  Anecdotal: my iPads have never aged the way my iPhones do. As to the reasons, I suspect the primary is just where and how it's used: I beat the piss out of my iphones, dropping them, using them out of good areas, on the go, in the car, while eating, etc. where my iPads have a comparatively nice existence largely in my home. The most strenuous environment I use my tablets in is my porch. But yeah, I just recently upgraded from an Air to the iPad Pro, mostly for the bigger screen and pencil. I had no reason to replace the current one other than having no reason to have two; 5 years on, it was kicking just as hard as ever.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    My iPad Air has slown down to be almost unusable. It is ancient, and I’m guessing it’s the battery + software throttle going on, but it is still very reminiscent of an aging iPhone.
    - MBCook 8y ago
      I’m not sure the throttling stuff really happens on the iPad. That was a check they added to the phones because of the unexpected shutdown issues, I don’t think that’s ever been much of a problem on the iPads because of their giant batteries. However there is a known issue where for some reason iOS can start to get extremely slow. Restoring from backup or doing a fresh install sometimes makes a device WAY faster. Not unlike Windows back in the 95 days. We solve reports of this when people were doing battery replacements. They go into Apple, get a new battery, and their phone wasn’t any faster. Then they’d do a fresh install and everything was fine. We also saw people give it a try before the battery replacement program was announced and have the same results. Basically, the batteries and the only reason iOS can get insanely slow. There’s obviously some kind of rail bug that can destroy performance. But a fresh install fixes it.
zdw 8y ago
The mid level tablet market died in a race to the bottom. Looking on aliexpress or taobao, you'll find dozens upon dozens of cheap tablets with CPU's from allwinner or rockchip, a few gigs of ram/flash and a not that great 8-10" screen for <$100. At higher price points you can get a chromebook with a keyboard and arguable more functionality. Completing against these are a few Samsung models that have their highly customized variant of Android, and Apple holding the premium ground with iOS/HW quality/price/performance, and MS selling the Surface with Windows for similar prices. The best we can hope for is for low end tablets to improve over the next few years.
- drak0n1c 8y ago
  Apple's newest full form-factor iPad is only $300, and often is available on sale for ~$270. I think that's made a big difference.
  - the_snooze 8y ago
    I picked up one of those iPads at ~$270 with an academic discount, and it's a solid machine. Great battery life, good screen, enough space for a couple Netflix movies on flights. It doesn't feel cheap or compromised at all.
    - snuxoll 8y ago
      I just bought one for my five year old, it's a pretty damned impressive device - she loves drawing on my 12.9" iPad Pro and having Apple Pencil support across the whole product line means she can do so on a less expensive device (the 12.9" Pro is already beastly enough, I cannot bear to put a case on it). With some fairly large games loaded up we've still got roughly 40% of the storage free, and with app offloading in iOS 11 I don't really have to worry about space like I do on her now defunct Fire HD 7. With that being said, I couldn't downgrade to the 9.7" iPad from the Pro models, I didn't think the non-laminated screen would be too much of a deal but it really does make a huge difference.
      - 8y ago
__sr__ 8y ago
Good riddance! It’s not like they have actively been developing Android to support tablets. In fact, it is the other way around. The older versions had better support for tablets. Even Nexus 9 was a half hearted attempt at best — and the rest is history. Google’s lack of interest in nowhere more evident than their own apps — many of them were just scaled versions of phone apps. And if Google is not bothering to optimise their apps for tablets, what motivation do third party developers have? Strictly speaking, Android tablets never even competed in the same arena as the iPad. Samsung is an exception, but they don’t control the ecosystem — which makes things much harder for them — even if we ignore their atrocious software.
- euyyn 8y ago
  I admit that I haven't paid much attention. But the whole revamp of the UI framework into Fragments was precisely to let app developers support both phones and tablets. Why do you say older versions of Android had better support for tablets?
  - wffurr 8y ago
    Lots of Android system UI and first party apps had better tablet interfaces in ICS than they do in Nougat or Oreo.
    - tomkarlo 8y ago
      This is a bit of a stretch. There was a lot of work done on improving tablet support in K, L and M, including work to specifically support the Nexus 9 and Pixel C. There was also the addition of multi-window, etc.
  - foobarbazetc 8y ago
    It has nothing to do with APIs. Our app has a great tablet version, on par with iPad and we don’t use fragments at all. We just change things based on size. It’s more that Google obviously stopped caring about tablets many major versions ago.
buzzword 8y ago
Thanks
jxdxbx 8y ago
In think 8” tablets are a good form factor for content consumption (ebooks, movies, some games) but Android tablets always fall short even then. You need a good screen, especially for text. The 2015 iPad Mini 4 is still much better than any similarly-sized Android tablet.
- megablast 8y ago
  And unfortunately looks like it will be Apple's last in that form factor.
  - MBCook 8y ago
    In some ways that makes sense. The Plus size iPhones aren’t that much smaller. And one of the biggest selling points of the mini was its price. But now you can get a full-size iPad that’s much faster for less than the mini was brand new. Only Apple knows what’s really going on. But it’s entirely possible sales fell off a cliff once the 6+ came out.
- m-p-3 8y ago
  To be honest most of the time I used my tablet was for reading stuff online. I sold it and bought a Kobo eReader instead. I push articles I want to read later to Pocket and read them there instead. My only wish would be to see a decent eReader with an email/calendar client to read my work emails on it and see my schedule. I looked at the reMarkable but despite its impressive annotation capabilities, it doesn't have anything else I would find useful at work.
  - vanderZwan 8y ago
    > I looked at the reMarkable but despite its impressive annotation capabilities, it doesn't have anything else I would find useful at work. Same. I want to have an ePaper device that I can use for more than just reading stuff. I don't understand why they are all so underpowered by definition.
  - jxdxbx 8y ago
    I use a 12.9” iPad Pro for most tablet purposes which is superior for me for everything except ebooks. It’s perfect for comics and PDFs and many games and it’s my laptop replacement when I travel (as an Old I prefer a real desktop computer, not a laptop, for day to day work). I agree that an ereader is ideal when compared with a small tablet; the Kobo Aura One is the perfect size and aspect ratio (7.9”, 4x3) for me but it doesn’t sync sideloaded books, and is a bit slow, and has no hardware buttons. But it does have Pocket as you mentioned which is pretty nice. A few reading-focused apps would indeed be welcome on ereaders. Overall Android had an advantage over iOS at first in its support for multiple phone sizes. But this just doesn’t scale well to tablets. You need separate human-designed tablet apps just like you can’t hope to have automatic layouts that scale between phones and desktops. I think Apple’s support for different sizes of screen is actually better than Android’s now, with different compact and normal portrait and landscape modes. The ironic thing is that a decent iPad layout for an iPhone app doesn’t need to take longer than an afternoon.
ygmelnikova 8y ago
Google sold tablets?
duxup 8y ago
My Chromebook that runs Android apps has replaced any need for a tablet for me. It is lighter than my bug laptop but still can get a lot done and if I want I fold it into tablet mode and I'm set.
- limeblack 8y ago
  This is not a serious solution at the time I tried this several months ago. Most of the apps I downloaded for Android were not optimized well for a Chromebook with text/window sizing, prevented resizing of the windows and were downright buggy(not registering presses and sometimes would even crash.)
  - duxup 8y ago
    What model did you try? I'm using a Chromebook Plus, outside of the very first release when it supported apps, I haven't had any issues.
  - Kudos 8y ago
    It's improving at a rapid pace. The more users run Android apps on Chromeos, the more devs are being forced to fix issues in that form factor to avoid 1 star reviews. My Pixelbook runs all the Android apps I'm interested in perfectly, including games like Hearthstone.
JVIDEL 8y ago
People are still using tablets?
- amelius 8y ago
  Nope, https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/25/tablets-are-dead/?guccounter=1 https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/25/tablets-are-dead/?guccount...
  - JVIDEL 8y ago
    I don't get the downvotes
transfire 8y ago
The idea that the tablet is dead is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. It is probably the most useful form-factor there is -- at least ultimately. But it hasn't come to full fruition yet. Stylus writing is really necessary, and lighter weights will be a big deal. Ultimately the tablet will be ubiquitous, and therefore must necessarily become dirt cheap. There is little to no profit margin. Revenue will have to come from software. Which makes it really disappointing that Google has bowed out as they are probably in the best position to pull that off. But instead it looks like Amazon is going to own the tablet market too, generating revenue via eBooks.
- ahartmetz 8y ago
  Maybe we can declare laptops as tablets with integrated stand, extra powerful hardware, built-in keyboard for efficient text input, and a much larger, less regulated app ecosystem with much more featureful apps. Tablets are pretty dumb really, IMO. That has been my opinion since the beginning of the tablet hype. The only way for them to actually take over was for them to gain most features of "regular" computers - maybe in unexpected ways. It could have happened if Steve Jobs hadn't died so early. Smartphones are very different - you can carry them in your pocket and that is a huge deal. All the compromises make sense there.
  - fragmede 8y ago
    While there are "flip" style laptops, most of them are not. Try typing on a laptop (and its keyboard) while standing/walking around and without a table or any surface to rest the laptop on. It's really cumbersome. The solutions are to hunt and peck type with both thumbs, or use one hand to hold the laptop and type with one hand, both of which are pretty dumb really, IMO. (Especially on a 15" laptop.)
Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
So ChromeOS with android apps it is, hopefully Google improves the android capabilities of ChromeOS; but I wonder whether the android on chromeOS will ever be nearly equal to a standalone version. As of now Google NaCL severly limits background services (for good?) of android apps, so you are required to keep it in foreground (above browser) for long operations. It's possible that, even threads are limited; as I noticed that some android apps which are heavily multi-threaded slows down on the Chromebook 11 N7 (Acer). Maybe this is Chromebook hardware specific, can anyone with a Pixelbook comment how good the android app performance is on their hardware?
Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
This is somewhat strange. I thought tablets killed the PC market. My wife is a primary school teacher and it's very difficult to teach children to use a mouse because they all have tablets at home. I know Android tablets haven't been selling well, but that's because people like me have been desperately waiting for a decent device to be released. iPads are absolutely everywhere. What's the proposed alternative for media consumption? In particular reading, but even watching videos and playing "board" games etc.
- Shank 8y ago
  > I know Android tablets haven't been selling well, but that's because people like me have been desperately waiting for a decent device to be released. Amazon sells Fire tablets pretty easily. The problem is that there's Amazon, selling tablets for next to nothing, and Apple and Microsoft, selling premium tablets. The middle market has to be either exceptionally good to exist, or it just disappears. That's what happened.
  - qwerty456127 8y ago
