7 ms·

Google says Android tablets are the future, starts staffing up new division

29 points by cpeterso 5y ago

encryptluks2 5y ago
Tablets will not be the future until they can find a better form of input than typing on a tablet.
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  This view seems to ignore the incredible success of the iPad.
  - bfrog 5y ago
    The iPad really has been the only tablet worth buying, it doesn’t cost that much at its lowest end device, has all the great and fast apps creators want (procreate is amazing) and really does it all well. I’ve never used an android device that didn’t always feel slow. Didn’t matter how new/fast the device was.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    Ok but is the iPad the future? I mean it seems to have plateaued at a very respectable position, but it doesn't look like it's going to conquer the world the way it looked a few years ago.
    - hulitu 5y ago
      Maybe if they reduce the price. For what it offers, it's expensive.
  - manachar 5y ago
    The iPad selling well annoys me, as it's prevented a touchscreen/drawable MacBook. Apple and most others would rather us have broken and locked down operating systems that sell us apps, it's more profitable for them and increasingly it's what consumers want to.
    - LeoPanthera 5y ago
      > The iPad selling well annoys me, as it's prevented a touchscreen/drawable MacBook. I am extremely grateful that this has been Apple's path, because I don't want touch screen support in macOS. It would inevitably make it worse for keyboard and mouse usage, as has happened with both Windows and Gnome.
    - ako 5y ago
      I have a laptop with touchscreen, mostly forget about it until i by accident touch the screen, and then usually it does something irritating. The touchscreen is more of a problem then a benefit. The only devices that really benefit from a touchscreen are phones and tablets. And there for certain types of apps it may even be a better input device than keyboard and mouse. This could be one of those situations: https://www.shapr3d.com/ https://www.shapr3d.com/
      - sdoering 5y ago
        I am in the other camp. I have a convertible and regularly use it in tablet mode. Be it when using whiteboard in a remote presentation, be it when reading pdf and doing annotations. Sometimes I even do work in photo editing with the pen on the screen. Afterwards I just switch back into normal mode and use it to create presentations, write code and just do my work. I think there are different types of people/users with different types of needs. Why not provide for both. Other vendors do this by providing the same model as regular and as convertible version.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    Although it has never threatened the Mac in the way many expected. Even Microsoft pivoted their operating system to be tablet friendly, at the expense of desktop users, only to find the market is quite small.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    You mean the success where they were forced to make a laptop out of it with a set of Apple keyboards for iPads, because people were buying those from Logitech et al anyway?
- smt88 5y ago
  Keyboard covers solved that problem a long time ago.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    What do we call a screen + keyboard cover? Right, a laptop.
    - smt88 5y ago
      Most laptops don't have: - detachable keyboards - touchscreens - Android or iOS apps It's very likely Google's Android tablet ambitions are intended to compete with hybrid devices like iPads and Surfaces.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        1 and 2 are fixed by buying a hybrid or 2-1 laptop, or whatever you want to call it. The third point is being sorted out with Windows 11, although there is seldom anything on Android better than the Windows ecosystem has to offer.
  - evilduck 5y ago
    Standard USB and bluetooth keyboards work fine with Android and iOS/iPadOS too.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  I can type quite fast and reliably on my iPad, but I use the big (very expensive) iPad Pro.
changoplatanero 5y ago
Is it 2012?
- timbit42 5y ago
  Back to the future...
reiichiroh 5y ago
They will give up on this in 9 months
- runiq 5y ago
  Well, I mean, technically, 9 months in the future is still in the future, so…
  - achow 5y ago
    Well, considering the hardware release cycles are approx' 12 months (from Apple, Samsung et al), 9 months is really not in future.
- Victerius 5y ago
  I may not be the target market for this product, but I've never owned a tablet. I have a smartphone, a gaming PC, a fourth gen console, but I've never been interested in acquiring a tablet. Tablets can't fit into my pocket, nor do they have the processing power or the resolution of a full fledged computer.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    I own a couple of tablets, but once I got a Chromebook, largely gave up on using them.
