Pixel Tablet | Hacker News Reader

Pixel Tablet

store.google.com

273 pointsabawany512 comments

> The included charging dock is also a speaker.

I've gotta say, charging docks are a killer feature for me and I don't understand why Apple doesn't do the same.

There used to be the Logitech Base [1] that I still use with the previous-gen (9th) iPad, but the smart connector in the newest iPad (10th gen) is no longer compatible with it, as the angle of the edge changed.

It's been years since I plugged in my phone or AirPods -- I only wirelessly charge. The idea that we should still be plugging in tablets with Lightning or USB-C is bizarre to me. A charging dock is the way to go, and it's so unexpected to me that Google realizes this while Apple doesn't. It's actually the only reason I haven't upgraded my iPad.

[1] https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/ipad-accessories/bas...

Wireless charging kills batteries faster -- that's why I personally avoid it.

How so?

Mostly the extra heat degrades the battery chemistry

Perhaps this is an issue with a particular charger? I've yet to notice my phone get warm when charging wirelessly.

The best wireless chargers I'm aware of are the magsafe ones which align the coils using magnets, improving efficiency and reducing heat.

Can you expand on this because I've noticed that my iPhone 13 mini's battery life has been quickly getting worse, and I use the magsafe charging a lot.

It's the heat generated with wireless charging which kills the battery, not the charging speed

Open the battery page in the settings and look at what % it has left. At 80% Apple suggests replacing it.

Wireless is usually a lot slower than plugging it in, so i suspect it'd be better on batteries rather than worse.

But the best way to save your batteries is to not charge to 100%.

I wish there were standard software in Android and iOS to limit charge percentage and battery temperature during charging.

It's ludicrous to me that the default behavior is plugging in your phone to a 30W ludicrously fast charger when you go to bed in the evening, where it then climbs to 100% charge and holds there while you sleep.

I should be able to tell it I'd like it to reach 85% charge as of the time my alarm goes off in the morning, timing that in a way that minimizes battery heating. My laptop, likewise, should be able to sit at 85% when on the docking station, potentially even syncing with my calendar to know when I have to leave and might need more battery or a more rapid charge before a meeting.

> It's ludicrous to me that the default behavior is plugging in your phone to a 30W ludicrously fast charger when you go to bed in the evening, where it then climbs to 100% charge and holds there while you sleep.

Apple already does something similar. It's not configurable beyond on/off but optimized battery charging on MBP, iPhone, and iWatch learns when you're normally awake and holds charging at ~80% overnight until a bit before your normal wakeup time. On MBP it holds at 80% most of the time during the day too if it learns you're rarely running on battery.

On Android this is called Adaptive Charging and has been on my Pixels for several years at this point.

> ludicrously fast charger when you go to bed in the evening

This is why I never charge overnight. Just pop the phone on to charge while I'm having a shower in the morning, or in the evening while I'm having dinner. Those time windows seem enough to keep my phone (Pixel 5) sufficiently charged.

> My laptop, likewise, should be able to sit at 85% when on the docking station

Samsung laptops have/had this exact feature, which they called Battery Life Plus[1]

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140101070825/https://www.samsu...

>I wish there were standard software in Android and iOS to limit charge percentage and battery temperature during charging.

Apple has this already, android implementations are more fragmented (not just due to manufacturer but due to charge standard, pmic used, and battery subtypes used). LineageOS has a standard feature they've been working on to provide for charge thresholds but it's not in official builds yet (it's good on the devices I've used it though).

Honestly limiting current is probably bad with modern low resistance cells as temperature is elevated longer. Better to get them saturation charge quickly and stop charging unless you need the extra capacity. Also better to use a low voltage charge standard that doesn't need to drop the voltage in the phone.

All modern major manufacturers throttle the charge current if it breaks thermal limits and have a hard cutoff over a certain value (and down also if it's near or below freezing temps)

Is that the default behavior on iOS? I'm not familiar with the details, but I thought there was logic for optimizing charging, IIRC so that it charges quickly to 80% but then slowly to 100%. And once it hits 100%, it's not like it's constantly drawing power to maintain that level.

You are correct, that's "optimized charging" setting, and it is on by default (but if one is inclined to turn it off for some reason, they can do it in settings).

The Pixel line has adaptive charging, which is active when you have an alarm set, and times the phone to be fully charged by the time the alarm goes off. It's unfortunate this does not seem to be a default behavior for stock Android.

I've had Pixel phones for a while now and I just thought that was a standard Android thing.

It took me a while to learn that I should set a one-shot alarm before I put my phone on the charger.

This feature was not very discoverable, so I also wonder how much unnecessary wear and tear I put on my phone from having rapid charges at bed time before I discovered how to summon the adaptive charge cycle.

samsung phones let you do this exactly.

My Motorola Android (Edge+, Android 12) will charge up to 80% when I plug it in at night and then back-mark against the morning alarm so that it is just getting to 100% when the alarm fires.

Asus Zenfone 9 does the same.

Tbh I don't think its worth even thinking about battery life preservation on phones. The battery can be replaced so cheaply that it makes years of charging anxiety not worth it for a few months longer lifespan.

But the inconvenience of replacing them yourself outweighs the benefit of restoring their battery for many people without much experience. I miss replaceable batteries

But you're usually going to have to replace it anyways if you have your phone for long enough.

Does it usually really matter if you have to replace it after 28 months versus after 32 months? The chance that you'll sell/lose/break your phone in that small window just doesn't seem worth worrying about.

I just take it in to the store, go get something to eat, then pick it up again.

Samsung routines can do exactly this. You can customize it to only charge up to 85% (though no way to set 80% or 90% or something) and then have it not charge until two hours before your alarm, either fast charge or slow charge.

This is why you should keep a non-fast charger next to the bed. Something that can only ever do 5V. If you need to charge quickly, plug in somewhere else.

I have a dell XPS laptop where thia feature is configurable in the BIOS

Is there some way to quickly override it so you get 100% charge ASAP? Or do you have to go into the bios and mess about?

> I should be able to tell it I'd like it to reach 85% charge as of the time my alarm goes off in the morning, timing that in a way that minimizes battery heating.

Isn't this precisely what adaptive charging does?

Pixel devices do this if you have an alarm set. Despite having a Pixel device, this doesn't work for me because I use a separate alarm clock (a daylight one). Instead, I just have an old, slow charger beside my bed.

In that case why not use an old charger that only outputs 5V 1A?

Do you have a source? I thought this has been thoroughly debunked.

> thoroughly debunked.

I wish people would stop using this phrase.

Especially when they couldn't be more wrong.

Heat degrades batteries, wireless charging generally comes with more heat from the lower efficiency.

But at the end of the day it most likely won't matter as people get new phones every few years anyways.

There are so many more factors than heat though

For one, I thought charging slower was better, so could the increased heat be offset by that? Also, it's more heat per joule transferred, but over a longer period of time, is that not better than sudden heat from fast charging?

Heat is the primary factor, and even with fast charging the inefficiencies of wireless charging will mean the latter will dump more heat into your phone.

The constant current phase of fast charging does not generate much heat in comparison at given wattage as it's able to charge up your phone much more quickly at higher efficiency until it switches to trickle charging at ~80%.

But fast charging makes batteries very hot too.

Btw, you basically just asked people to know when they are wrong. Seems very optimistic...

Where did I say fast charging doesn't make batteries hot? I've built LiPo packs from scratch and rebalanced cells manually, I know something about LiPo degradation.

So I'm confused, what are you saying: fast charging is making batteries hotter, or wireless charging is making them hotter?

I'm genuinely curious but you don't give details or you simply answer with a question...

Any type of charging generates heat.

At any wattage, wireless charging at 70% efficiency will always generate more heat than fast charging at 95% efficiency.

If you want to compare 5w wireless charging to 100w fast charging, even then it's not obvious the wireless charging is better, because it will still thermal throttle and stay throttled for longer, at least a few hours. Meanwhile fast charging will charge it to 80% state of charge in half an hour and then trickle charge to full.