    > I know Android tablets haven't been selling well, but that's because people like me have been desperately waiting for a decent device to be released. Indeed. E.g. I want a tablet to be a as big as needed to view A4/Letter PDFs in 100% zoom without scrolling (so I'd be able to stop carrying papers with me) and have as much RAM as possible (at least 4 GiB). I'd also appreciate it to utilize the extra space available in this case by adding full-sized USB3 ports, and an external SD card reader to be used as removable media (in addition to the internal SD card reader to be used as the "hard drive" expansion).
- sundvor 8y ago
  Set them up with Fortnite and that won't be a problem much longer. (You'll have plenty of new ones, though!)
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    The new solitaire? When mice first became a thing, games were useful to teach the motor skills; I suppose there's no reason it wouldn't work again:)
lalos 8y ago
Is somebody keeping track of all the projects that Google quits? Back in the day we had this infographic https://www.wordstream.com/articles/retired-google-projects https://www.wordstream.com/articles/retired-google-projects
- Shank 8y ago
  Gwern tracks Google's services, but not necessarily cancelled hardware: http://www.gwern.net/Google-shutdowns http://www.gwern.net/Google-shutdowns
derefr 8y ago
> Cheap Kindle tablets from Amazon have proliferated somewhat, presumably as distractions for kids who would otherwise get fingerprints all over mom’s new phone, or for ultra-compact time-wasting on airplanes. Why does everybody think of only consumer-electronics uses for a $40 tablet? I think it would be quite obvious what the real use for these is: IoT control surfaces (the “smart fridge” upgrade), POS systems, inventory kiosks, etc. Embedded systems, in other words. And, heck, for $40 apiece, you can embed them into every desk in your office as a personalizeable dashboard. Or hand them out with preloaded maps on them to every participant in a missing-persons search. In fact, for $40, you could just set the display to a single colour and call it a cheaper alternative to a smart lightbulb. :P
- akhilcacharya 8y ago
  I agree completely! I've been thinking about why the rise of the ultra-cheap Fire tablets haven't created a new maker revolution so to speak. They can be had for cheaper than the RPi for Black Friday with a built in screen!
  - mindslight 8y ago
    I thought those things were defective-by-design, and nobody had really succeeded in fixing them?
  - djrogers 8y ago
    Well it’s not as if Amazon lets you hack around around on them or side load apps - you’re stuck with the Amazon store unless you try a dodgy exploit based unlocking method - which leaves you with a questionable tablet.
    - dawnerd 8y ago
      Exactly. And they sneakily auto update before you realize it. My older one apparently can’t be rooted now and because they pump new ones out there’s no one really caring about the old ones. Hard to complain for the price but ya know still sucks. They make great gifts at least.
mortdeus 8y ago
Im just happy that tablets are finally dead. You have a super supped up desktop computer at home sitting on your desk, and you have a relatively supped up smart phone sitting in your pocket when you cant be sitting at your desk. Where does tablets fit into this scenario? It doesn't. All tablets do is make app developers think they can somehow make app experiences you can only achieve on the desktop, somehow attainable on the go. sorry for the bad grammar. kinda tipsy
- fireattack 8y ago
  Read books and watch videos in the bed. For me at least.
  - whatsstolat 8y ago
    > watch videos I prefer a laptop for this as I can sit it down. Plus the bigger screen.
- wepple 8y ago
  I don’t want to read a book or watch a few YouTube clips or browse twitter whilst sitting at my desk in my office, nor do I want to poke at a tiny screen. Tablets are thriving, just not android tablets.
  - izacus 8y ago
    Even Android tablets are still selling very well. Just not the 500$ models competing with iPads. People buy 200$ Chinese models because they provide the same experience for most tablet use cases.
    - GalacticDomin8r 8y ago
      Yep pretty hard to beat my Lenovo Tab 2 10 for my purpose and have used tablets daily for years. M
- sundvor 8y ago
foobaw 8y ago
I used to work on Tablets with Google. Tablets have higher margins so it's a very attractive business for OEMs but compatibility was definitely an issue. Tons of Android apps weren't developed with screen compatibility in mind so QA was a nightmare (Sending massive emails to app developers asking them to fix their apps).
013a 8y ago
Microsoft seems like the only company that understands tablets right now. They should be more like computers, not more like phones. There's also a pretty great argument that given all of our phones are absolute powerhouses nowadays, phones should also be less like phones and more like computers. I'm hopeful Microsoft can also move to spur on this change; maybe soon the market will be ready for the return of Windows Phone.
- ce4 8y ago
  I have an Asus Chromebook flip and love the form factor. It can be used in tablet mode (360 hinges) and runs almost all Android apps. Pro: cheap, physical keyboard, 10hrs runtime, lightweight Con: flaky touch, proprietary charger, mine needs a new battery, no gps
- esturk 8y ago
  It's only a matter of time for the convergence of phones and Dex like docking functionality. I'm actually surprised Google isn't exploring this area more because it will really kick up the versality of phones. I guess Google doesn't want phones to cannabalize their Chromebook marketshare.
  - jbigelow76 8y ago
    I guess Google doesn't want phones to cannabalize their Chromebook marketshare. Android, Chrome, and ChromeOS exist as channels for Google to deliver its services, they are not profit centers in and of themselves (no license fee for Android, Chrome is a free download, ChromeOS runs on the cheapest hardware out there). Google would have no qualms about gutting the ChromeOS market if whatever replaced it offered a better opportunity to get their services in front of more eyeballs.
    - 0xFFC 8y ago
      Exactly. This is the core strategy for Google. And it makes sense, because google makes money from ads. Not android or chromeos
  - 8y ago
joering2 8y ago
Interesting thread but am I the only one here that still enjoys JooJoo tablet some 8 years later? Sure they didnt ship too many units but os is based on linux so all sorts of updates are welcome. Furthermore the batery on this thing is insane- some 6 days without charging!
hyperpallium 8y ago
Phones have become tablets. The trend continues. We had to go via small phones, to adapt to touchscreens. Change in behaviour is the adoption barrier.
usernameforgot 8y ago
These days when I'm not at my desk I carry a Samsung Tab A 10" tablet, a small Logitech bluetooth keyboard, and do all my coding in Termux. Basically my ideal hardware format, just wish I could get a bigger screen and maybe some more CPU. The idea that this kind of device should have a built-in keyboard is strange to me. It's stuck to the screen!
fencepost 8y ago
I'll probably be picking up a new 10" tablet in the next couple of months, but it'll be for use as an ebook reader for computer books and for use as a second monitor (https://www.splashtop.com/wiredxdisplay https://www.splashtop.com/wiredxdisplay) when I'm away from my desk. It may not be the same as an external 14" monitor, but it'll be a lot more portable.
bitmapbrother 8y ago
The news simply suggests Google isn't selling tablets anymore on their store. Their last tablet was the Pixel C which was discontinued on December 28, 2017 so this news isn't exactly surprising. This does not mean, however, that Android tablet are going away. You're still going to see tablets from Samsung, Huawei, Lenovo, Acer, Asus, etc. https://www.statista.com/statistics/276635/market-share-held-by-tablet-vendors/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/276635/market-share-held...
qop 8y ago
Android tablets were awful software on great hardware. Or decent hardware. Sometimes great. I hope that if fuchsia becomes the next Google mobile device os, that they take special care to not fragment it into a million pieces within the first few years. Actually, I don't really care what they do after this year. I'm gonna switch to iphone+ipad mini, and Google can go fuck themselves, which they usually do anyways.
dschuler 8y ago
The problem is that people just don't buy a lot of tablets compared to smartphones. This is true of iPhones and iPads also. If you take a look at the most recent annual SEC report for Apple [0], you can see that Apple sold 5 iPhones for every iPad in 2017, and the number of iPads sold has dropped for the two years prior to that. It doesn't matter if Google/Nvidia/Samsung could or couldn't make a good Android tablet when people just don't buy many of them, unfortunately. That said, I still have the Nexus 9 I got at Google I/O 2015, which didn't really live up to expectations despite costing as much as an iPad a the time. The rubberized plastic has begun to wear off, the display has started to show a small air bubble (!) in the top corner, and the flash speed is so slow that you can actually watch Chrome animate a new tab open. Not to mention Android 7.1 is the latest update for that device. I don't think Google tried to make a tablet that people would really want, so a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy there. I say this as a full-time Android developer, so maybe my expectations are a bit high, but who knows... [0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019317000070/a10-k20179302017.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/0000320193170...
- orbitingpluto 8y ago
  I've had two Nexus 9 tablets. One of them had a bright horizontal light filtering out from the border of the screen and was incredibly unreliable. The other Nexus 9 never skipped a beat, but it was the 16GB version. It was good enough that I skipped over getting the somewhat pricey Pixel C because it was good enough. I regret that.
- ksec 8y ago
  But iPad has a much longer replacement cycle. There are roughly 350M iPad still in use , and as a device usage number it is still growing. So I don't think tablet is dead, it is being used in places and usage we never thought before.
- GordonS 8y ago
  I think this is a good point. For some reason, being seen with a new phone seems to have more 'street cred' associated with it than with tablets. Maybe it's just because most people tend to use their phone in public more often than their tablet.
nafizh 8y ago
With the new low cost Ipad, Apple will absolutely kill any and all competition. I am a graduate student, bought the new ipad with 290$ + 90$ pencil from my university book store. My life has totally changed. All my notes, and research now happens in the ipad. The writing is so smooth it feels like I have been doing it all along, and I won't ever need to go back to pen and paper. It is a mind blowing combination of hardware and software. And with the cost down, now within many people's reach who never thought of owning one.
- hliyan 8y ago
  $329 + $99 unless you're a student... Question: can it do handwriting recognition?
  - nafizh 8y ago
    There are many apps in the app store that do handwriting recognition.
  - tomduncalf 8y ago
    Both Apple Notes and Notability make handwriting searchable. There are handwriting to text apps available on the App Store too, haven’t personally tried one.
- GordonS 8y ago
  I'm so used to typing that I actually rarely write with a pen; actually feels odd when I do, and my hand cramps up fairly quickly. Give me a keyboard any day of the week for note taking!
  - nafizh 8y ago
    That is fine. Different people have different ways to learn in terms of efficiency. Btw, there is research that I can't remember off the top of my head, that shows writing down notes is more efficient than typing in terms of retaining the material.
orbitingpluto 8y ago
What I want to know is why new exercise equipment is running Android 2.2 Froyo. I had to reboot a brand new stair climber with an Android interface today. Software kept crashing whenever I tried to select an exercise profile.
skybrian 8y ago
Apparently some newer Chromebooks run Android and have a tablet mode. Maybe that means dedicated tablets aren't needed anymore?
- deltron3030 8y ago
  Seems so. If you think about it, having smartphones, smaller tablets (<= 7") running the same OS as 10/13" tablets didn't make sense in first place, because they're just used differently. This also reflects in UI design, it makes more sense to group a 10" tablet into a small laptop category, instead of grouping them with 5 ~ 7" phones or small tablets half the width. From a holistic perspective, regarding UI frameworks and the developer experience in general, grouping by screen real estate vs. device category could make the entire organization of things much simpler, improving the developer experience by a lot. Apple might do the same, turning their iPads into their new non pro laptop line down the road. They already ditched the "mini" versions of their tablets a while ago, and their UI framework switched from device category adaptability to adaptability based on screen real estate. (e.g. a phone app could just be a sidebar, and a tablet app the main content area on a 16:10 screen).