    - searchableguy 5y ago
      Which chromebook do you own? I was looking at duet 5 and upcoming smaller duet because both have an oled display and a decent processor for a chromebook. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-ideapad-duet-5-13-3-oled-chromebook-snapdragon-sc7180-qualcomm-adreno-graphics-8gb-memory-128gb-ssd-abyss-blue/6477625.p https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-ideapad-duet-5-13-3-oled...
      - MattGaiser 5y ago
        I have one of this: https://www.amazon.ca/Asus-ASUS-Intel-Dual-Core-Celeron/dp/B082L3VK13/ref=asc_df_B082L3VK13/?tag=googleshopc0c-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=459413596452&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10981587544304804605&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001338&hvtargid=pla-1485539207415&psc=1 https://www.amazon.ca/Asus-ASUS-Intel-Dual-Core-Celeron/dp/B... Do not really recommend it. I just bought it as I didn't want to take my brand new gaming laptop or my laptop with my files on a trip into somewhat sketchy places. As an FYI, if you are going to buy that Lenovo, buy it directly and use Rakuten to get a substantial discount.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
perryizgr8 5y ago
I still remember Android Honeycomb which was supposed to be tablet-first. Then google forgot about it. That was in 2011, eleven years ago.
vishnugupta 5y ago
Looks like a director planning out path to their promotion.
mimikatz 5y ago
Fool me once... Google has killed any hardware good will they previously had. My ipad has won me over completely, I am thinking about moving from Android to Apple for my next phone.
- throwaway675309 5y ago
  I'm the same way, they had a good thing with the Google Nexus 5X and it's been downhill ever since then.
fareesh 5y ago
I'll believe it when I see it
roywashere 5y ago
My company has an Android app and we are always trying to buy devices that run 'latest' android for testing. Google has the Pixel phones and since a few years there is a list of other brands that can run the newest OS while it is in beta. But since I think Android 10, there never has been a tablet in this line of devices, only phones. It just shows how much of an afterthought tablets are for Google at the moment
Buttons840 5y ago
Why don't they focus on Chrome OS? It can run Android apps and has a full featured browser. You can even install Linux. I'd rather use a Chrome OS tablet than an Android tablet.
- monstermachine 5y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. Chromebook duets are so good at their price point as both a light work tablet and laptop. The newer duet 5 has an OLED display too at $459. Chromebooks are also supported for 8 years compared to barely a year for most Android tablets. Chrome OS can run all the popular desktop apps too like vscode and Chrome desktop which is missing on android. They have got the recipe for success here.
  - wiredearp 5y ago
    You can even run Andoid apps on Chrome OS according to https://chromeos.dev/en/android https://chromeos.dev/en/android.
- bsimpson 5y ago
  Sounds familiar: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/12/the-pixel-cs-bumpy-road-from-chrome-os-concept-to-android-adoptee/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/12/the-pixel-cs-bumpy-r...
filchermcurr 5y ago
Are we talking about giant folding tablet phones or actual tablets? I only saw one mention of folding in the article but it was just about OS updates. I'm not sure a phone that unfolds into a tablet works with current technology. It's a fun gimmick and some people apparently love it, but the phone aspect ratio is weird, they're chonky, and there's a lot of room for mechanical failure. At any rate, I had both of the Nexus 7's back in the day and was very disappointed when they just... stopped. Now I have an iPad Mini and it's awesome. I can't see myself ever going back to Google after they just left us high and dry once before. Especially when Apple's lineup is very stable. I'm positive there will be another iPad coming. Google tablet? Who knows.
- Hamuko 5y ago
  Did the Nexus 7 fail commercially or what? I remember it being fairly popular in reviews, popular enough that I bought one. And then it kinda just fizzled out. I do remember the Nexus 7 having pretty major "big phone" vibes, since it occupied a kind of awkward size between phablet and full-sized tablet, and I don't think most software were really using the screen to their advantage.
  - louky 5y ago