The notion that this is somehow "debunked" is just against physics.

https://www.androidauthority.com/100w-wired-vs-wireless-char...

Well I don’t know, if people tested and don’t see any difference, wouldn’t that count as “debunked”?

A quick internet research shows the Internet consensus is, wireless charging does not degrade batteries faster. At least it seems there is no empirical data proving otherwise, which at the very least would indicate the difference is small, if any.

I think until I see (good) empirical data proving either of the theories I’m going to stay skeptical.

The more heat lithium ion batteries are subject to, the more they degrade.

For any given wattage, wireless charging will always generate more heat.

It really isn't more difficult than that. You don't need to be skeptical about physics.

I've already addressed in my first post the differences are likely marginal, as people get new phones within a few years anyways. Doesn't mean additional degradation didn't happen.

I give up. I'm curious, you are clearly not.

Why does everyone seem to disagree with you?

Does the fact that the copper coil get hot instead of the battery itself have any influence?

Do you have empirical data?

Etc. Etc. Just some examples, from the top of my mind...

When one is curious they tend to find the answer out themselves.

Copper coil in phones are next to the battery, it's going to heat up the cells.

I've already sent you one link and you've not acknowledged it. Good luck in your epistemic endeavors.

Page 1 of Google seems to suggest the contrary. Source?

The dock seems to be magsafe style contacts not wireless

This isn’t wireless, it’s basically pogo pins. It’s magnetically aligned/held, but that’s all.

I'm not going to get a Pixel Tablet, but I really do like the idea of a charging dock speaker.

I like the dock idea as well

Couldn't you just get a Nest Mini and 3d Print a cover for it with a charging connector built-in?

I know the existing tablets on the market don't lend themselves to being docked, but my point is what if you want a speaker and a tablet and a dock, and the speaker should work when the tablet isn't docked, it's actually just 2 devices jammed together.

The charging dock is cool, but feels like a missed opportunity to have it be a regular Google Home speaker when the tablet is undocked.

> undocked

You mean docked? And is it not? I thought it basically acts like a Nest Hub Max [0] when docked?

[0] https://store.google.com/ca/product/google_nest_hub_max

I believe they did mean "undocked" so if the tablet is in the other room the dock could operate as a Google Home independently.

Oh I see, so just the dock being a speaker by itself. Interesting. Yeah not sure if it has any real processing in it, or if it's purely driven by the tablet itself when connected.

It's a missed opertunity to add a teeny bit of compute to it. This dock is essentially the same as what Lenovo released a couple years back only that was also a bluetooth speaker.

> teeny bit of compute

You mean, a whole other processor + memory + firmware + microphone + network + ... ?

Yes, like in the thing that they practically give away (Home Mini for $50)

I got my home minis for like $25 CAD.

Yup it's definitely a missed opportunity. We use our Google home devices as intercom. However if the dock is only a Google home device when docked, then it's unreliable as an intercom. So can't really use that feature.

Perhaps just buy a Home Mini for $50 in addition to this tablet?

Missing the point.

Au contraire.

A vendor has produced a device that does what it does, and is marketed at an optimised price point.

Someone has looked at it and said 'this device should be a different device' and claimed that it's a trivial matter to make it more like a device that they want.

I can't dispute they want a different device, but I can dispute it's a) trivial, and b) sensible, for the vendor to have produced a different device instead.

It's a common trope on HN, where the local demographic's expectations and use cases are often much dissimilar to the general population's. And that's okay, so long as we're aware of it.

No, your comment did totally miss the poiint. They were discussing how they believed a better implementation would have been doable, not too expensive, and fulfilled many needs in one device.

Your response was suggesting to just buy a second device. That wasn't useful; they know they can buy a second device, and we know they know that because they mentioned that device originally.

They never asked "How can I have all this functionality in my home?", but that's the question your comment was answering.

> I can dispute it's a) trivial, and b) sensible, for the vendor to have produced a different device instead

Agreed. That would have usefully contributed to the discussion about whether or not it would have been trivial and sensible.

If my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bicycle.

It wasn't a 'better implementation' they were proposing, just a different one.

A configuration that would necessarily involve more $'s -- so this would immediately be the opposite of better for people who are happy with the actual existing price & feature matrix.

It would also add more complexity - unique firmware, operational questions around what happens if either / both components are playing music before they are docked / undocked, etc.

The poster was tacitly suggesting an extra $50 for unwanted features was a small price for everyone else to pay for their convenience. I was suggesting their needs could be readily satisfied, without it costing anyone else anything, by them obtaining two discrete units.

That was the headline error in the Verge's coverage too ...

The Pixel Tablet is half of what it could have been https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/11/23718860/pixel-tablet-doc...

But I really don't understand - that would require the dock to have a screen, a SoC, mic's etc. That would be a completely different and much more expensive piece of hardware.

No way they could have included that with the tablet, unless they called it a bundle (which is what it would have been) and charged more.

Put the $49 Google Home Mini in the dock and charge $99 for it as an add-on.

Or honestly just include it for free since there was a time when Google was literally just giving the minis away.

Why a screen in a speaker? Minis don't have them

It’s just my impression, but, to me we humans seem to instinctively avoid retuning a tool to where it have been found, likely to avoid allowing adversaries inspect it. We however tend to build a routine, and leaving objects to a key tray is okay so long the actions to pick up and returning mentally differs.

What I’m saying is, I personally like the idea of cradles, but I seem to be a minority. Cables seem to be a more generally preferred solution.

Apple has been rumoured to develop a HomePod/iPad dock thing for a while. I hope it happens (but not like this terrible mockup)

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/10/15/apple-ipad-dock-smart-h...

When I recently worked at <big consumer tech> we did “market research” and we basically came to the conclusion that apple is probably waiting to see reactions to pixel tablet dock to decide if it should be an iPad first or HomePod first.

What's interesting is that even when Apple follows a design or trend, their fans can often claim that Apple innovates it at the same time. For example, Android has had wireless charging and USB-C ages before Apple, but when Apple started to use them, their fans said something along the lines of 'Apple refined and innovated on the prototype concept, and are first to deliver a working, solid product', despite the Android ones working... fine?

I wonder if we'll see the same with these docks.

Apple still isn’t using USB-C for phone charging. How good are the MagSafe equivalents in android land?

I'm not currently in the apple ecosystem at all, but am a long-time apple product user and have been on a first-name basis with hundreds of iPhone users since they came out. 100% of the awful statements and stances towards the android ecosystem or any of its constituents I've seen attributed to "apple fans" have come from people mad at apple and apple users. Zero percent– really— have I heard from actual Apple users.

One of the big selling points of iPhones is that if you have a phone released within 3 or 4 years, you don't have to think about the capabilities of your phone. At all. I'm not saying they're objectively better, it's just geared towards users who want their phone to get out of the way and do it's thing, and that's fine. If there's a trove of apple users somewhere that have strong opinions about Android phones, I've never encountered them.

I'll never understand why some people get so wrapped around the axle about phones.

>If there's a trove of apple users somewhere that have strong opinions about Android phones

Is using /r/apple cheating? ;)

To be clear, I envy Apple's long-term support for their products and no one can deny the fantastic build quality. I know that MacBooks can occasionally get some dislike here, but I genuinely really like the few I have, aside from my butterfly keyboard one, which is the odd child of the bunch.

The earliest occurrence of this that I can remember is when the iPhone X introduced OLED displays, back when the burn in occurred much faster. People were swearing up and down that Apple's OLED would be of a higher standard and wouldn't burn it in at all (not an exaggeration), not like those pesky Samsung phones!

I don’t think /r/apple is representative of the general population any more than any other fan subreddit. The median apple customer bought their device and didn’t think about it as long as it continued working. Meanwhile that subreddit draws who make apple a part of their identity.

To be fair until the iPod the Apple base had a decent proportion of committed Cupertino cultists. At this stage that's an ancient historical anomaly. They still exist as a tiny fraction of the actual customer base nowadays, but the external critique is still trapped in a time warp.