hsljekskfh 8y ago
recently i tried to find a high end tablet to demo my mobile game and i found that the best technical tablet specs belonged to an nvidia shield from three years ago. not surprised about this. tablets have been going down in market share consistently for years and apple has cornered the market on nice new tablets.
jimjimjim 8y ago
everytime there is a tablet article on hn i feel the need to ask if there is a replacement tablet at least as good as the nexus 7. mine is physically looking a bit rough these days and i'm worried what I can do if it finally breaks. 7inch tablets are the perfect size for reading ebooks on a train or in bed.
- Macha 8y ago
  The old answer was the 8" Nvidia shield, which like the Nexus 7 is just better than most current android tablets. unfortunately that is also discontinued now.
pjmlp 8y ago
All tablets worth using are using Windows 10. Microsoft might have lost the mobile OS war, but outside US they won the tablets and convertibles one.
makecheck 8y ago
For me the tablet form factor was killed not by apps but ironically the non-apps: web browsing went from perfection to trash once sites tried to detect touch screens and “improve their experiences”. Pinch-and-zoom with normal sites goes a long way and should have been the preferred tablet web model.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  +1 honestly the optimization for tablets made every UI trash. Don't forget Windows 8 & 10's new interfaces.
- oblong 8y ago
  You know you can get back that behavior through accessible settings?
- 7952 8y ago
  I have Microsoft's RDP app on my tablet. It is shocking how well old fashioned windows software works with it. The app seemlessly converts your taps into mouse inputs, and you can bring up a cursor if you need to. It is not perfect, but I prefer it to a badly designed tablet UI.
- superflyguy 8y ago
  What tablet do you use? I can pinch to zoom the same on my Android tablet as on my Android phone - unsurprisingly, really, as I'm using the same browser (Firefox) on both.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago
  Reddit is trying to force me into downloading their app and constantly switches to the mobile interface. I always have to request desktop site, as I really like the desktop format, using pinch and zoom.
  - chapium 8y ago
    Same here, their requests are getting more and more intrusive. I'm about to abandon the platform. The desktop site works so well on mobile, I'm not sure why they want to move away from that.
erikb 8y ago
Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 (the latter one being a mini tablet) were the best mobile devices I ever had. They worked well together and on their own. Combined with a real laptop and smart tv I really had all the sizes I could ever want to have. The problem, I think, is not that nobody wants tablets but that there simply isn't a good one to buy anymore.
- tracker1 8y ago
  It was almost as bad or worse than phones... updates were less frequent and today it's hard to tell what's new or old anymore... On Amazon I see everything from Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 etc. And nothing seems to have anything newer than Marshmallow on it. Google started selling "premium" devices, leaving thier middle/value segment behind, and Amazon's Fire devices are at the low end running 2012 spec hardware. It's hard to be enthusiastic about it.
sunstone 8y ago
A lot of tablet opinions on here. Mine is not yet represented (after 6 hours) so here it is. Yes I had the Nexus 7's, too slow and too small. The tablet you want is an 8 inch tablet for reading books, storing music and play lists (VLC of course), and browsing the web or reading books lying on your sofa. The best tablet at the moment that fits the bill is the ASUS ZenPad S 8.0 Z580C-B1-BK for $275 USD (newegg.com). Why? The screen is excellent at 2048x1536 pixels. Speed is fast enough to keep you happy. 2G of RAM and 32G of storage with option of SD card to max out for your music and movies. (Asus has a lot of cheaper tablets with low resolution screens so be careful to get the right one.) If you go for this tablet be sure to google to find out how to increase the Android version. It's a bit tricky but doable and worth it.
yason 8y ago
To me it makes sense. Tablets don't seem so hugely popular and they've become a commodity ages ago. Anecdotally, I've had a few and they all were left sitting in a drawer somewhere pretty soon. While I have my phone for quick lookups, a Chromebook for lightweight web browsing and long battery life, and laptops for "serious" computing (i.e. work, other programming, some gaming), I've never found much use for a tablet. And whatever use I had I could easily have done with one of the earliest tablets I had. No reason to buy a new tablet really, and not much of a reason to buy a tablet at all.
- eksemplar 8y ago
  I guess I’m an oddity, I can’t remeber the last time I went to HN or reddit on something other than my iPad. But I have an iPhone SE so maybe it’s just because I have a small screen phone that I rarely browse the web in it.
  - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
    You must be keeping work and HN/Reddit admirably seperate then :)
    - eksemplar 8y ago
      I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything on HN that was related to my job.
_o_ 8y ago
It is somhow understandable, phones keep contacts, call history, smses, emails, gps location,... tablet is mostly the same as workstation. I don't see any reason why they even tryed to have tablets, there is little synergy with their bussines model there.
em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
Google ditching another endeavor is not news, given its history.
Nicholas7900 8y ago
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IloveHN84 8y ago
They were defeated at their own game... Android was out of control the moment they allowed manufacturers to modify the OS, producing products that are no longer upgradable after buying them (the low end sector is seen as buy and throw).
dkobia 8y ago
I have a Huawei Mediapad M3. Lovely tablet that I use more than my iPad. Huawei is on a roll with hardware.
John_KZ 8y ago
A lot of comments here, but almost none of them are based on reality. Apples has ~20% of the market share, and amazon another ~10%. That leaves the entire 70% of the tablet market occupied by Android devices. I know HN has an unusual fondness for Apple's products but Apple products are not doing any damage to Google or Android, only to their buyers pockets.
flippyhead 8y ago
I didn't even know they sold tablets.
bhauer 8y ago
I am not surprised. What we think of today when we say "tablet" is a first-class computing device and I am of the opinion few people want a plurality of such devices in their life. This is due to what I call the "yet another application platform dilemma." At some saturation point, few people want the mental burden of adding the care and feeding of another device to their life. Few people want to manage numerous devices each of which requires installation and configuration of applications, processing of notifications they've seen elsewhere, and irksome routine updates. Multi-device living is exhausting when each device is a first-class application platform that (out of necessity) assumes it may be your exclusive piece of technology. A few years back, I argued [1] that we have forgotten an alternative definition of tablet, a device category that—were it executed well, and with today's capabilities—would be sufficiently compelling that I would buy several for my household: > In the early 2000s, Microsoft experimented with mobile display panels in a tablet form factor called "Smart Displays." ... Smart Displays provided access to your desktop computer via Wi-Fi. With their poorly executed hardware, short-sighted licensing limitations in Windows XP, immaturity of the RDP protocol, high prices, and essentially no marketing, Smart Displays were a certain failure from the start. > But theirs was a trajectory for tablets that has since been lost to history. They existed to bring your singular computing environment to you, wherever you were, in a convenient form factor. That singular computing platform with multiple views model is what I have wanted essentially my whole life. I've called it "PAO" (Personal Application Omnipresence) [2] for the last several years. I believe it's a model that could be highly compelling if executed broadly by a tech titan willing to try something different. [1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/why-tablet-sales-are-falling http://tiamat.tsotech.com/why-tablet-sales-are-falling [2] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao
- jeroenhd 8y ago
  FINALLY, someone who had the same idea as me. I've actively looked for ways to do something like this and even considered setting something like this up in a quick and dirty way (by abusing X forwarding over the internet across devices; probably the closest I'll get to making this system work without modifying every program on my computer). The sheer inefficiency of getting my email on my phone, laptop, PC and tablet across several apps without any of them communicating between them is driving me mad. I have an overpowered gaming machine in my room and a slow, old Samsung tablet near my bed. If I want to read something in bed, I'll have to suffer through the slow Chrome browser with all of its lag and lack of hardware accelerated decoding while there's a machine with incredible graphical power available _right there_. I'd love to turn my tablet into a thin client for my PC, but that requires a mix of slow or unstable remote desktop apps. In my mind, this concept would also have other devices help with the workload. For example, when my server is busy running compilers, my laptop can kick in and help out with some of the work by doing the Javascript for my tablet. This makes the work more complicated, but combines the power of my collection of personal devices into a single platform. I really hope someone or some company can help the world move this way. It's been done before in part back when thin clients were the latest hit and after the last few years, responsive design has been normalized to the point combined systems like these have a real chance of becoming the next thing in computing. Sadly, I fear the moment this becomes popular the general population will just pick a cloud-based solution so they don't need to set up an application server, which gives companies like Amazon and Google even more power and data then they already have.
nashashmi 8y ago
I don't like the name of this article. "Quits" is akin to giving up. It should have been "Google no longer promotes Android tablets" and the larger reason for this is that they have a competing product called Google Chromebook Tablet which will eventually run Android apps natively and with a plethora of features.
PeterMikhailov 8y ago
I LOVE my tablet. Badly titled article. Google is not "giving up on tablets". You feel shame now.
tracker1 8y ago
If there was a decent tablet made in the last 4-5 years that cost less than $250, I'd probably get it... my last one was the Nvidia Shield Tablet, which was nice, if a bit heavy, and the battery quickly stopped taking a charge... I haven't even turned it on in over a year. Before that was the Nexus 7, which was great, until OS updates made it run like a dog. In the end, the shield has had better support than most, but that era of battery tech was just really bad. I don't want an iThing.
- leadingthenet 8y ago
  “I don't want an iThing.” Your loss, because it’s exactly the device which would address your complaints.
  - tracker1 8y ago
    As a developer, I just don't like the Apple experience all around. I do use macos on my desktop and laptop is a rmbp. The iPod/Pad/Phone is just too locked down for my taste.
- sjdbwixb 8y ago
  Huawei mediapad was going for 220 brand new last year with a 2k screen and monster battery. Seems like it's all gone though
  - tracker1 8y ago
    But which mediapad? I mean there are several results on Amazon.. M3, M3 Lite, M5, T2, T3 and several others... at even just the search results on Amazon glance, it's hard to tell what's what, what the MSRP is, what the expected price should be, what's current, what's old. How long will updates be supported. I really wish that LineageOS gave some better guidance, I'd love a good community supported device, or clear(er) modeling. It's funny, but I know enough about PCs to compare specs, but not nearly enough about tablets, ARM etc. I get what a lot of people looking at computers feel like. --- edit: Looks like the M5 is the current hotness, not sure about T3 etc. Just ordered one, thanks for the reference. It's just hard to know. Also, looks like there should be a LineageOS port, if it's still 8.0 and not 8.1 yet.
techsin101 8y ago
Time for fuschia os
mike_kamau 8y ago
Such a shame.