    Mine died (I had 4-5 over years) there was a hardware flaw google refused to acknowledge then the company effective just wandered off to the next shiny. The second nexus 7 lasted until THE LAST firmware update bricked two devices at the same time. I have a rooted fire 10 now, no amazon or google on it and it's been useful for a few years from content
Mandatum 5y ago
The UX will never be half as good as iPad. They could throw 500M at it and it’d still suck.
- hulitu 5y ago
  Last i heard the GUI of Apple has lost its former glory. Android is bad, but let's not exagerate about Apple.
  - white_dragon88 5y ago
    [dead]
  - llampx 5y ago
    Nope. If in phones its somewhat of a competition, on tablets Apple has been eating Android's lunch since day 1.
Jedd 5y ago
I picked up both a Google Nexus 10, and a Samsung Tab Pro 12.2, when they came out. Google gave us a year or two more for software updates, but it was a grossly under-powered device - when it started to play up, I tried to install Cyanogen / Lineage on it, but determined it was actually a hardware problem. I think it lasted about five years. The Samsung promised more - bigger, faster, longer battery, the after market stylus was great - but they abandoned updates, and I think that whole product line, a short while later. (We all have a 'and I'll never buy from X again' experience, I'm sure.) Lineage works well on the device, still, and it's great for large-format book-reading if you don't mind the eye-strain. I experimented with bluetooth keyboard + mouse for a while, but latency of the device itself was awful. Graphics work with the stylus was okay, but not great. Audio suffered the same horrendous latency issue as every other android tablet. I think that's still not resolved - and was one of the compelling features of IOS, IIRC, which is where you had to go for the really good audio apps.
- slowmotiony 5y ago
  The Android team must have been working on the latency issues for years now, and it's still a total mess. Actually, forget about audio, even fucking scrolling chops and reacts with a delay.
vorpalhex 5y ago
I would love a high quality android tablet. I have an iPad at the moment and.. it's a toy. I've bought stupidly expensive software and in a pinch I can kind of code and push up to a git repo.. and that's about it. Not even linting or feedback on code. I can't even access my notes because file sync is so damn broken on iOS. God help you if you need to move around an ssh key. On my android phone, I can at least do all the things I want to do. I even have an actual real bash shell! It's just that it's a phone and while I can connect a keyboard, it's a tiny screen. It'd be nifty to have a usb port or two extra instead of just the one. The Microsoft Surface, despite being stuck in Windows, is the best "tablet that's usable as a computer" around. It does everything you want it to be able to do, though you're stuck with Windows which is missing a touchscreen based ecosystem. I'd love to see Google produce a good android tablet with quality hardware, expand AndroidOne to tablets, and maybe even see some competition and new features. Build in a kickstand. Get real stylus support. Give me two or three usb c ports.
- drBonkers 5y ago
  You can run emacs on iOS via iSH [1]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/DoomEmacs/comments/o3phkh/trying_out_doom_emacs_with_ish_on_ipad_a_bit_slow/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DoomEmacs/comments/o3phkh/trying_ou...
- tgv 5y ago
  The ipad is not a toy, just because it restricts development activity. It’s a perfect replacement for a desktop for my parents, and many others.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    It's a toy because it does no work. My gaming console is a toy. Sure I can probably get google drive to load and pair a keyboard but that doesn't mean it's a real tool. You can't even copy over movies or books! You can't buy books from anyone except Apple. You can't manage files meaningfully. You can't install useful software. Hell, I can't even get a real web browser, instead I'm stuck with safari which is basically a decade old under the hood. I made the mistake one time of traveling with just my ipad, pre-pandemic. I couldn't even get and print train tickets in a hotel! At the time I couldn't even watch videos off a usb drive (since added). iPads are toys. They are the fake version of a real computer you give a child so they don't cause too much damage.
LiteBlue 5y ago
[flagged]
grapescheesee 5y ago
12" Thinkpad from a decade ago still beats any tablet except for just consumption of entertainment. Until a tablet has 3+ USB c/a ports I won't consider them serious devices. But I still need serial and NIC ports for my work so maybe I am an outlier.
- rektide 5y ago
