Google says Android tablets are the future, starts staffing up new division
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
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...
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.
But if you are in the habit of popping to the coffee shop or trying to make use of your time on the train or an airplane, they're pretty handy. Sure, you can bring a whole laptop, but that's just larger and takes up more room. The tablet is easy to slip in and out of a bag and have it on instantly.
In theory, tablets should be good for light work too. Note taking, drawing and sketching, etc. In practice, neither ecosystem supports this very well - you can take a note or make a drawing, but you can't _do_ anything with the output. There's no sending your diagram to a pc for meaningful usage or integrating your note with your actual knowledgebase. The tablets are too locked down.
> There's no sending your diagram to a pc for meaningful usage
This is two taps on iPad in most apps: tap share, then tap the Airdrop icon for your laptop or other device.
> integrating your note with your actual knowledgebase
Notion, Quip, Google Docs, Coda, Microsoft Office all run fine on iPad.
On notes:
1. Notion doesn't have offline support, mobile exports don't work last I tried, no printing or sharing. Notion is block based, making it not appropriate for notes.
2. Quip is just a bad app. It's also a block based editor, and an office suite, making it inappropriate for notes.
3. Google docs is a word processor/office suite, not a note taking app. It has severe, severe lag past about 30 or 40 pages which renders it unusable. It has very broken behavior when you paste formatted text.
4. No experience with coda
5. Microsoft office is an office suite. It has the same general problems as Google Docs.
A note taking app, must:
+ Flow text correctly (not block based)
+ Handle copying and pasting correctly without barfing my formatting
+ Work offline. My notes are not useful if I can only get to them when I have internet.
+ Not be a word processor. Word processors are designed to format documents, not capture information quickly. Using a word proccessor for notes is like using the photoshop text tool to write essays.
+ It should handle and operate on a directory of files. I do not have one note. I have several hundred. Even a modest project is going to have a few note files.
+ It should load instantly and have no lag.The tradeoff is that you get less features.
Examples of note taking apps on the iPad are Bear, Notes, Obsidian, and I think Joplin has a port.
Doesn't that depend on the tablet? The iPad Pro has an M1 inside it.
I miss them a lot, and really wish that there were a modern Nexus or Pixel tablet. They filled a computing slot I currently have unfilled; a phone, even a large one, is nowhere near as good at any of the tasks I used my tablet for.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/DoomEmacs/comments/o3phkh/trying_ou...
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.
As I noted elsethread, I really enjoyed watching TV (and movies, too) and reading on my Nexus tablets. I found them really well-designed for that, much preferable for reading than the Kindle I had had previously. Granted, a big-screen TV would be better for flashy, Marvel, giant-blue-laser-pointed-at-the-sky-to-kill-mankind, but then a theatre is even better for that! And also I don't want too many of those movies. When I do … I head to my den.
Asides, too bad samsung killed Linux on Dex, now that was something special.
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.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/12/the-pixel-cs-bumpy-r...
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.
And Google themselves have crippled the iPad versions of their own apps, on purpose, like refusing to support picture-in-picture on YouTube.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
Even Microsoft pivoted their operating system to be tablet friendly, at the expense of desktop users, only to find the market is quite small.
- 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.
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.
... all warranted.