398 points by lando2319 8y ago

My favorite tablet ever made is discontinued and I never got to buy it[0] and it had a design that made complete sense to me. It is the only tablet where the speakers are facing you and they're on the top and bottom (idk any other tablet doing this...) and they're really loud. My fiance has one because I recommended it to her, and her parents got it for her as a graduation present. It has it's funky moments, but I'm upset they never renewed it. It was slick and no nonsense. It's a gaming tablet, but a tablet is a tablet. Dear Nvidia, bring back the Nvidia Shield Tablet and market it better. Market it for everyone, not just 'gamers' and you could make a killing off it, if you QA it enough. I love Android and want a serious tablet, but instead I have an iPad. I just don't understand why nobody makes a decent (more competitive like the Shield) Android Tablet. [0]: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/tablet/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/tablet/

Mononokay 8y ago
There're a few used ones on Amazon, although that might not be something you'd want.
sliken 8y ago
Sadly the nvidia shield tablet CPU is pretty weak these days. Nvidia even filed with the FCC for a tablet with a better CPU, but never shipped it.
crooked-v 8y ago
From what I understand, the Nintendo Switch is pretty much a (newer) Shield reference system implementation with a different OS. There's also a working exploit to run Ubuntu on the Switch right now: https://gbatemp.net/threads/quick-tuto-how-to-boot-linux-on-your-switch.501918/ https://gbatemp.net/threads/quick-tuto-how-to-boot-linux-on-...
- freehunter 8y ago
  I would love to be able to stream games from my PC onto my Switch like you could with the Shield. It's just such a convenient system to play.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    Steam link would be a pretty cool app to have on the switch. Unfortunately, I doubt that will ever happen, since it would undercut a lot of Nintendo's control of the system.
  - knuththetruth 8y ago
    It’s only a matter of time since the device has been completely hacked now. Check for updates on the related subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/switchhaxing https://www.reddit.com/r/switchhaxing Might want to pick one up in the near future though. Nintendo has a hardware update in the works to remedy the unpatcheable tegra exploit in current models.
    - bitwize 8y ago
      There's also the fact that if Nintendo detects that you have a hacked Switch, they will ban you from all their online services even if you log in from a different device.
      - giancarlostoro 8y ago
        If you get a 2nd Switch for hacking purposes and never login but wipe the OS can they still really detect this? Would be cool to just have Android on a Switch honestly. I love the Switch but if I ever did any modding for mine I'd buy an entirely new Switch for that. I miss the PSP hacking scene and when the PSP was still fairly relevant so people were actively working on things for it.
  - MBCook 8y ago
    I’m guessing it would absolutely never happened, but I would happily pay money for the ability to have my PS4 stream games to my Switch. Like the Vita.
freehunter 8y ago
>the speakers are facing you and they're on the top and bottom This drives me crazy on my iPad. My phone came out in 2016 and has stereo speakers. My iPad came out in 2017 and despite being massive in comparison with tons of available space (and weirdly, a headphone jack) it only has one speaker. Yet I never watch movies on my phone and I do it all the time on my iPad, where it makes way more sense to have stereo speakers. Get your shit together Apple.
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  The iPad Mini (2012) and iPad Air (2013) and all iPads since have stereo speakers on either side of the bottom edge. They're laid out for portrait though, since Apple treats that as the standard orientation. Not ideal for watching movies. The Pro versions have four speakers in the corners and adjust which pair are left vs right depending on whether you're in portrait or landscape.
  - garyclarke27 8y ago
    Yes how stupid to assume portrait, I (and everyone I know) have always used iPads in landscape mode! And why on earth do their crappy speakers face backwards ??
    - tinus_hn 8y ago
      Makes you wonder why Apple doesn’t hire you as their designer! Obviously you have got all the answers!
  - freehunter 8y ago
    Plus Apple’s official case (Smart Cover) only allows you to prop it up in landscape mode, not portrait mode.
    - wlesieutre 8y ago
      Especially with split screen modes making landscape more powerful I have to wonder if they’ll change their tune and go for a landscape-first approach in the next redesign. Ditching the home button in favor of FaceID seems like it would be the right moment to move the camera and other sensors to the long edge opposite the keyboard connection.