  I wamt to agree, but i think your lone criteria is falsy. Ecen though I really think phones/tablets should have more ports!! Usb4 significantly changes the game & makes even one lone port (a sad, fake, stupid, artificial & senseless limitation) tennable. Being able to plug in one cable that is basically a mini external southbridge, an io expander, is good enough in most cases, especially when that includes significant compressed video capabilities & a 40gbps pipe.
  - hulitu 5y ago
    > I want to agree, but i think your lone criteria is falsy. Even though I really think phones/tablets should have more ports!! It's useless when there is no SW that can use them. Also you keep a tablet in your hand. It will look like a lobster with a lot of peripherals attached.
  - grapescheesee 5y ago
    I understand the technology has expanded to point where a single port can allow for full capability. It is still just not practical regardless of the specifications on paper. I still want discrete ports. VFIO-passthrough doesn't work on a single port adequately, low level VM setups fail. I still need to run DOS and 95 from disk or VM (another issue) often. The line from consumer to industrial PC's has just continued to grow, and it makes everything more difficult. Give me two different dedicated USB4 ports and I think I could make that work. Still looks like an octopus.
russellbeattie 5y ago
I'm writing this on my Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+, which I use all day, every day. When I bought it, it was the best, fastest and largest Android tablet on the market. I can think of dozens of OS improvements off the top of my head. Anyone who uses Android tablets regularly can. That said, it's really not the OS that's going to be the issue. I originally bought a Galaxy Tab S7 and within 2 days of owning it, a saucer stuck to the bottom of my cup of coffee, dropped an inch onto the corner of the tablet and completely shattered the screen. There is no fixing it: The Samsung store would not take it to fix it, telling me to go online or phone support. Online forms were simply broken and phone support would not give me an estimate over the phone, requiring me to send it in or go to a local fix-a-phone franchisee, which I did. They spent a half hour trying to get info and then told me the price to fix the tablet was literally $50 more than buying a new one. I sucked up the loss, but learned my lesson about Samsung and the state of Android tablets. I really can't see this changing through anything Google does.
xkfm 5y ago
4:3 please. The vast majority of Android tablets are 16:9, which is okay for media, but not for anything else.
- timbit42 5y ago
  I'd even take 3:2
llampx 5y ago
Google can't fool me twice. I have an Android tablet and it is disappointing in every respect. My next tablet will either be an iPad or not a tablet at all.
proyb2 5y ago
It should start with a clean or modern Android since most app carry tech debts.
alfiedotwtf 5y ago
So many negative comments here ... all warranted.
pjmlp 5y ago
Too little, too late. Outside iPadOS, hybrid laptops with Windows are a much better proposition than Android will ever be. Note tablets being the exception, if one is willing to live with Android's traditional lack of updates vs Windows ones.
jhanschoo 5y ago
I got the cheapest Samsung Android tablet half a year ago for the specific use cases of reading e-books, comics, and viewing recipes for cooking, and it works alright in those cases. I'm not sure what other people use their tablets for.
- danielrpa 5y ago
  Same here. It's quite decent for these use cases. I also use it for light gaming and toilet Internet browsing.
danielrpa 5y ago
I still remember my top-of-the-line Google Nexus 10 Tablet bought for $500... No more software updates after a couple of years. To make matters worse, the very last update had a bug that would trigger a tablet reboot (due to a hard crash) every time I used the Youtube app for a couple of minutes.
Razengan 5y ago
Android tablets weren’t even the past. AFAIK most Android apps don’t even have a dedicated tablet version, just the regular phone version scaled up, let alone apps made exclusively for Android tablets, unlike the iPad with Procreate, Affinity, etc. And Google themselves have crippled the iPad versions of their own apps, on purpose, like refusing to support picture-in-picture on YouTube.
- oceanghost 5y ago
  I am not disagreeing with you... but PIP on iOS is in beta as we speak. I happened to be asked to test it (or maybe everyone was?).
returnInfinity 5y ago
iPad only, because strong software support, after having disposed 3 android tablets
lostmsu 5y ago
After having a few tablets: 2 iPads and 2 Androids, I switched to 2-in-1 Windows laptops. Bigger screen to read from, keyboard if you want to work, no roadblocks for installing software, and OS updates for many years to come.