While I don't think online fan communities represent anything except weird online behavior, it doesn't even matter. Go to /r/Apple and look for people specifically proclaiming the superiority of iphones over android devices. Surely, there are some, but even in there, the vast majority of users just don't give a shit. However, if a search results point me to reddit when looking up something up about my Samsung phone, you'd think it was a Red Sox VS. Yankees rivalry. It's a one-sided rivalry between two user bases. It's bizarre. It's a phone. It's someone else's phone.

I have only heard that in reference to MagSafe, which does solve the problem of misaligning the charging coils and is more efficient than Android charging.

Not invalidating your experience, but I've never seen anyone try and say this about Apple and wireless charging. You're just inventing bogeymen when you theorise that people are going to claim apple is so smart when they do better USB-C on iPhone.

It's quite fascinating. Apple ships their tablet with a stylus, while Google ships theirs with a charger-speaker-dock.

Apple is saying "this is for the creatives" while Google is saying "this is a home console".

"Apple ships their tablet with a stylus"

Huh?

Yikes, I was under the impression that it was included in the $449. Nope, gotta drop another $100.

My point stands: Apple has pen as primary accessory, Google has dock.

I mean, Galaxy Note has a pen but iPhone does not. Does that mean Samsung is for creatives but Apple is not? :->

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed your theory, the thinking and rationale :). But given the pen is a whopping 100$ for Apple, not sure if it's as simple as that.

Apple made or tried to make the operating system useful enough to use productively with a stylus and keyboard. Google has not yet.

Remember the original iPad was very much NOT a keyboard/stylus device. Google is a few years behind, but fwiw their device supports Bluetooth keyboards and styluses they just don’t make a first party one.

Android has supported keyboards and mice pretty much forever, I think.

Uh, Pixel C? Google did the magnetically attached keyboard that turns it most of the way into a laptop long before Apple did. And the keyboard part worked great.

I think Google is trying to compete with Amazon Echo Show for this device, not with Apple iPad.

Apple used to know how to do this:

The Apple Macintosh PowerBook Duo Dock turns a PowerBook Duo into a full-featured desktop Macintosh including a 1.44 MB floppy disk drive, a complete set of desktop ports, and NuBus slots as well as the options of a secondary 230 MB hard drive and a 68882 FPU to improve performance.

The Duo Dock is compatible with all of the grayscale PowerBook Duos (210, 230, 250, 280), but can also support the color Duos (270c, 280c, 2300c/100) with a replacement lid.

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_duo/specs/mac_p...

charging docks are cool, but they're a little inconvenient for traveling and portable needs

It can be charged via usb-c.

> Can the Pixel Tablet charge with a regular USB-C® cord? > Yes, in addition to charging your Pixel Tablet with the Charging Speaker Dock, you will also be able to charge your Pixel Tablet with a USB-C® cord.1

I keep my ipad pro 2018 12.9" in a logitech slim folio that gives me the same standing position and all I need to do is plug in a usb-c to the ipad. The audio on the ipad pro is great, no need for another speaker in a dock. And along with a mouse it makes it an almost functional microsoft office experience, and folds down for drawing in procreate.

The case just looks nicer. the keyboard case is more functional for me.

https://www.logitech.com/en-ca/products/ipad-keyboards/slim-...

Are charging docks not a way to avoid EU regulations around standardizing/unbundling charging cables?

Charging Dock is one option you can charge using USB-C also.

You have to include USB-C charging but that doesn't mean you can't use other charging methods (like the new Macbooks that have magsafe and USB-C)

here's the thing with wireless charing - and this may not apply to your use case. when you're plugged in, you're running on the cable. my laptop for example, which I set to charge to 80% and stop, is pretty much always plugged in unless I'm carrying it between rooms. my phone - an android phone - has always been plugged in to charge. the battery acts as a surge protector.

now what happens when you wireless charge. your device is running on your battery, 24/7, charging and discharging while you sleep.

Here I am with a phone that's over 10 years old, flashed with the latest android, that I use for email and sites like this or youtube about 3 hours per day, and infrequent navigation. maybe an hour of call time, about 5 hours of screen time per day.

over a decade later, my battery lasts several days w/o a charge. my wife is probably more like you and I get her a new iphone every 3 years. she wireless charges - always. her battery life after 3 years of this, is absolute crap, because mine is discharging 5 hours/day, and hers is discharging 24 hours per day.

what is bizarre is when people think plugging a cable into a reversible port is some kind of a task or inconvenience compared to placing it aligned on a round circle. please share your thought about the insurmountable inconvenience of having to press the pump on the soap dispenser instead, or having to turn the knob on a door.

wires are a mess.

I do wonder if something like the MagSafe (laptop) adaptor would strike a happy medium.

Also - I don't know if Apple's 15w Qi is strong enough for a tablet.

You make a good point - there are loads of third-party magnetic charging cables out there, but I never saw the point when I have a wireless charger.

I might have to give the cables a try next time I replace my battery, see how it affects longevity.

It's like $50 to get your battery replaced. The convenience is worth $50 (I'd spend more than that on worn-out lightning cables)

1) I can’t find a source confirming your worry about wireless charging. Counter example source[0]. Perhaps other causes lead to what you observed. 2) The difference between cable charging and wireless is more obvious when you charge the phone tens of times during the day. If you argue that’s not needed because you always charge at night, then you get into having to manage the battery state. With wireless you can mostly forget about the battery: Simply place it on the charger (preferably an angled one like the Pixel Tablet’s dock for further use) anytime you can and you are unlikely to ever have to worry about charging - even if you don’t charge overnight.

[0] https://www.magfast.com/magfast-news/does-wireless-charging-...

what phone?

Apple isn't good at charging.

There's a lot of aspect they excel, graphic design, ergonomics, material etc. Charging has never been their forte. I present as evidence:

- the original humongous 31 pin ipod cable

- the harpooned mouse

- the wireless charging mat they never could deliver

- the first Apple pencil (and its usb-c charging cable...)

- their previous gen desktop keyboards charging over lightning

Their only great charging idea was probably magsafe for laptops.

And (from greats), iphone magsafe wireless magnetic charging.

- the iPhone battery case with the battery bump on the back

If I recall this was like eighty bucks and guaranteed to break your charging port within ten days.

>Apple isn't good at charging.

They're pretty good at changing how you charge every few years and charging you for that change though.

I'd reword that as:

Can't agree: Cupertino constantly changes charging copling and consequently can charge for that change.

I think mine was more nicely balanced, but I suppose the increase in alliteration may be worth it.

Lightning out-lived micro USB, two types of mini USB and a thousand proprietary device specific connectors. What are you talking about?

Apple bad -HN

Lightning was put on the iPhone in 2012. Other phone manufacturers switched to micro-USB in 2009 at the behest of the EU. Apple even released a micro-USB -> 30 pin connector to comply with the law.

Digital cameras, and other devices do have a habit of picking other connectors.

There were two 30 pin connectors by the way. I had to get an adapter to use my 3g iPhone on an older car stereo that supported iPods. All it did was flip a couple of the pins around.

Are they?

There have been two iPhone charge cables, and the original was the iPod charger.

How many have been used by other companies?

That mouse charger is ludicrous. Worst apple design ever?

The fact that there are multiple charge cables shows how good Apple is at charging.

Apple is great at charging? No, they are not. I have a 2019 Macbook Pro with an Intel i9. When working, the i9 pretty much gets throttled down to the performance of an i5 because the thermal design is terrible, but it's a different story. But even when the CPU get throttled down, my battery gets discharged while being connected to the most performant Apple charger (96W). An no, the laptop is not faulty, I can reproduce it with a second Macbook with exactly the same specs.

And when I'm not using the original Apple charger, because I have a nice monitor with PD over USB-C, the Macbook regularly refuses to charge, not always, but every single time when I need it to charge. No other device has any issues with the monitor (tested with a Acer R13 Chromebook, Pixel 6 phone, Lenovo/Dell/Acer/Asus laptops, Lenovo Yoga Tab 13 Tablet, Steam Deck, etc.)