sliken 8y ago

I loved my nexus-7, and the 2nd gen nexus-7 even more. Inexpensive, pure android, decent hardware spec, and a usefully larger display than a phone. Anyone know of a current table that avoids the adware, crapware, and 3d contact managers where each card flies around in 3D? I just want android with the current security updates and 7-9" display.

toomuchgov 8y ago
Nvidia Shield from eBay?
atomi 8y ago
Nexus 7 2013 is still a great tablet.
- Too 8y ago
  While the Nexus7 gen 2 was, and to some extent still is, a great tablet. I don't think i would recommend anyone to buy it today. It's stuck on Android 6.0 with known security vulnerabilities and the performance is starting to fall a bit behind the software "development".
  - phjesusthatguy3 8y ago
    True, but you can get a refurb unit for about $100 and put LineageOS on it. We've had five of them through this house (the kids use them) and I haven't seen anything they want to do that it can't.
gruez 8y ago
go over to https://download.lineageos.org/ https://download.lineageos.org/ and find a supported tablet. pros: no crapware (nearly stock android), weekly updates cons: needs unlocked bootloader, not the newest and greatest (manufacturers take their sweet time to release kernel sources), weekly rolling release
- trumped 8y ago

assblaster 8y ago

I have a Pixelbook and I love it, more useful than a tablet because of the attached keyboard, and it still has a touch screen. I think hybrid tablet computers will be the way forward versus clunky tablets which are useful mostly for large format reading.

kelnos 8y ago

> ... few people see any reason to upgrade a device that was originally sold for its simplicity and ease of use, not its specs. I, for one, have been using the third-gen (1st Retina) iPad since its release approximately 500 years ago and have never felt any compulsion whatsoever to get a new one. This seems a little weird to me. Don't tablets age in a similar way that smartphones age? As in, the battery gets weaker over time (sure, often you can replace); OS updates, being designed for current hardware, cause slowdowns; apps written for the latest-and-greatest assume more resources and higher specs, etc.? I guess if all you use your tablet for is watching videos on YouTube, and don't care about OS updates (which you should, if you care about security at all), then maybe it's ok. I think a more plausible reason for sales numbers falling is that people just don't need or want tablets as much as they thought they did, especially with smartphone screens getting larger with every generation.

FussyZeus 8y ago
Anecdotal: my iPads have never aged the way my iPhones do. As to the reasons, I suspect the primary is just where and how it's used: I beat the piss out of my iphones, dropping them, using them out of good areas, on the go, in the car, while eating, etc. where my iPads have a comparatively nice existence largely in my home. The most strenuous environment I use my tablets in is my porch. But yeah, I just recently upgraded from an Air to the iPad Pro, mostly for the bigger screen and pencil. I had no reason to replace the current one other than having no reason to have two; 5 years on, it was kicking just as hard as ever.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  My iPad Air has slown down to be almost unusable. It is ancient, and I’m guessing it’s the battery + software throttle going on, but it is still very reminiscent of an aging iPhone.
  - MBCook 8y ago
    I’m not sure the throttling stuff really happens on the iPad. That was a check they added to the phones because of the unexpected shutdown issues, I don’t think that’s ever been much of a problem on the iPads because of their giant batteries. However there is a known issue where for some reason iOS can start to get extremely slow. Restoring from backup or doing a fresh install sometimes makes a device WAY faster. Not unlike Windows back in the 95 days. We solve reports of this when people were doing battery replacements. They go into Apple, get a new battery, and their phone wasn’t any faster. Then they’d do a fresh install and everything was fine. We also saw people give it a try before the battery replacement program was announced and have the same results. Basically, the batteries and the only reason iOS can get insanely slow. There’s obviously some kind of rail bug that can destroy performance. But a fresh install fixes it.

zdw 8y ago

The mid level tablet market died in a race to the bottom. Looking on aliexpress or taobao, you'll find dozens upon dozens of cheap tablets with CPU's from allwinner or rockchip, a few gigs of ram/flash and a not that great 8-10" screen for <$100. At higher price points you can get a chromebook with a keyboard and arguable more functionality. Completing against these are a few Samsung models that have their highly customized variant of Android, and Apple holding the premium ground with iOS/HW quality/price/performance, and MS selling the Surface with Windows for similar prices. The best we can hope for is for low end tablets to improve over the next few years.

drak0n1c 8y ago
Apple's newest full form-factor iPad is only $300, and often is available on sale for ~$270. I think that's made a big difference.
- the_snooze 8y ago
  I picked up one of those iPads at ~$270 with an academic discount, and it's a solid machine. Great battery life, good screen, enough space for a couple Netflix movies on flights. It doesn't feel cheap or compromised at all.
  - snuxoll 8y ago
    I just bought one for my five year old, it's a pretty damned impressive device - she loves drawing on my 12.9" iPad Pro and having Apple Pencil support across the whole product line means she can do so on a less expensive device (the 12.9" Pro is already beastly enough, I cannot bear to put a case on it). With some fairly large games loaded up we've still got roughly 40% of the storage free, and with app offloading in iOS 11 I don't really have to worry about space like I do on her now defunct Fire HD 7. With that being said, I couldn't downgrade to the 9.7" iPad from the Pro models, I didn't think the non-laminated screen would be too much of a deal but it really does make a huge difference.
    - 8y ago

__sr__ 8y ago

Good riddance! It’s not like they have actively been developing Android to support tablets. In fact, it is the other way around. The older versions had better support for tablets. Even Nexus 9 was a half hearted attempt at best — and the rest is history. Google’s lack of interest in nowhere more evident than their own apps — many of them were just scaled versions of phone apps. And if Google is not bothering to optimise their apps for tablets, what motivation do third party developers have? Strictly speaking, Android tablets never even competed in the same arena as the iPad. Samsung is an exception, but they don’t control the ecosystem — which makes things much harder for them — even if we ignore their atrocious software.

euyyn 8y ago
I admit that I haven't paid much attention. But the whole revamp of the UI framework into Fragments was precisely to let app developers support both phones and tablets. Why do you say older versions of Android had better support for tablets?
- wffurr 8y ago
  Lots of Android system UI and first party apps had better tablet interfaces in ICS than they do in Nougat or Oreo.
  - tomkarlo 8y ago
    This is a bit of a stretch. There was a lot of work done on improving tablet support in K, L and M, including work to specifically support the Nexus 9 and Pixel C. There was also the addition of multi-window, etc.
- foobarbazetc 8y ago
  It has nothing to do with APIs. Our app has a great tablet version, on par with iPad and we don’t use fragments at all. We just change things based on size. It’s more that Google obviously stopped caring about tablets many major versions ago.

buzzword 8y ago

Thanks

jxdxbx 8y ago

In think 8” tablets are a good form factor for content consumption (ebooks, movies, some games) but Android tablets always fall short even then. You need a good screen, especially for text. The 2015 iPad Mini 4 is still much better than any similarly-sized Android tablet.

megablast 8y ago
And unfortunately looks like it will be Apple's last in that form factor.
- MBCook 8y ago
  In some ways that makes sense. The Plus size iPhones aren’t that much smaller. And one of the biggest selling points of the mini was its price. But now you can get a full-size iPad that’s much faster for less than the mini was brand new. Only Apple knows what’s really going on. But it’s entirely possible sales fell off a cliff once the 6+ came out.
m-p-3 8y ago
To be honest most of the time I used my tablet was for reading stuff online. I sold it and bought a Kobo eReader instead. I push articles I want to read later to Pocket and read them there instead. My only wish would be to see a decent eReader with an email/calendar client to read my work emails on it and see my schedule. I looked at the reMarkable but despite its impressive annotation capabilities, it doesn't have anything else I would find useful at work.
- vanderZwan 8y ago
  > I looked at the reMarkable but despite its impressive annotation capabilities, it doesn't have anything else I would find useful at work. Same. I want to have an ePaper device that I can use for more than just reading stuff. I don't understand why they are all so underpowered by definition.
- jxdxbx 8y ago
  I use a 12.9” iPad Pro for most tablet purposes which is superior for me for everything except ebooks. It’s perfect for comics and PDFs and many games and it’s my laptop replacement when I travel (as an Old I prefer a real desktop computer, not a laptop, for day to day work). I agree that an ereader is ideal when compared with a small tablet; the Kobo Aura One is the perfect size and aspect ratio (7.9”, 4x3) for me but it doesn’t sync sideloaded books, and is a bit slow, and has no hardware buttons. But it does have Pocket as you mentioned which is pretty nice. A few reading-focused apps would indeed be welcome on ereaders. Overall Android had an advantage over iOS at first in its support for multiple phone sizes. But this just doesn’t scale well to tablets. You need separate human-designed tablet apps just like you can’t hope to have automatic layouts that scale between phones and desktops. I think Apple’s support for different sizes of screen is actually better than Android’s now, with different compact and normal portrait and landscape modes. The ironic thing is that a decent iPad layout for an iPhone app doesn’t need to take longer than an afternoon.