29 points by cpeterso 5y ago

encryptluks2 5y ago

Tablets will not be the future until they can find a better form of input than typing on a tablet.

LeoPanthera 5y ago
This view seems to ignore the incredible success of the iPad.
- bfrog 5y ago
  The iPad really has been the only tablet worth buying, it doesn’t cost that much at its lowest end device, has all the great and fast apps creators want (procreate is amazing) and really does it all well. I’ve never used an android device that didn’t always feel slow. Didn’t matter how new/fast the device was.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  Ok but is the iPad the future? I mean it seems to have plateaued at a very respectable position, but it doesn't look like it's going to conquer the world the way it looked a few years ago.
  - hulitu 5y ago
    Maybe if they reduce the price. For what it offers, it's expensive.
- manachar 5y ago
  The iPad selling well annoys me, as it's prevented a touchscreen/drawable MacBook. Apple and most others would rather us have broken and locked down operating systems that sell us apps, it's more profitable for them and increasingly it's what consumers want to.
  - LeoPanthera 5y ago
    > The iPad selling well annoys me, as it's prevented a touchscreen/drawable MacBook. I am extremely grateful that this has been Apple's path, because I don't want touch screen support in macOS. It would inevitably make it worse for keyboard and mouse usage, as has happened with both Windows and Gnome.
  - ako 5y ago
    I have a laptop with touchscreen, mostly forget about it until i by accident touch the screen, and then usually it does something irritating. The touchscreen is more of a problem then a benefit. The only devices that really benefit from a touchscreen are phones and tablets. And there for certain types of apps it may even be a better input device than keyboard and mouse. This could be one of those situations: https://www.shapr3d.com/ https://www.shapr3d.com/
    - sdoering 5y ago
      I am in the other camp. I have a convertible and regularly use it in tablet mode. Be it when using whiteboard in a remote presentation, be it when reading pdf and doing annotations. Sometimes I even do work in photo editing with the pen on the screen. Afterwards I just switch back into normal mode and use it to create presentations, write code and just do my work. I think there are different types of people/users with different types of needs. Why not provide for both. Other vendors do this by providing the same model as regular and as convertible version.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  Although it has never threatened the Mac in the way many expected. Even Microsoft pivoted their operating system to be tablet friendly, at the expense of desktop users, only to find the market is quite small.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  You mean the success where they were forced to make a laptop out of it with a set of Apple keyboards for iPads, because people were buying those from Logitech et al anyway?
smt88 5y ago
Keyboard covers solved that problem a long time ago.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  What do we call a screen + keyboard cover? Right, a laptop.
  - smt88 5y ago
    Most laptops don't have: - detachable keyboards - touchscreens - Android or iOS apps It's very likely Google's Android tablet ambitions are intended to compete with hybrid devices like iPads and Surfaces.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      1 and 2 are fixed by buying a hybrid or 2-1 laptop, or whatever you want to call it. The third point is being sorted out with Windows 11, although there is seldom anything on Android better than the Windows ecosystem has to offer.
- evilduck 5y ago
  Standard USB and bluetooth keyboards work fine with Android and iOS/iPadOS too.
tshaddox 5y ago
I can type quite fast and reliably on my iPad, but I use the big (very expensive) iPad Pro.

changoplatanero 5y ago

Is it 2012?

timbit42 5y ago
Back to the future...