Edit: PD output of the monitor is also at ~96W

You're missing the joke.

They are good at charging you money

> I have a 2019 Macbook Pro with an Intel i9

I have a work Arm based MacBook Pro that last at least 12 hours on battery, never gets hot, I have never heard the fan, etc.

I guess that parent comment was a joke about charging money...

I would include wireless magsafe in the bad decision category. The idea is good, but the implementation… they should have found a way to make it backward compatible, at least for the first generation of devices, and to be a really good company, introduced it as a standard from the get-go. But that wouldn't be very Apple. So now we have a few generations of wireless charger e-waste, which is a lot more material than a cable.

I've been using the same Anker charging pad for the last 4 years through several iPhone upgrades. I use it to charge my AirPod Pro 2s as well.

MagSafe is a Qi charger with some magnets around the rim. It works with any Qi wireless charging device.

Yes, but Apple could have introduced it as an open design on introduction. That would effectively have been two products; the functionality and the open-handed, wide-ranging ecological solution. They chose to offer a different second product, an implied proprietary, exclusive design. Now, three years later, it's an open standard, in the meantime there is probably thousands of tons of e-waste of interim products.

If you consider a decade a few years, sure.

Oh it’s you! The hypothetical person who gets mad about a once-in-a-decade charger change! I’ve heard so much about you in every discussion ever about why Apple hasn’t moved the iPhone to USB-C, you’re very influential.

The magsafe laptop charger is my favorite charger, the switch the USB c had my laptop flying at least once. Good decision they want back.

>- the original humongous 31 pin iPod cable

The first two iPod models had a 6-pin FireWire port. It wasn't until the third generation that they introduced the 30-pin connector that worked with both FireWire and USB on the PC side to introduce Windows compatibility.

And then they changed the spec on the 31 pin connector half way through it's life. I had an iPod ready car stereo back in the day, and it required an adapter to use my iPhone even though they were both the same physical connector. Fuckin stereo was expensive back then especially one with iPod integration. I had the thing for maybe 2 years at the most. Felt pretty burned by that one.

> Their only great charging idea was probably magsafe for laptops.

And even then they botched the gen 1 magsafe connector joint's design so badly it resulted in a lawsuit and settlement to replace every one of them.

Day 1 user of the Apple Watch. I hated Gen 1. But I have the most vivid memory of the magnetic wireless charging solution it came with. It felt novel and ahead of its time.

What's great with charging docks? I charge with several chargers hanging from sockets all around the house. If I had only a charging dock I would have either to carry it were I need to charge my tablet while I'm using it or move myself to the dock.

I agree the dock as the only way to charge seems daft, but I suppose they expect everyone to have a USB-C charging cable for their phone already, and use that on the go. Most Android phone owners will, and I suppose this is aimed at them.

Both aren't mutually exclusive.

"Charging via Charging Speaker Dock (included) or USB-C® charger (sold separately)"

Because I only charge at night since a single charge gets me through the day.

And it's just so much easier to set a tablet down to charge than to grab the cord when it fell down the back of the desk/table/whatever, and then find exactly where the tiny charging port in the middle of a long edge is. Or just to lift up rather than carefully unplugging first, and leaving a messy cable behind that's easy to knock off of its surface (or build a system to carefully clip it somewhere).

And a dock isn't taking away the port. It's just a nice option.

Someone needs to figure out medium range charging and sell a unit to every home, coffee shop, airport, airplane, etc. Let us never be powerless or tethered or docked again!

Some smartass engineer should have sold Tim Cook on the docks by rebranding them as dongles. Then Apple would have put out ten different coloured dongle-docks for each new device.

Didnt the first ipods come with charging docs?

I would like to use my tablet while it is charging. This seems like a very basic requisite?

The HP Touchpad had an awesome wireless charging stand all the way back in 2011.[0] What I especially liked about it is that WebOS (before I blew it away and loaded Android onto the tablet) could switch to a slideshow mode when it was left on the stand, and so your Touchpad could serve as a digital picture frame while not in use.

[0] https://www.phonearena.com/news/HP-TouchPad-Touchstone-Charg...

Or you could set it up to show the clock when not in use, which was what I did. (I still like to be able to glance at a clock.) I have yet to install Android on it; so, maybe I'll do that this weekend.

Last time I bought a Google device was a Pixel C end of 2016 as present for my dad. It was supported up to Android 8, released in 2017, and then Google decided this device was obsolete and would never get the next Android release. I am done with Google hardware. I bought my dad an iPad Mini since, as a replacement, I sure it will be updated for much longer.

Google is similar to a person with ADHD when it comes to hardware and services, they are not going to be with it for very long while jumping to make another.

As a person with ADHD, I hope this misrepresentation does not become a common saying.

my ipad 2018 is pretty obsolete already. it can't be updated due to speed and hardware issues, and most apps won't work on the old os

Yes.

This is the problem with the tablet duopoly

I looked very hard a two years ago for a high end tablet that I could put my own OS on. All I could find was the one by Pine64, and it was not "high end"

I am typing this on an eight year old laptop I bought second hand at the start of COVID lock downs. Running Linux, it works pretty damn well.

Why can I not get a tablet like that?

I got a surface tablet. The one that just runs normal windows.

I'm not a Windows user normally, but it's the best "tablet" OS by far IMO.

You can get WSL, and honestly I would be surprised if you can't install Linux on it, but I haven't actually checked.

> high end tablet that I could put my own OS on

with that requirement I would concur, Surface (Intel) seems to be the best bet, although last time I checked (which was a couple of years ago) full support was spotty depending on generation.

Maybe someone else can chime in with feedback about getting Linux on there?

I have been using Surface devices for a couple of years. I liked them a lot; in particular, I think that the Surface Book is (was) a unique machine, before being abandoned by M$ (it definitely needs/needed a reengineering).

Long time after release (Pro 3, Book 1), both devices became usable (BT, camera/mic, wifi; I've never used touch on Linux, and anyway, Linux's DEs are/were not really designed for touch), although sleep is a significant problem, due M$'s s0 idle. I've ultimately moved to a normal laptop plus Android tablet.

Without really good O/S support, I think that hybrids in general don't make much sense (I used to dual boot).

The advantages of a split configuration are considerable, both in terms of ergonomy and specs. For example, a recent Ipad Air, is lighter, and lasts much more than any Surface, while being large enough. In practice, the only time when I need a large tablet is when I read magazines, but even then, an A4 is "not great" on a 13.5", so even a Surface Book doesn't universally solve any reading need with its size (the 15" is too heavy).

An Ipad Pro is IMO the only acceptable hybrid/tablet (but I personally don't use Mac stuff for work) on the market, currently.

You can install Linux on a Surface, but there is no good writing software for Linux, but touch and pen support is finicky/complicated.

> Why can I not get a tablet like that?

You can: https://pine64.com/product-category/pinetab/

Was very enthusiastic to check this out, but then

>Resolution: 1280×800 pixels

Yeah...I'm out.

Even cheapo Android tablets now have 2000x1200 displays. I bought an ARM Windows tablet for 200 Euro and that has a 2880x1920 display. My eyes are grateful when reading text, not going back to displays reporting in inches per pixel.

I'm really sad Intel pulled the plug on X86 Atom chips for tablets. It was super easy to boot any OS on them. Unlike ARM tablets.

There are rumors that Purism are also making a user-respecting tablet.

Interested.

Do not be a tease, what rumours?

There is no specific info yet:

https://forums.puri.sm/t/h-k-s-purism-librem-16/20174/2

https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-6-look-ahead-wishlist/18694/...

For fun, I might.

But I need a high ed tablet. This one is deliberately not

No disrespect to Pine64, the design is not what I need

In my experience, the issue with tablets running GNU/Linux is not so much hardware driver support, but that the usual desktop just does not support touch input very well. For example, last time I tried, Debian does not build Firefox in such a way that you could use it with a touch screen for scrolling, opening links in new tabs, and so on. Similarly, evince did not properly support navigation in PDF documents. But libinput debugging showed that the software stack was producing touch data that looked quite detailed.