ygmelnikova 8y ago

Google sold tablets?

duxup 8y ago

My Chromebook that runs Android apps has replaced any need for a tablet for me. It is lighter than my bug laptop but still can get a lot done and if I want I fold it into tablet mode and I'm set.

limeblack 8y ago
This is not a serious solution at the time I tried this several months ago. Most of the apps I downloaded for Android were not optimized well for a Chromebook with text/window sizing, prevented resizing of the windows and were downright buggy(not registering presses and sometimes would even crash.)
- duxup 8y ago
  What model did you try? I'm using a Chromebook Plus, outside of the very first release when it supported apps, I haven't had any issues.
- Kudos 8y ago
  It's improving at a rapid pace. The more users run Android apps on Chromeos, the more devs are being forced to fix issues in that form factor to avoid 1 star reviews. My Pixelbook runs all the Android apps I'm interested in perfectly, including games like Hearthstone.

JVIDEL 8y ago

People are still using tablets?

amelius 8y ago
Nope, https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/25/tablets-are-dead/?guccounter=1 https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/25/tablets-are-dead/?guccount...
- JVIDEL 8y ago
  I don't get the downvotes

transfire 8y ago

The idea that the tablet is dead is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. It is probably the most useful form-factor there is -- at least ultimately. But it hasn't come to full fruition yet. Stylus writing is really necessary, and lighter weights will be a big deal. Ultimately the tablet will be ubiquitous, and therefore must necessarily become dirt cheap. There is little to no profit margin. Revenue will have to come from software. Which makes it really disappointing that Google has bowed out as they are probably in the best position to pull that off. But instead it looks like Amazon is going to own the tablet market too, generating revenue via eBooks.

ahartmetz 8y ago
Maybe we can declare laptops as tablets with integrated stand, extra powerful hardware, built-in keyboard for efficient text input, and a much larger, less regulated app ecosystem with much more featureful apps. Tablets are pretty dumb really, IMO. That has been my opinion since the beginning of the tablet hype. The only way for them to actually take over was for them to gain most features of "regular" computers - maybe in unexpected ways. It could have happened if Steve Jobs hadn't died so early. Smartphones are very different - you can carry them in your pocket and that is a huge deal. All the compromises make sense there.
- fragmede 8y ago
  While there are "flip" style laptops, most of them are not. Try typing on a laptop (and its keyboard) while standing/walking around and without a table or any surface to rest the laptop on. It's really cumbersome. The solutions are to hunt and peck type with both thumbs, or use one hand to hold the laptop and type with one hand, both of which are pretty dumb really, IMO. (Especially on a 15" laptop.)

Abishek_Muthian 8y ago

So ChromeOS with android apps it is, hopefully Google improves the android capabilities of ChromeOS; but I wonder whether the android on chromeOS will ever be nearly equal to a standalone version. As of now Google NaCL severly limits background services (for good?) of android apps, so you are required to keep it in foreground (above browser) for long operations. It's possible that, even threads are limited; as I noticed that some android apps which are heavily multi-threaded slows down on the Chromebook 11 N7 (Acer). Maybe this is Chromebook hardware specific, can anyone with a Pixelbook comment how good the android app performance is on their hardware?

Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago

This is somewhat strange. I thought tablets killed the PC market. My wife is a primary school teacher and it's very difficult to teach children to use a mouse because they all have tablets at home. I know Android tablets haven't been selling well, but that's because people like me have been desperately waiting for a decent device to be released. iPads are absolutely everywhere. What's the proposed alternative for media consumption? In particular reading, but even watching videos and playing "board" games etc.

Shank 8y ago
> I know Android tablets haven't been selling well, but that's because people like me have been desperately waiting for a decent device to be released. Amazon sells Fire tablets pretty easily. The problem is that there's Amazon, selling tablets for next to nothing, and Apple and Microsoft, selling premium tablets. The middle market has to be either exceptionally good to exist, or it just disappears. That's what happened.
- qwerty456127 8y ago
  > I know Android tablets haven't been selling well, but that's because people like me have been desperately waiting for a decent device to be released. Indeed. E.g. I want a tablet to be a as big as needed to view A4/Letter PDFs in 100% zoom without scrolling (so I'd be able to stop carrying papers with me) and have as much RAM as possible (at least 4 GiB). I'd also appreciate it to utilize the extra space available in this case by adding full-sized USB3 ports, and an external SD card reader to be used as removable media (in addition to the internal SD card reader to be used as the "hard drive" expansion).
sundvor 8y ago
Set them up with Fortnite and that won't be a problem much longer. (You'll have plenty of new ones, though!)
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  The new solitaire? When mice first became a thing, games were useful to teach the motor skills; I suppose there's no reason it wouldn't work again:)

lalos 8y ago

Is somebody keeping track of all the projects that Google quits? Back in the day we had this infographic https://www.wordstream.com/articles/retired-google-projects https://www.wordstream.com/articles/retired-google-projects

Shank 8y ago
Gwern tracks Google's services, but not necessarily cancelled hardware: http://www.gwern.net/Google-shutdowns http://www.gwern.net/Google-shutdowns

derefr 8y ago

> Cheap Kindle tablets from Amazon have proliferated somewhat, presumably as distractions for kids who would otherwise get fingerprints all over mom’s new phone, or for ultra-compact time-wasting on airplanes. Why does everybody think of only consumer-electronics uses for a $40 tablet? I think it would be quite obvious what the real use for these is: IoT control surfaces (the “smart fridge” upgrade), POS systems, inventory kiosks, etc. Embedded systems, in other words. And, heck, for $40 apiece, you can embed them into every desk in your office as a personalizeable dashboard. Or hand them out with preloaded maps on them to every participant in a missing-persons search. In fact, for $40, you could just set the display to a single colour and call it a cheaper alternative to a smart lightbulb. :P

akhilcacharya 8y ago
I agree completely! I've been thinking about why the rise of the ultra-cheap Fire tablets haven't created a new maker revolution so to speak. They can be had for cheaper than the RPi for Black Friday with a built in screen!
- mindslight 8y ago
  I thought those things were defective-by-design, and nobody had really succeeded in fixing them?
- djrogers 8y ago
  Well it’s not as if Amazon lets you hack around around on them or side load apps - you’re stuck with the Amazon store unless you try a dodgy exploit based unlocking method - which leaves you with a questionable tablet.
  - dawnerd 8y ago
    Exactly. And they sneakily auto update before you realize it. My older one apparently can’t be rooted now and because they pump new ones out there’s no one really caring about the old ones. Hard to complain for the price but ya know still sucks. They make great gifts at least.

mortdeus 8y ago

Im just happy that tablets are finally dead. You have a super supped up desktop computer at home sitting on your desk, and you have a relatively supped up smart phone sitting in your pocket when you cant be sitting at your desk. Where does tablets fit into this scenario? It doesn't. All tablets do is make app developers think they can somehow make app experiences you can only achieve on the desktop, somehow attainable on the go. sorry for the bad grammar. kinda tipsy

fireattack 8y ago
Read books and watch videos in the bed. For me at least.
- whatsstolat 8y ago
  > watch videos I prefer a laptop for this as I can sit it down. Plus the bigger screen.
wepple 8y ago
I don’t want to read a book or watch a few YouTube clips or browse twitter whilst sitting at my desk in my office, nor do I want to poke at a tiny screen. Tablets are thriving, just not android tablets.
- izacus 8y ago
  Even Android tablets are still selling very well. Just not the 500$ models competing with iPads. People buy 200$ Chinese models because they provide the same experience for most tablet use cases.
  - GalacticDomin8r 8y ago
    Yep pretty hard to beat my Lenovo Tab 2 10 for my purpose and have used tablets daily for years. M
sundvor 8y ago

foobaw 8y ago

I used to work on Tablets with Google. Tablets have higher margins so it's a very attractive business for OEMs but compatibility was definitely an issue. Tons of Android apps weren't developed with screen compatibility in mind so QA was a nightmare (Sending massive emails to app developers asking them to fix their apps).