reiichiroh 5y ago

They will give up on this in 9 months

runiq 5y ago
Well, I mean, technically, 9 months in the future is still in the future, so…
- achow 5y ago
  Well, considering the hardware release cycles are approx' 12 months (from Apple, Samsung et al), 9 months is really not in future.
Victerius 5y ago
I may not be the target market for this product, but I've never owned a tablet. I have a smartphone, a gaming PC, a fourth gen console, but I've never been interested in acquiring a tablet. Tablets can't fit into my pocket, nor do they have the processing power or the resolution of a full fledged computer.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  I own a couple of tablets, but once I got a Chromebook, largely gave up on using them.
  - searchableguy 5y ago
    Which chromebook do you own? I was looking at duet 5 and upcoming smaller duet because both have an oled display and a decent processor for a chromebook. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-ideapad-duet-5-13-3-oled-chromebook-snapdragon-sc7180-qualcomm-adreno-graphics-8gb-memory-128gb-ssd-abyss-blue/6477625.p https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-ideapad-duet-5-13-3-oled...
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      I have one of this: https://www.amazon.ca/Asus-ASUS-Intel-Dual-Core-Celeron/dp/B082L3VK13/ref=asc_df_B082L3VK13/?tag=googleshopc0c-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=459413596452&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10981587544304804605&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001338&hvtargid=pla-1485539207415&psc=1 https://www.amazon.ca/Asus-ASUS-Intel-Dual-Core-Celeron/dp/B... Do not really recommend it. I just bought it as I didn't want to take my brand new gaming laptop or my laptop with my files on a trip into somewhat sketchy places. As an FYI, if you are going to buy that Lenovo, buy it directly and use Rakuten to get a substantial discount.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

perryizgr8 5y ago

I still remember Android Honeycomb which was supposed to be tablet-first. Then google forgot about it. That was in 2011, eleven years ago.

vishnugupta 5y ago

Looks like a director planning out path to their promotion.

mimikatz 5y ago

Fool me once... Google has killed any hardware good will they previously had. My ipad has won me over completely, I am thinking about moving from Android to Apple for my next phone.

throwaway675309 5y ago
I'm the same way, they had a good thing with the Google Nexus 5X and it's been downhill ever since then.

fareesh 5y ago

I'll believe it when I see it

roywashere 5y ago

My company has an Android app and we are always trying to buy devices that run 'latest' android for testing. Google has the Pixel phones and since a few years there is a list of other brands that can run the newest OS while it is in beta. But since I think Android 10, there never has been a tablet in this line of devices, only phones. It just shows how much of an afterthought tablets are for Google at the moment

Buttons840 5y ago

Why don't they focus on Chrome OS? It can run Android apps and has a full featured browser. You can even install Linux. I'd rather use a Chrome OS tablet than an Android tablet.

monstermachine 5y ago
I was thinking the same thing. Chromebook duets are so good at their price point as both a light work tablet and laptop. The newer duet 5 has an OLED display too at $459. Chromebooks are also supported for 8 years compared to barely a year for most Android tablets. Chrome OS can run all the popular desktop apps too like vscode and Chrome desktop which is missing on android. They have got the recipe for success here.
- wiredearp 5y ago
  You can even run Andoid apps on Chrome OS according to https://chromeos.dev/en/android https://chromeos.dev/en/android.
bsimpson 5y ago
Sounds familiar: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/12/the-pixel-cs-bumpy-road-from-chrome-os-concept-to-android-adoptee/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/12/the-pixel-cs-bumpy-r...

filchermcurr 5y ago

Are we talking about giant folding tablet phones or actual tablets? I only saw one mention of folding in the article but it was just about OS updates. I'm not sure a phone that unfolds into a tablet works with current technology. It's a fun gimmick and some people apparently love it, but the phone aspect ratio is weird, they're chonky, and there's a lot of room for mechanical failure. At any rate, I had both of the Nexus 7's back in the day and was very disappointed when they just... stopped. Now I have an iPad Mini and it's awesome. I can't see myself ever going back to Google after they just left us high and dry once before. Especially when Apple's lineup is very stable. I'm positive there will be another iPad coming. Google tablet? Who knows.

Hamuko 5y ago
Did the Nexus 7 fail commercially or what? I remember it being fairly popular in reviews, popular enough that I bought one. And then it kinda just fizzled out. I do remember the Nexus 7 having pretty major "big phone" vibes, since it occupied a kind of awkward size between phablet and full-sized tablet, and I don't think most software were really using the screen to their advantage.
- louky 5y ago
  Mine died (I had 4-5 over years) there was a hardware flaw google refused to acknowledge then the company effective just wandered off to the next shiny. The second nexus 7 lasted until THE LAST firmware update bricked two devices at the same time. I have a rooted fire 10 now, no amazon or google on it and it's been useful for a few years from content

Mandatum 5y ago

The UX will never be half as good as iPad. They could throw 500M at it and it’d still suck.

hulitu 5y ago
Last i heard the GUI of Apple has lost its former glory. Android is bad, but let's not exagerate about Apple.
- white_dragon88 5y ago
  [dead]
- llampx 5y ago
  Nope. If in phones its somewhat of a competition, on tablets Apple has been eating Android's lunch since day 1.