It was for a project that would have been the only programme running, with ts own bespoke interface

Went with the iPad.

Yuk

I presume it's a 6th gen (A10).

While A10 phones stopped receiving OS updates with iOS 16, this iPad is still supported by iOS 16.

I had an iPhone 7 (same SoC) til early this year with iOS 15 and it was fine (changed because it got physically destroyed); I was never prevented to install any app even though iOS 16 was released well over 6 months before. I have a 7th gen iPad (A10) and iPad Pro 10.5 (A10X) and they both work perfectly fine with iOS 16.

In any case, even if it stopped being supported that's a far cry from that aforementioned Pixel situation where it stopped being supported _the next year_.

> that aforementioned Pixel situation where it stopped being supported _the next year_.

That Pixel (from 2016) did not stop being supported the next year (2017).

Android 8 was first released in 2017 and was followed by Android 9 one year later. So it was most recent Android up to 2018. Then it was still supported, since the latest patch for Android 8 was in 2021 and the latest compatible Google Play services release was this month (2023).

So the phone and OS are still supported today, but I suppose that circa 2020 (2-3 OS releases later) some applications started requiring a more recent OS.

So in affect it isn’t being supported? Apple supports phones with OS upgrades much longer and then still releases patches for older versions of iOS.

I would argue it still is, because I am sure most Android apps still supports Android 9. Google is also much more serious about backward compatibility than Apple, and go a long way to make sure that Android APIs has backwards compatibility between multiple versions of it, see https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/support-librar... and https://developer.android.com/jetpack/androidx.

So as long your device is still receiving security updates, it means you can pretty confidently run the majority of Android apps, even if you're in an older device. This is specially true since essential apps like browsers use their own engine and can receive security updates. This is very different from iOS that once it stops receiving updates, you're pretty much screwed up.

Not saying that one approach is better than the other, but both have trade-offs.

The original poster just said that some apps required the latest OS.

iOS 16 supports all phones back to the iPhone 8/X released in 2017.

> This is very different from iOS that once it stops receiving updates, you're pretty much screwed up.

Apple just released a security patch for the iPhone 5s January of this year. It was released September 2013. It was the first 64 bit iPhone and the first that supported LTE. Is Google or any Android manufacturer doing security updates for a phone released in 2013?

> Is Google or any Android manufacturer doing security updates for a phone released in 2013?

lol, goal posts moved.

To demonstrate the absurdity of this logic, let's talk about how much better Linux is than Apple. Linux (various distributions, collectively referred to here as "linux" for convenience) still supports many systems that are 20+ years old! In fact, Linux is often used to give unsupported Apple devices a longer lease on life. Does Apple do that?

How is this moving the goalposts? We are comparing phones. Unless you have a phone from 20 years ago running the latest version of Linux.

> Google is also much more serious about backward compatibility than Apple, and

How is Google “better” at backwards compatibility when they don’t support devices as long?

The iPhone 5s which was introduced in 2013 got a security update earlier this year. Is the same true for Android phones that are almost 10 years old?

The iPhone 8/X that was introduced in 2017 still is running the latest OS. Is that true for Android devices?

Seeing that Apple didn’t even create phones 20 years ago, and that you can’t even connect a phone older than the iPhone 5s to a modern network, I fail to see how that is relevant.

Or do you expect Apple to support the original iPhone that 128MB of RAM, 4GB/8GB of storage, 2G networking (which isn’t supported by carriers anymore) and a 320x480 screen?

> How is this moving the goalposts? We are comparing phones.

No the conversation is not comparing phones in general. They're discussing specifically when the Pixel (from 2016) stopped being supported. Your comment is the first one that expanded/changed the subject from when one specific phone lost support to all phones/Apple/Google in general, and it was in a reply/rebuttal to a defense of when the Pixel 2016 stopped receiving updates. Classic definition of the fallacy of moving the goalposts.

If you want to debate all phones in general, you should clearly bring that up rather than sneak it in as a rebuttal to a different subject.

For the record, I'm not disagreeing that in general Apple > Android on updates. It clearly is IMHO and this is a major thing Goolge needs to improve on (and I say that as someone who will never buy an Apple product again).

> No the conversation is not comparing phones in general. They're discussing specifically when the Pixel

The iPad support is basically inline with the iPhone that was released at the same time.

And by the way, the iPad released in 2017 is still capable of running the latest OS (there wasn’t a regular iPad released in 2016)

> The original poster just said that some apps required the latest OS.

Yes, of course there is a small number of apps that will need the latest OS, because they're trying to do something new that is not possible before etc. This is not true for 99% of the apps that you use though, and is specially not true for apps used by the mass market like Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/your bank because you would be crazy to only support a small % of your user base.

Also keep in mind that this is valid for both iOS and Android (bigger publishers generally support older versions of iOS because there are folks that will never upgrade/their devices doesn't support the latest version).

> Apple just released a security patch for the iPhone 5s January of this year. It was released September 2013. It was the first 64 bit iPhone and the first that supported LTE. Is Google or any Android manufacturer doing security updates for a phone released in 2013?

I still used my 10 year old tablet (LG G Pad 8.3) a few years ago because even if it didn't had the latest security updates, because at least my browser was up-to-date. Keep in mind that I wouldn't do anything security critical on it, but it is still arguably more useful than a iPhone 5s that should be using an ancient version of WebKit (so a good portion of the Web is broken on it probably).

BTW, before you ask why I stopped using the tablet: it finally broke after all those years.

The equivalent iPad in 2013 when your tablet was released is the 1st iPad Air that had a slightly better screen than your Asus and a much better processor - the A7. It stopped getting OS updates in 2019 and also got a security update January of this year.

The version of WebKit available in 2019 is not “ancient”.

> The equivalent iPad in 2013 when your tablet was released is the 1st iPad Air that had a slightly better screen than your Asus and a much better processor

Apple didn't had that much advantage in CPU power them, looking at the benchmarks A7 seems to be ~30% faster that isn't "much better".

Also, iPad was way expensive than my tablet, specially in my country. It was fifty percent more expensive. 50% more expensive for 30% more performance looked really bad for that time. The screen being better in the Air also didn't matter because I choose LG G Pad 8.3 exactly because it had a 8.3 inch screen.

> The version of WebKit available in 2019 is not “ancient”.

It is. This is at least 4 years without relevant security updates (except maybe for "extremely critical") and without improvements in Web standards.

I could get that same tablet today and get a modern browser like Chrome to run with relatively acceptable performance.

Right, but in comparison my iPhone 6S was released in 2016 with iOS 9. It got the very latest iOS updates up until and including iOS 15 (2021).

It was released in 2015 even. It’s cool that they are still releasing security updates almost 8 years after.

I have two 6th gen and one 5th gen iPad. All 3 run iPadOS 16 fine. Currently the 5th gen iPad is the oldest iPad that iPadOS 16 supports.

??? I run a 2015 ipad and I haven't run across an app that won't run on it.

How is that? I have a 2014 iPad Air 2 and while it didn't get the very latest major update it is still getting security and bug fix minor updates for iPadOS 15. And not only that it's still working great and very usable!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPadOS_15#Releases

My iPad 2011 is also obsolete. The screen looks great and it runs both Vlan and iBook just fine, so I can connect it to a PC and move books and videos on it.

It’s not great for browsing any more it is still a great study tool (still runs anki, still great for reading)

It’s still a good tool, but it has definitely lost features over time.

My 2019 iPad Pro is kind of obsolete, its battery life isn’t great. But it still does mostly what I need it to do, so I can’t bring myself to buy a new one.

What does obsolete mean to you? There’s nothing obsolete about a 2019 iPad Pro. It received the most recent iPadOS update and it’ll certainly receive an update to iPadOS 17. The hardware is as good or better than current entry level iPads. The battery should still be good, but maybe yours needs replaced.

From people that use these sorts of terms in my life, it's an internal justification to make a new purchase, usually with a payment plan.

Hmm, if that were the case I would have just done it already. But no, I looked at the trade in value for it via Apple's exchange program, and they said...they would be happy to recycle it for me.

