I may be soon in the market for a new Android tablet. Does anybody have suggestions?
The rule of thumb for me is to buy the device with the highest screen resolution you can afford. Those tend to have the beefiest specs. Common high-res tablets have screens either at 2048 x 1536 (4:3) or 2560 x 1600 (16:10). I prefer 4:3 tablets so on Android, that really only leaves the Galaxy Tab S2 or S3 (the latter having pen functionality).
I'm still getting an iPad because the productivity apps are far superior, purpose-built and actively maintained. And that happens because people actually pay for the app. On Android, everything is freemium, so people are incentivized not to pay, and developers are incentivized to jam up the UX with ads and "unlock this with Premium" CTAs.
Yes, I can write webdev code on my Android tablet with Droidedit, and connect via SSH to my web server. But it's a hassle to do so, especially when the app in question feels like a scaled up phone app instead of a purpose-built tool.
I have a Fire HD 10 tablet that I use for international travel without personal data, but Fire OS is pretty unpleasant and I was hoping to replace it with a new Pixel laptop from Google. Not sure what I'll being doing about that now. (Also, I expect the number of people cross-shopping Fire tablets and Pixelbooks is vanishingly small.)
Unless you absolutely need Android for some reason, I would recommend the iPad.
That said, 2-in-1 x86_64 Chrome OS devices are bearable. Unlike Android; all the drivers are upstream.
I really like my Samsung Chromebook Pro, but would recommend looking for something that's on a later Linux kernel (at least 4.4) because not all the new features get backported. (See http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-fo... for a list of all the options.)
It's GTalk/Hangouts/Allo/etc. all over again, just this time with Android and ChromeOS. I wouldn't be surprised if they announce that they're going to abandon ChromeOS and that they're going to only use Android instead. How can the different product teams at a company be so completely disconnected from each other?
Similar to the whole .NET vs C++ at Microsoft, and how that influenced Longhorn, WinRT and such
As near as I can tell from the outside, there aren’t any good Android tablet options, and the problems are baked into the OS at a fairly deep level — deep enough that OEMs can’t really address them, and Google hasn’t shown any recent signs of being to do so either. (For example, read any review of the Pixel Slate).
If you already have a software/app/etc niche you like, I hear the new Samsung tablets are decent (not ‘good’) and not too expensive.
1. This news plants doubt about whether the ChromeOS/Android hybrid in the Pixel Slate is The New Way or a dead end.
2. Google has botched the evolution of Android's tablet capabilities and tablet support in app frameworks so badly there may not be a future for Android tablets outside of Samsung's proprietary extensions to Android. Let that sink in: Samsung may be, by default, leading the Android tablet future.
3. I don't like what Samsung does to Android. This is a matter of taste. But I know I don't like it.
However when tablet dies, I will rather go for a Surface like tablet.
Eventually iPad Pro as alternative.
Getting fed up of Android J++, and a NDK experience that seems like the outcome of a 20% project.