013a 8y ago

Microsoft seems like the only company that understands tablets right now. They should be more like computers, not more like phones. There's also a pretty great argument that given all of our phones are absolute powerhouses nowadays, phones should also be less like phones and more like computers. I'm hopeful Microsoft can also move to spur on this change; maybe soon the market will be ready for the return of Windows Phone.

ce4 8y ago
I have an Asus Chromebook flip and love the form factor. It can be used in tablet mode (360 hinges) and runs almost all Android apps. Pro: cheap, physical keyboard, 10hrs runtime, lightweight Con: flaky touch, proprietary charger, mine needs a new battery, no gps
esturk 8y ago
It's only a matter of time for the convergence of phones and Dex like docking functionality. I'm actually surprised Google isn't exploring this area more because it will really kick up the versality of phones. I guess Google doesn't want phones to cannabalize their Chromebook marketshare.
- jbigelow76 8y ago
  I guess Google doesn't want phones to cannabalize their Chromebook marketshare. Android, Chrome, and ChromeOS exist as channels for Google to deliver its services, they are not profit centers in and of themselves (no license fee for Android, Chrome is a free download, ChromeOS runs on the cheapest hardware out there). Google would have no qualms about gutting the ChromeOS market if whatever replaced it offered a better opportunity to get their services in front of more eyeballs.
  - 0xFFC 8y ago
    Exactly. This is the core strategy for Google. And it makes sense, because google makes money from ads. Not android or chromeos
- 8y ago

joering2 8y ago

Interesting thread but am I the only one here that still enjoys JooJoo tablet some 8 years later? Sure they didnt ship too many units but os is based on linux so all sorts of updates are welcome. Furthermore the batery on this thing is insane- some 6 days without charging!

hyperpallium 8y ago

Phones have become tablets. The trend continues. We had to go via small phones, to adapt to touchscreens. Change in behaviour is the adoption barrier.

usernameforgot 8y ago

These days when I'm not at my desk I carry a Samsung Tab A 10" tablet, a small Logitech bluetooth keyboard, and do all my coding in Termux. Basically my ideal hardware format, just wish I could get a bigger screen and maybe some more CPU. The idea that this kind of device should have a built-in keyboard is strange to me. It's stuck to the screen!

fencepost 8y ago

I'll probably be picking up a new 10" tablet in the next couple of months, but it'll be for use as an ebook reader for computer books and for use as a second monitor (https://www.splashtop.com/wiredxdisplay https://www.splashtop.com/wiredxdisplay) when I'm away from my desk. It may not be the same as an external 14" monitor, but it'll be a lot more portable.

bitmapbrother 8y ago

The news simply suggests Google isn't selling tablets anymore on their store. Their last tablet was the Pixel C which was discontinued on December 28, 2017 so this news isn't exactly surprising. This does not mean, however, that Android tablet are going away. You're still going to see tablets from Samsung, Huawei, Lenovo, Acer, Asus, etc. https://www.statista.com/statistics/276635/market-share-held-by-tablet-vendors/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/276635/market-share-held...

qop 8y ago

Android tablets were awful software on great hardware. Or decent hardware. Sometimes great. I hope that if fuchsia becomes the next Google mobile device os, that they take special care to not fragment it into a million pieces within the first few years. Actually, I don't really care what they do after this year. I'm gonna switch to iphone+ipad mini, and Google can go fuck themselves, which they usually do anyways.

dschuler 8y ago

The problem is that people just don't buy a lot of tablets compared to smartphones. This is true of iPhones and iPads also. If you take a look at the most recent annual SEC report for Apple [0], you can see that Apple sold 5 iPhones for every iPad in 2017, and the number of iPads sold has dropped for the two years prior to that. It doesn't matter if Google/Nvidia/Samsung could or couldn't make a good Android tablet when people just don't buy many of them, unfortunately. That said, I still have the Nexus 9 I got at Google I/O 2015, which didn't really live up to expectations despite costing as much as an iPad a the time. The rubberized plastic has begun to wear off, the display has started to show a small air bubble (!) in the top corner, and the flash speed is so slow that you can actually watch Chrome animate a new tab open. Not to mention Android 7.1 is the latest update for that device. I don't think Google tried to make a tablet that people would really want, so a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy there. I say this as a full-time Android developer, so maybe my expectations are a bit high, but who knows... [0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019317000070/a10-k20179302017.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/0000320193170...

orbitingpluto 8y ago
I've had two Nexus 9 tablets. One of them had a bright horizontal light filtering out from the border of the screen and was incredibly unreliable. The other Nexus 9 never skipped a beat, but it was the 16GB version. It was good enough that I skipped over getting the somewhat pricey Pixel C because it was good enough. I regret that.
ksec 8y ago
But iPad has a much longer replacement cycle. There are roughly 350M iPad still in use , and as a device usage number it is still growing. So I don't think tablet is dead, it is being used in places and usage we never thought before.
GordonS 8y ago
I think this is a good point. For some reason, being seen with a new phone seems to have more 'street cred' associated with it than with tablets. Maybe it's just because most people tend to use their phone in public more often than their tablet.

nafizh 8y ago

With the new low cost Ipad, Apple will absolutely kill any and all competition. I am a graduate student, bought the new ipad with 290$ + 90$ pencil from my university book store. My life has totally changed. All my notes, and research now happens in the ipad. The writing is so smooth it feels like I have been doing it all along, and I won't ever need to go back to pen and paper. It is a mind blowing combination of hardware and software. And with the cost down, now within many people's reach who never thought of owning one.

hliyan 8y ago
$329 + $99 unless you're a student... Question: can it do handwriting recognition?
- nafizh 8y ago
  There are many apps in the app store that do handwriting recognition.
- tomduncalf 8y ago
  Both Apple Notes and Notability make handwriting searchable. There are handwriting to text apps available on the App Store too, haven’t personally tried one.
GordonS 8y ago
I'm so used to typing that I actually rarely write with a pen; actually feels odd when I do, and my hand cramps up fairly quickly. Give me a keyboard any day of the week for note taking!
- nafizh 8y ago
  That is fine. Different people have different ways to learn in terms of efficiency. Btw, there is research that I can't remember off the top of my head, that shows writing down notes is more efficient than typing in terms of retaining the material.

orbitingpluto 8y ago

What I want to know is why new exercise equipment is running Android 2.2 Froyo. I had to reboot a brand new stair climber with an Android interface today. Software kept crashing whenever I tried to select an exercise profile.

skybrian 8y ago

Apparently some newer Chromebooks run Android and have a tablet mode. Maybe that means dedicated tablets aren't needed anymore?

deltron3030 8y ago
Seems so. If you think about it, having smartphones, smaller tablets (<= 7") running the same OS as 10/13" tablets didn't make sense in first place, because they're just used differently. This also reflects in UI design, it makes more sense to group a 10" tablet into a small laptop category, instead of grouping them with 5 ~ 7" phones or small tablets half the width. From a holistic perspective, regarding UI frameworks and the developer experience in general, grouping by screen real estate vs. device category could make the entire organization of things much simpler, improving the developer experience by a lot. Apple might do the same, turning their iPads into their new non pro laptop line down the road. They already ditched the "mini" versions of their tablets a while ago, and their UI framework switched from device category adaptability to adaptability based on screen real estate. (e.g. a phone app could just be a sidebar, and a tablet app the main content area on a 16:10 screen).

hsljekskfh 8y ago

recently i tried to find a high end tablet to demo my mobile game and i found that the best technical tablet specs belonged to an nvidia shield from three years ago. not surprised about this. tablets have been going down in market share consistently for years and apple has cornered the market on nice new tablets.

jimjimjim 8y ago

everytime there is a tablet article on hn i feel the need to ask if there is a replacement tablet at least as good as the nexus 7. mine is physically looking a bit rough these days and i'm worried what I can do if it finally breaks. 7inch tablets are the perfect size for reading ebooks on a train or in bed.