Jedd 5y ago

I picked up both a Google Nexus 10, and a Samsung Tab Pro 12.2, when they came out. Google gave us a year or two more for software updates, but it was a grossly under-powered device - when it started to play up, I tried to install Cyanogen / Lineage on it, but determined it was actually a hardware problem. I think it lasted about five years. The Samsung promised more - bigger, faster, longer battery, the after market stylus was great - but they abandoned updates, and I think that whole product line, a short while later. (We all have a 'and I'll never buy from X again' experience, I'm sure.) Lineage works well on the device, still, and it's great for large-format book-reading if you don't mind the eye-strain. I experimented with bluetooth keyboard + mouse for a while, but latency of the device itself was awful. Graphics work with the stylus was okay, but not great. Audio suffered the same horrendous latency issue as every other android tablet. I think that's still not resolved - and was one of the compelling features of IOS, IIRC, which is where you had to go for the really good audio apps.

slowmotiony 5y ago
The Android team must have been working on the latency issues for years now, and it's still a total mess. Actually, forget about audio, even fucking scrolling chops and reacts with a delay.

vorpalhex 5y ago

I would love a high quality android tablet. I have an iPad at the moment and.. it's a toy. I've bought stupidly expensive software and in a pinch I can kind of code and push up to a git repo.. and that's about it. Not even linting or feedback on code. I can't even access my notes because file sync is so damn broken on iOS. God help you if you need to move around an ssh key. On my android phone, I can at least do all the things I want to do. I even have an actual real bash shell! It's just that it's a phone and while I can connect a keyboard, it's a tiny screen. It'd be nifty to have a usb port or two extra instead of just the one. The Microsoft Surface, despite being stuck in Windows, is the best "tablet that's usable as a computer" around. It does everything you want it to be able to do, though you're stuck with Windows which is missing a touchscreen based ecosystem. I'd love to see Google produce a good android tablet with quality hardware, expand AndroidOne to tablets, and maybe even see some competition and new features. Build in a kickstand. Get real stylus support. Give me two or three usb c ports.

drBonkers 5y ago
You can run emacs on iOS via iSH [1]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/DoomEmacs/comments/o3phkh/trying_out_doom_emacs_with_ish_on_ipad_a_bit_slow/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DoomEmacs/comments/o3phkh/trying_ou...
tgv 5y ago
The ipad is not a toy, just because it restricts development activity. It’s a perfect replacement for a desktop for my parents, and many others.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  It's a toy because it does no work. My gaming console is a toy. Sure I can probably get google drive to load and pair a keyboard but that doesn't mean it's a real tool. You can't even copy over movies or books! You can't buy books from anyone except Apple. You can't manage files meaningfully. You can't install useful software. Hell, I can't even get a real web browser, instead I'm stuck with safari which is basically a decade old under the hood. I made the mistake one time of traveling with just my ipad, pre-pandemic. I couldn't even get and print train tickets in a hotel! At the time I couldn't even watch videos off a usb drive (since added). iPads are toys. They are the fake version of a real computer you give a child so they don't cause too much damage.