I’m not sure I understand. Is your definition of obsolete based on trade in value? What about resale value? What about functionality?

I own one device that I cannot imagine wanting to upgrade or call “obsolete” in foreseeable future: the 2018[0] 256 GB third generation 13-inch iPad Pro.

Granted, in my workflow it faces fewer demands than for example a laptop or phone (I don’t program on iPad or use it for full media production workflow), I don’t rely on it day in day out like I do on those devices, and perhaps I will change my mind once it stops receiving updates, but all of what it needs to do it just does (communication, leisure, music/art playground) and had been doing for years with no noticeable degradation. Somehow I have a soft spot for this particular trusty shiny rectangle.

[0] Replaced in 2020 due to no fault of its own but my idiocy that resulted in broken screen. Incidentally, with expired AppleCare+ that cost me around half of the original price. I’m not super wealthy but I don’t regret this specific expense.

slap it on your refrigerator as a calendar/recipe book.

My Pixel C is running great. I basically just use it as a netflix machine for camping/road trips/hostels. If I download offline on WiFi and then stick on airplane mode I can watch 10-12 hours on one charge even after all these years.

Considering i'd only watch 1-2 hours a day that's a week of TV per charge. I love it.

As a rule me and my family don't use devices that don't get software updates. As soon as they're not patching it the devices as good as dead to us. The most we will do with it is play video games on it. Even my very computer illiterate parents understand this well.

Seems extreme since app updates regularly still happen?

Agreed. The most important thing is the browser and those continue to get updates. If you use bluetooth or NFC, those can be considerations, but NFC is rare for a tablet. Especially if you just use it around the house, it seems extreme to me to cut it off from life.

> Even my very computer illiterate parents understand this well.

This strikes me as similar to the pro-God arguments that people sometimes make with, "even my 6 year old kid knows that God exists"

It's a personal choice.

Anything that gets passwords, a means of authentication, or touches accounts with money needs to get all of its updates. Otherwise it's an entertainment device. So, Netflix, and video games. I've been meaning to get around to dropping honey pot crypto wallets on the devices.

Now I learned about this... https://honeypot.is/

My pixel 6 is going to be my last Google device. It's relatively new- but the software is terrible in ways it shouldn't be. Google switching between chat and hangouts, but won't allow me to uninstall the one that's obsolete ended up having me stop using both products completely. And 25 percent of every pin unlock attempt results in the screen just doing nothing. Sometimes I have to press the screen to unlock, sometimes I have to turn the screen off and start all over again. Unlocking the screen is something I do countless times a day, yet it's constantly failing after a recent update. Hasn't been fixed in months. This kind of behavior should be a release blocker.

No need for Android, you can run any linux distro on that now: https://github.com/pixelc-linux/documentation

We did quite some work back then (:

It turns out the expected security support for android devices is only 3 years, so if you buy an older device it’s lifespan could be super short. Seems wild to me given apples support length is 5 years.

https://9to5google.com/2019/08/09/google-pixel-c-update/#:~:....

It was only 3 years before. Currently it is 5 years. https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705?hl=en

Note that major OS updates != security updates.

Since the treble is taken over now updated are offered for longer.

Android tablets generally feel overpriced right now for what they offer compared to Apple's ecosystem. There's one exception: Lenovo's last gen pro tablet got a small refresh. It's the "Lenovo P11 Pro Gen 2" and it's absurdly affordable compared to the competition right now (~$270). It's got a 120hz OLED display, great general-purpose performance (my previous tablet experience was Samsung's budget S6 Lite, which was a little sluggish and had a worse display.). I'm super happy with my purchase so far.

Downside: the compatible pen Precision Pen 3 seems to be unavailable right now.

[edit: looks like the price has gone back up to $399 in most places. I'd still consider it a good alternative at that price, but if you can pick it up on sale at under $300 it's a no-brainer]

Notably rocking a MediaTek Kompanio 1300T. I feel like for a while Qualcomm was the obly company making chips we see in most tablets.

I really hope we see competition open up again; it'd be great for Samsung to get their feed under them, for some new parties to show, and it'll be exciting if AMD gets below their new Z1's 9W TDP & starts competing too.

This is a great tablet, bought one for mom & then a couple months latter for me. Alas mine got lost in the mail! Boo.

Is that tablet a loss leader for lenovo? How can they possibly sell a tablet with a 120hz display at a fraction of the price of monitors with such a refresh rate? Would it be possible to remove the screen and plug it into an xbox?

Nobody is buying 11" monitors, that's how. Also refresh rate is only one single stat out of dozens you need to consider to price a monitor.

"mid range" (but excellent) MediaTek chip probably helps a ton. The screen is great quality oles... it's probably the most expensive part. But what does Lenovo actually pay? To spitball a number, probably like ~$80.

I think people don't appreciate how much we are up-sold, over very negligible costs. A huge amount of cheap products exist not because it's really that much cheaper to cut the specs here & there & make a chunky gross form factor, but because the company makes a $1800 model of whatever it is, that they want to push you towards.

Lenovo competes in a lot of markets, and I think many of the places they compete are more value oriented than North American type markets. I think that in part is why Lenovo came up with such a well balanced product; picking intelligently how to build a great product at a reasonable price.

I think they're trying to dump their stock since the P12 is out now?

> for what they offer compared to Apple's ecosystem

Yet after over a decade, iPads still don't support multiple profiles for a device that's very often used in a household by multiple people. Something that this very first generation Pixel Tablet does.

Literally nobody needs this... until Apple "invents" it

Wonder who downvotes this.

The sole reason why I chose samsung tab over iPad is that iPad is essentially useless as a shared family device - the UX of switching accounts inside apps is just terrible.

Tablet should definitely be a multiuser device and it's kinda stupid that Apple actually has multiple accounts functionality, but it only works for school or enterprise.

> it's kinda stupid that Apple

Its marketing, by locking that feature you are forced to buy more iPads for other family members.

Yeah, honestly it probably forces more sales than it prevents people from buying ipads at all.

> you are forced to buy more iPads for other family members

Who does this? 5% of consumers?

I think they-misestimate anyone's desire to be wastefull, both ecologically and financially.

Their assumption may not apply to you, but I assure you that Mr. Apple himself has considered this possibility and allocated a significant amount of resources to finding the most profitable solution.

Since we are soeculating, maybe the solution agreed eith me but was overruled by internal politics.

By looking at people I know and their tablet ownership, I think you're the one mis-estimating.

But the psychology probably goes further than "I'll buy everyone in the family a tablet" and is more like "Well I was thinking of maybe upgrading soon in a year or two, and anyway I'm tired of loaning the kids my tablet, how about I buy that new shiny one for myself and the kids can have this one?" to just push people over a threshold of spending

Apple devices have so long lifetimes with iOS/iPadOS updates you can just cycle the devices among family.

I get a new one because I ca... because I need one, yes, that's why. And my old one goes to the kids. A few cycles of this and everyone has their own, and all of them are still officially supported with major version upgrades - not just security patches.

Apple has conditioned its user base to spend on its products. They honestly buy and upgrade whenever told and that includes multiple iPads.

Sounds like something the EU should regulate.

"due to the new EU Directive 2024/0815/EC, every new device must support multiuser functionality. This includes ovens, toothbrushes, powerbanks Apple AirTags, and vape pens."

That would be great. I have been eyeing iTablet for long now.

If I could flash android onto it, I would buy it right away

> iPad is essentially useless as a shared family device - the UX of switching accounts inside apps is just terrible.

What does "multiuser" mean to you? The traditional home PC was shared by everyone in the family, all using the same account. What do you accomplish by running multiple accounts on the iPad?

> all using the same account.

not in my family. You only do this if they don't know how to create an account.

Previously PCs contained no personal data - maybe some school work, a few documents and a hidden porn collection .

Nowadays there is all of your messages, bank apps and photos you dont want your parents to see

> all using the same account

Never heard of this. Anyone I knew back in the days with a home PC always had an account for each family member. Multi account on PC is a long solved problem. Not sure why iPad still hasn't solved it after over a decade.