Macha 8y ago
The old answer was the 8" Nvidia shield, which like the Nexus 7 is just better than most current android tablets. unfortunately that is also discontinued now.

pjmlp 8y ago

All tablets worth using are using Windows 10. Microsoft might have lost the mobile OS war, but outside US they won the tablets and convertibles one.

makecheck 8y ago

For me the tablet form factor was killed not by apps but ironically the non-apps: web browsing went from perfection to trash once sites tried to detect touch screens and “improve their experiences”. Pinch-and-zoom with normal sites goes a long way and should have been the preferred tablet web model.

mehrdadn 8y ago
+1 honestly the optimization for tablets made every UI trash. Don't forget Windows 8 & 10's new interfaces.
oblong 8y ago
You know you can get back that behavior through accessible settings?
7952 8y ago
I have Microsoft's RDP app on my tablet. It is shocking how well old fashioned windows software works with it. The app seemlessly converts your taps into mouse inputs, and you can bring up a cursor if you need to. It is not perfect, but I prefer it to a badly designed tablet UI.
superflyguy 8y ago
What tablet do you use? I can pinch to zoom the same on my Android tablet as on my Android phone - unsurprisingly, really, as I'm using the same browser (Firefox) on both.
qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago
Reddit is trying to force me into downloading their app and constantly switches to the mobile interface. I always have to request desktop site, as I really like the desktop format, using pinch and zoom.
- chapium 8y ago
  Same here, their requests are getting more and more intrusive. I'm about to abandon the platform. The desktop site works so well on mobile, I'm not sure why they want to move away from that.

erikb 8y ago

Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 (the latter one being a mini tablet) were the best mobile devices I ever had. They worked well together and on their own. Combined with a real laptop and smart tv I really had all the sizes I could ever want to have. The problem, I think, is not that nobody wants tablets but that there simply isn't a good one to buy anymore.

tracker1 8y ago
It was almost as bad or worse than phones... updates were less frequent and today it's hard to tell what's new or old anymore... On Amazon I see everything from Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 etc. And nothing seems to have anything newer than Marshmallow on it. Google started selling "premium" devices, leaving thier middle/value segment behind, and Amazon's Fire devices are at the low end running 2012 spec hardware. It's hard to be enthusiastic about it.

sunstone 8y ago

A lot of tablet opinions on here. Mine is not yet represented (after 6 hours) so here it is. Yes I had the Nexus 7's, too slow and too small. The tablet you want is an 8 inch tablet for reading books, storing music and play lists (VLC of course), and browsing the web or reading books lying on your sofa. The best tablet at the moment that fits the bill is the ASUS ZenPad S 8.0 Z580C-B1-BK for $275 USD (newegg.com). Why? The screen is excellent at 2048x1536 pixels. Speed is fast enough to keep you happy. 2G of RAM and 32G of storage with option of SD card to max out for your music and movies. (Asus has a lot of cheaper tablets with low resolution screens so be careful to get the right one.) If you go for this tablet be sure to google to find out how to increase the Android version. It's a bit tricky but doable and worth it.

yason 8y ago

To me it makes sense. Tablets don't seem so hugely popular and they've become a commodity ages ago. Anecdotally, I've had a few and they all were left sitting in a drawer somewhere pretty soon. While I have my phone for quick lookups, a Chromebook for lightweight web browsing and long battery life, and laptops for "serious" computing (i.e. work, other programming, some gaming), I've never found much use for a tablet. And whatever use I had I could easily have done with one of the earliest tablets I had. No reason to buy a new tablet really, and not much of a reason to buy a tablet at all.

eksemplar 8y ago
I guess I’m an oddity, I can’t remeber the last time I went to HN or reddit on something other than my iPad. But I have an iPhone SE so maybe it’s just because I have a small screen phone that I rarely browse the web in it.
- fauigerzigerk 8y ago
  You must be keeping work and HN/Reddit admirably seperate then :)
  - eksemplar 8y ago
    I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything on HN that was related to my job.

_o_ 8y ago

It is somhow understandable, phones keep contacts, call history, smses, emails, gps location,... tablet is mostly the same as workstation. I don't see any reason why they even tryed to have tablets, there is little synergy with their bussines model there.

em3rgent0rdr 8y ago

Google ditching another endeavor is not news, given its history.

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IloveHN84 8y ago

They were defeated at their own game... Android was out of control the moment they allowed manufacturers to modify the OS, producing products that are no longer upgradable after buying them (the low end sector is seen as buy and throw).

dkobia 8y ago

I have a Huawei Mediapad M3. Lovely tablet that I use more than my iPad. Huawei is on a roll with hardware.

John_KZ 8y ago

A lot of comments here, but almost none of them are based on reality. Apples has ~20% of the market share, and amazon another ~10%. That leaves the entire 70% of the tablet market occupied by Android devices. I know HN has an unusual fondness for Apple's products but Apple products are not doing any damage to Google or Android, only to their buyers pockets.

flippyhead 8y ago

I didn't even know they sold tablets.

bhauer 8y ago

I am not surprised. What we think of today when we say "tablet" is a first-class computing device and I am of the opinion few people want a plurality of such devices in their life. This is due to what I call the "yet another application platform dilemma." At some saturation point, few people want the mental burden of adding the care and feeding of another device to their life. Few people want to manage numerous devices each of which requires installation and configuration of applications, processing of notifications they've seen elsewhere, and irksome routine updates. Multi-device living is exhausting when each device is a first-class application platform that (out of necessity) assumes it may be your exclusive piece of technology. A few years back, I argued [1] that we have forgotten an alternative definition of tablet, a device category that—were it executed well, and with today's capabilities—would be sufficiently compelling that I would buy several for my household: > In the early 2000s, Microsoft experimented with mobile display panels in a tablet form factor called "Smart Displays." ... Smart Displays provided access to your desktop computer via Wi-Fi. With their poorly executed hardware, short-sighted licensing limitations in Windows XP, immaturity of the RDP protocol, high prices, and essentially no marketing, Smart Displays were a certain failure from the start. > But theirs was a trajectory for tablets that has since been lost to history. They existed to bring your singular computing environment to you, wherever you were, in a convenient form factor. That singular computing platform with multiple views model is what I have wanted essentially my whole life. I've called it "PAO" (Personal Application Omnipresence) [2] for the last several years. I believe it's a model that could be highly compelling if executed broadly by a tech titan willing to try something different. [1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/why-tablet-sales-are-falling http://tiamat.tsotech.com/why-tablet-sales-are-falling [2] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao

jeroenhd 8y ago
FINALLY, someone who had the same idea as me. I've actively looked for ways to do something like this and even considered setting something like this up in a quick and dirty way (by abusing X forwarding over the internet across devices; probably the closest I'll get to making this system work without modifying every program on my computer). The sheer inefficiency of getting my email on my phone, laptop, PC and tablet across several apps without any of them communicating between them is driving me mad. I have an overpowered gaming machine in my room and a slow, old Samsung tablet near my bed. If I want to read something in bed, I'll have to suffer through the slow Chrome browser with all of its lag and lack of hardware accelerated decoding while there's a machine with incredible graphical power available _right there_. I'd love to turn my tablet into a thin client for my PC, but that requires a mix of slow or unstable remote desktop apps. In my mind, this concept would also have other devices help with the workload. For example, when my server is busy running compilers, my laptop can kick in and help out with some of the work by doing the Javascript for my tablet. This makes the work more complicated, but combines the power of my collection of personal devices into a single platform. I really hope someone or some company can help the world move this way. It's been done before in part back when thin clients were the latest hit and after the last few years, responsive design has been normalized to the point combined systems like these have a real chance of becoming the next thing in computing. Sadly, I fear the moment this becomes popular the general population will just pick a cloud-based solution so they don't need to set up an application server, which gives companies like Amazon and Google even more power and data then they already have.

nashashmi 8y ago

I don't like the name of this article. "Quits" is akin to giving up. It should have been "Google no longer promotes Android tablets" and the larger reason for this is that they have a competing product called Google Chromebook Tablet which will eventually run Android apps natively and with a plethora of features.

PeterMikhailov 8y ago

I LOVE my tablet. Badly titled article. Google is not "giving up on tablets". You feel shame now.

tracker1 8y ago

If there was a decent tablet made in the last 4-5 years that cost less than $250, I'd probably get it... my last one was the Nvidia Shield Tablet, which was nice, if a bit heavy, and the battery quickly stopped taking a charge... I haven't even turned it on in over a year. Before that was the Nexus 7, which was great, until OS updates made it run like a dog. In the end, the shield has had better support than most, but that era of battery tech was just really bad. I don't want an iThing.

leadingthenet 8y ago
“I don't want an iThing.” Your loss, because it’s exactly the device which would address your complaints.
- tracker1 8y ago
  As a developer, I just don't like the Apple experience all around. I do use macos on my desktop and laptop is a rmbp. The iPod/Pad/Phone is just too locked down for my taste.
sjdbwixb 8y ago
Huawei mediapad was going for 220 brand new last year with a 2k screen and monster battery. Seems like it's all gone though
- tracker1 8y ago
  But which mediapad? I mean there are several results on Amazon.. M3, M3 Lite, M5, T2, T3 and several others... at even just the search results on Amazon glance, it's hard to tell what's what, what the MSRP is, what the expected price should be, what's current, what's old. How long will updates be supported. I really wish that LineageOS gave some better guidance, I'd love a good community supported device, or clear(er) modeling. It's funny, but I know enough about PCs to compare specs, but not nearly enough about tablets, ARM etc. I get what a lot of people looking at computers feel like. --- edit: Looks like the M5 is the current hotness, not sure about T3 etc. Just ordered one, thanks for the reference. It's just hard to know. Also, looks like there should be a LineageOS port, if it's still 8.0 and not 8.1 yet.

techsin101 8y ago

Time for fuschia os

mike_kamau 8y ago

Such a shame.