LiteBlue 5y ago

[flagged]

grapescheesee 5y ago

12" Thinkpad from a decade ago still beats any tablet except for just consumption of entertainment. Until a tablet has 3+ USB c/a ports I won't consider them serious devices. But I still need serial and NIC ports for my work so maybe I am an outlier.

rektide 5y ago
I wamt to agree, but i think your lone criteria is falsy. Ecen though I really think phones/tablets should have more ports!! Usb4 significantly changes the game & makes even one lone port (a sad, fake, stupid, artificial & senseless limitation) tennable. Being able to plug in one cable that is basically a mini external southbridge, an io expander, is good enough in most cases, especially when that includes significant compressed video capabilities & a 40gbps pipe.
- hulitu 5y ago
  > I want to agree, but i think your lone criteria is falsy. Even though I really think phones/tablets should have more ports!! It's useless when there is no SW that can use them. Also you keep a tablet in your hand. It will look like a lobster with a lot of peripherals attached.
- grapescheesee 5y ago
  I understand the technology has expanded to point where a single port can allow for full capability. It is still just not practical regardless of the specifications on paper. I still want discrete ports. VFIO-passthrough doesn't work on a single port adequately, low level VM setups fail. I still need to run DOS and 95 from disk or VM (another issue) often. The line from consumer to industrial PC's has just continued to grow, and it makes everything more difficult. Give me two different dedicated USB4 ports and I think I could make that work. Still looks like an octopus.

russellbeattie 5y ago

I'm writing this on my Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+, which I use all day, every day. When I bought it, it was the best, fastest and largest Android tablet on the market. I can think of dozens of OS improvements off the top of my head. Anyone who uses Android tablets regularly can. That said, it's really not the OS that's going to be the issue. I originally bought a Galaxy Tab S7 and within 2 days of owning it, a saucer stuck to the bottom of my cup of coffee, dropped an inch onto the corner of the tablet and completely shattered the screen. There is no fixing it: The Samsung store would not take it to fix it, telling me to go online or phone support. Online forms were simply broken and phone support would not give me an estimate over the phone, requiring me to send it in or go to a local fix-a-phone franchisee, which I did. They spent a half hour trying to get info and then told me the price to fix the tablet was literally $50 more than buying a new one. I sucked up the loss, but learned my lesson about Samsung and the state of Android tablets. I really can't see this changing through anything Google does.

xkfm 5y ago

4:3 please. The vast majority of Android tablets are 16:9, which is okay for media, but not for anything else.

timbit42 5y ago
I'd even take 3:2

llampx 5y ago

Google can't fool me twice. I have an Android tablet and it is disappointing in every respect. My next tablet will either be an iPad or not a tablet at all.

proyb2 5y ago

It should start with a clean or modern Android since most app carry tech debts.

alfiedotwtf 5y ago

So many negative comments here ... all warranted.

pjmlp 5y ago

Too little, too late. Outside iPadOS, hybrid laptops with Windows are a much better proposition than Android will ever be. Note tablets being the exception, if one is willing to live with Android's traditional lack of updates vs Windows ones.

jhanschoo 5y ago

I got the cheapest Samsung Android tablet half a year ago for the specific use cases of reading e-books, comics, and viewing recipes for cooking, and it works alright in those cases. I'm not sure what other people use their tablets for.

danielrpa 5y ago
Same here. It's quite decent for these use cases. I also use it for light gaming and toilet Internet browsing.

danielrpa 5y ago

I still remember my top-of-the-line Google Nexus 10 Tablet bought for $500... No more software updates after a couple of years. To make matters worse, the very last update had a bug that would trigger a tablet reboot (due to a hard crash) every time I used the Youtube app for a couple of minutes.

Razengan 5y ago

Android tablets weren’t even the past. AFAIK most Android apps don’t even have a dedicated tablet version, just the regular phone version scaled up, let alone apps made exclusively for Android tablets, unlike the iPad with Procreate, Affinity, etc. And Google themselves have crippled the iPad versions of their own apps, on purpose, like refusing to support picture-in-picture on YouTube.

oceanghost 5y ago
I am not disagreeing with you... but PIP on iOS is in beta as we speak. I happened to be asked to test it (or maybe everyone was?).

returnInfinity 5y ago

iPad only, because strong software support, after having disposed 3 android tablets

lostmsu 5y ago

After having a few tablets: 2 iPads and 2 Androids, I switched to 2-in-1 Windows laptops. Bigger screen to read from, keyboard if you want to work, no roadblocks for installing software, and OS updates for many years to come.