GP is probably older and remembers the more primitive home OS from DOS to Win98 and MacOS System N which didn’t have accounts.

Even MacOS 9 supported multiple user accounts

Stop downvoting OP because you don't remember PCs before 2000/XP. Those either didn't have different users or, in the case of windows 95 and 98, they were essentially pointless.

For the record: I don't remember my family having different accounts on our home computer as a kid.

Windows didn't properly support multi-users before Windows 10 anyway.

Properly as in "even my mom can use it". You could do it in earlier versions, but the UX wasn't exactly smooth if you had multiple users you needed to switch between.

I remember it differently. We had a family PC on WinXP with multiuser setup, and I hardly remember any issues.

Um, what? User switching in Windows 10 works exactly like it worked in 7, where it worked exactly like it worked in XP. Start -> Log Out -> Select another user and log in. Am I misremembering?

Traditional computers persisted decades after windows 95, so it's a really bad point of reference.

And PCs even nowadays don't have so many installed apps that require login, unlike mobile OS apps.

> What does "multiuser" mean to you?

It means separate app data, so I don't have to tediously re-login in spotify, messengers etc.

> The traditional home PC was shared by everyone in the family, all using the same account.

Not really and even if so, the separation of concerns is much easier. For traditional PC I can get by with a separate browser profile.

For mobile OS with mobile apps, each having an account or personalisation features, it's just non-usable.

I have one tablet from each ecosystem and user switching is really handy! On top of that, it's nice to have a work profile where you can just shut it off and get no notifications from any work apps. I haven't looked to see if my iPad will do that.

Yeah, iOS and iPadOS have profiles where you can whitelist or blacklist specific people or apps. E.g. when I'm at work, I only get notifications from my girlfriend and Slack.

Apple want you to buy multiple iPads.

ding ding ding, we own 4 - could be 2 with profiles

Is this really considered "first generation" Pixel tablet?

Google is so good at killing off products that nobody remembers the previous attempts at tablets?

> Is this really considered “first generation” Pixel tablet?

No, its the first generation Pixel Tablet (note capitalization: “Pixel Tablet” is a new branding.)

Yep. Nexus devices were a whole different thing.

There was also a Pixel tablet, but it was not a Pixel Tablet.

Oh... wow that's some SEO fun.

Certainly no worse than the iPad. Not to be confused with the iPad or the iPad or the iPad or the iPad going back 10 generations. For sale now at apple.com is the "New iPad".

Pixel C and Pixel slate. I had a Pixel C that my employer paid for, nice device, but I wouldn't have paid sticker price for it

Are you referring to the Pixel Slate?

They mean the Pixel C. We try to not talk about the Pixel Slate.

I still have a semi functioning nexus 7. I used it as an ebook reader for the longest time. Not sure what to do with it now.

I also have a Nexus 7, but it's now slow as molasses to the point of being unusable. Maybe I should try a factory reset...

I think someone mentioned there's a new kernel and lineage build for it, but it might just be time to admit its too old. I used it as a pdf reader for a while but its been a couple years since I last tried to use it.

Try replacing the battery. The Nexus 7 was way ahead of its time.

I also think it's weird to call this first generation when it's the second one (not counting the misstep of Pixel Slate with ChromeOS).

My first generation Pixel C from 2015 is still in daily use, but admittedly getting slow so I will be ordering this one. This refresh cycle of 8 years seems almost as designed for those who bought the original C. I'm already looking forward for the third installment in 2031.

> iPads still don't support multiple profiles for a device

It's even worse than that. They actually do!

But managed for education/enterprise only...

Android has had that for ages too, I remember the Nexus 7 having it.

Something my 4 year old Asus zenpad does perfectly. It has a profile for everyone in the house...all with their own apps, email accounts and personalizations.

OTOH, I'm still waiting for any pen-enabled Android apps that manage to catch up with XP Tablet PC Edition 2004 in terms of usability and feature set, let alone anything made for iPads (or Windows 8/10/11). Even desktop Linux is doing fractionally less worse.

When Apple inevitably copies that feature it will be "revolutionary"

This tablet has a lower pixel density than my desktop. But 120Hz OLED sounds soooo good. I'm almost super sad it's not 4K. Would've been an instant wishlist item then.

2560x1536 is 267dpi, which ain't bad.

Notebookcheck.net also notes it averages 633 nits brightness, which is superb. That's why I ordered one, to be a better outdoor-capable remote terminal than my oled-but-meh-brighness Samsung Book 12. Hopefully I can run a real Linux at least via KVM on the Lenovo someday!!

Yeah it ain't bad, but my desktop has 4K@15.6", which is around 280dpi. Actually smaller gap than I thought, but an 11 inch display is going to be used closer which amplifies it.

Brightness and vividness of colors is a huge plus though, OLEDs are amazing. I love them. But it's gotta be 4K.

Maybe I am just cursed with above-average vision.

There are no tablets that meet your requirements. Apple's iPads are 264 dpi, and have been since the very first Retina tablet.

> There are no tablets that meet your requirements.

Probably the reason why I don't have one. Aside from money.

I'm a high dpi/tiny font person too.

I still use font size 14+ even with a very close to face small display. My belief is that higher dpi isn't useful or necessary. I can read font size 8 on a low dp display fine & not complain.

If your display isnt as high dpi as you want, there's almost always plenty of font sizes down you can go & still be fine.

Not tiny fonts. Normal sized fonts, but cleaner. More pixels.

I like 4K because it's an easy 1080p display but with enough pixels to make everything look way better. And everything divides evenly with a perfect 200% scale factor so I don't get any weird rounding errors.

On Android this is much, much less of an issue due to their DIP system, but more pixels still = better, imho.

You sure about that? Desktop resolution is 72 ppi

> Desktop resolution is 72 ppi

You have to assume _both_ their screen size and resolution to come up with ppi, so not sure where you're getting 72 from.

Speaking for my personal devices, my laptop is 201 ppi and my desktop is a little over half that at 109 (27" 1440p).

Whose desktop? 72 ppi would be a 1080p screen at 30". Or 1366x768 at 22". That's pretty low ppi even for your average Joe.

They also said their desktop. Though I don't know what resolution/size it would be to beat 266 ppi. I'm guessing a 4k laptop screen, as a 4k 24" monitor is only 183ppi.

This is from a professional design company:

>The optimal resolution for images on screen is 72 DPI. Increasing the DPI won’t make the image look any better, it’ll just make the file larger, which will probably slow down the website when it loads or the file when it opens.

https://largeprinting.com/resources/image-resolution-and-dpi...

They seem to be a print company rather than design, which explains why they don't understand DPI for screens.

Above all, what DPI looks good enough for humans to notice depends on how close the screen is to the user's eyes, which is why phones tend to have higher DPIs than computer monitors which tens to have higher DPIs than TVs.

But even a computer screen at 72 DPI is pretty shit these days.

As your link points out DPI and PPI aren't really the same thing. DPI has to do with the resolution of the edited/saved image. Usually, it's determined by your editing software. PPI is the physical or effective resolution of your display. You almost definitely want a better than 72ppi display for text work because otherwise fonts will look absurdly pixelated like in the early days of "desktop publishing." I don't think it's even possible anymore to buy a true computer monitor with less than 100ppi, although if you're using an old 768p 49-inch "HDTV" as a PC display it's going to give you something like 32ppi.

https://www.sven.de/dpi/

A high PPI is great for text work, 220 is close to print quality, if it weren’t for the backlight it would look like paper.

One reason I WFH is that it’s the only way I can use a decent monitor at work (outside of the laptop one).

Absolutely, the main reason I want 4K so bad is for crisp text and vector rendering. I actually do have a non-backlit tablet with around 220 DPI, it's the reMarkable 2[0] and the text still looks pretty fuzzy due to that pixel density (it's nowhere near print quality). Print quality is usually around 300–600 DPI at the low end.

[0]: https://remarkable.com

> 220 is close to print quality

Would a decent laser printer be in that ballpark?

72dpi was normal/standard... about two decades ago.

About the closest thing we have to a "normal" desktop dpi nowadays is probably 24 inches @ 1920x1080, which is ~92dpi.

> About the closest thing we have to a "normal" desktop dpi nowadays is probably 24 inches @ 1920x1080, which is ~92dpi.

Funnily enough, 96dpi is actually the reference that Windows uses. 200% scaling factor is therefore 192dpi, and 250% is 240dpi.

Explains why Windows defaults to 250% scaling on 15" 4K monitors, like laptops. Or 125% on 15" 1080p monitors!

I was curious about the reason for the 96dpi number and found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dots_per_inch#Computer_monitor...

There's interesting history behind these numbers.

> I'm guessing a 4k laptop screen

Yeah I use one of those 15.6" portable monitors. It's because I have a medical condition that requires me to lay in bed for ~all day ~every day, but I can no longer use actual laptops due to how fragile they are. But I like the laptop form factor as "something that can be used in bed". So here I am.

The monitor itself costed around $70 for 4K. It's only sRGB, but it's honestly the most accurate sRGB display I own aside from my phone. Even beats my laptop, because the laptop is 8-bit Adobe RGB.

> Desktop resolution is 72 ppi

For a mid-range screen in the early 90s, right?

Sure? And I have a 4K monitor at 15.6", so around 280ppi. It doesn't matter what "desktop resolution" is.

I would have liked a slightly higher resolution, but the contrast is so good that you really won't notice in most situations. Certainly for media consumption it looks great.

> it's absurdly affordable compared to the competition right now (~$270).

Ipads are even cheaper at around $210 I think? I don't think it's possible to get an Android tablet of that screen size for anywhere close. It's sort of weird how Apple overprices all of their stuff except tablets.

Then again, then you have to deal with the ATS nonsense which is hell for local web dev without https.

They completely over priced the keyboards, though, it’s kind of incredible. If you want to close the gap between tablet and laptop, you’re going to pay laptop prices.

Well, the ipad pro has pretty much the same internals so it's not surprising when you spec it to be similar to a laptop, it costs similarly.

Cheapest new ipad is $270, but the base model will have a worse screen. Of course you'll still get all the awesome iPad apps you can't get on Android.

Getting a second hand ipad is a lot more viable than on Android. Apple keeps these things updated for about 6-7 years and they feel super fresh the whole time. While my experience is that Android tablets feel a little clunky brand new, and then go downhill fast after only getting a years updates.

I wish more Android devices had built in lidar

Also, where the hell is the pencil? Seriously, that is one of the big edges to iPads. I'll complain that the pencil should do more but the only reason they are getting away with that is that there's no decent option outside. The other thing I use a lot is the screen sharing (second monitor) and air drop (Google has an air drop alternative). Google is catching up on the aesthetic side that Apple did well but I'm often surprised at missing features. Tbh, I can say this about a lot of ecosystems so this isn't that harsh of a criticism. Though I have to ask what all these engineers are doing if we're not developing new features, even low hanging fruit.

You can use any USI 2.0 stylus with it.

I wonder if there is a cheaper portable monitor version of that tablet.

Lenovo has the M14 series of portable monitors, which is fairly cheap.

The specs are nice on paper but even at 60Hz and minimal brightness, the battery on my brand new one barely lasts 2-3 hours when just using the browser. It'll even drain completely if I leave it on standby for a few days.

There's also a serious red tint to the screen [0].

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/zmht0j/lenovo_p11_p...

Sounds like something funky is going on... I just flew to/from Europe and I watched many hours of HDR content on mine, and the battery was fine.

In my country it has comparable price to Pixel tablet.

BTW. Is there a good tablet that has a screen that one can comfortably keep in hands, like around 8 inches?

I’d guess that iPad mini is the best option there, it’s 8.3 inches. Compared to the current gen Air it has an A15 instead of M1 and doesn’t have the same accessories support, but otherwise looks very similarly specced.

> Android tablets generally feel overpriced right now for what they offer compared to Apple's ecosystem.

Is this a US-only thing? I have not been actively looking into the latest Android offering, but I got my sister a Xiaomi Pad 5 [1] two years ago, which I believe delivered much more value at that time compared to the latest iPad 10.2 I owned, at a slightly cheaper price too.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/xiaomi-gets-back-int...

I'm in Europe, and also believe that iPads are unbeatable when talking about price - in both nominal and price/value ratio sense.

I have been an iPad user for over a decade. 2 years ago I was shopping for a new tablet. I went to a local electronics shop trying some of them out: the affordable (~300 EUR for me) Lenovo, Huawei and Samsung ones all stuttered even in their own setting menu. The high end Samsungs were nice - starting at 600EUR.

Settled for a base iPad for 300 EUR. I hate Apple, but iPads are literally cheap, have good performance, and offer more than magnified phone applications, even with the crappy iOS.

And iPads get about 5 years of major version updates.

The 600€ high end Samsung will maybe get one Android OS update.

This is FUD. Samsung promise 5 years of security updates and 4 OS updates:

https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-sets-the-new-standar...

It's not FUD. Apple has _delivered_ updates for multiple generations of devices for 5+ years.

Samsung has promised to update for 4 OS versions. They haven't delivered anything yet. We'll see in 2027 if they can actually deliver.

I had Samsung s9+ in 2018 and I did have monthly security upgrades up until 2022 when I had it. Their promise was 5 years of security upgrades.

I also had the latest Android version. iirc they promised 3 years of OS upgrades

Casting fear, uncertainty and doubt over a manufacturers claims is literally what FUD stands for. And that's what you're doing.

This topic will probably resolve itself from 2025 on when the EU will start requiring 5 years of software updates.

> I'm in Europe, and also believe that iPads are unbeatable when talking about price - in both nominal and price/value ratio sense

The problem with iPad is that if you want a larger screen you have to get the very expensive iPad Pro. For large screen sizes, the Android ecosystem is much better value.

iPad still has huge disadvantages to me:

- Android tablets have the Opera browser which has text reflow functionality which works much much better than anything else. This is a huge deal for me. - I can access the file system and do whatever I want with it. - I still like notifications more in Android vs iPadOS.

If it were not for these things, I would buy an iPad in a heartbeat.

Follow-up: the display on this tablet is not as good as I initially thought. It's great for media consumption but not great for text. Seems to have something to do with the subpixel layout required by the OLED display.

As someone who generally likes the Pixel line of phones (not a fanboy; I just enjoy the stock+ android experience), I'm sceptical of the support on this tablet. My old Nexus tablet (I think it's the Nexus 7) is generally useless beyond basic offline usage because it doesn't get OS updates any more.

Given the price, it's going to be a hard thing to justify at AUD$899 if it's going to be a security liability after 2028.

I like the dock though. Gives it a second purpose as a hub I guess.

I agree with the sentiment that the devices aren't being supported for long enough but thought I'd mention that you can install LineageOS on a Nexus 7 and get OS and software updates.

According to Google, Pixel tablets will get "software version updates for at least 3 years" and "Pixel security updates for at least 5 years from when the device first became available on the Google Store in the U.S." (https://support.google.com/googlepixeltablet/answer/13555449).

I imagine most people here will agree that 3 years isn't long enough for something this expensive.

It’s crazy Google thinks that’s an acceptable time range considering apple regularly supports 7 years for devices.

That said, anything longer and I’d be worried google just hallucinated that support and they’ll kill it off anyways. I vaguely believe this duration.

My iPhone 6S (which still receives security updates) has received more years of major OS releases than Google plans for security updates.

I'm not a fan of Apple or iOS but Google's devices largely feel disposable: if I buy them on release I get less support than buying a used two year old iPhone.

Android and ios update cycles are different because on android most components are upgradable without OS update. Most notably the browsers get updates longer than 7 years and they tend to be the biggest security concern.

The real problem is the five years of security updates, especially since these devices will be sold for a few years and not just today. Major Android version upgrades don't add much anymore, in my experience.

I think they've added the "material you" theme to a recent Android version, but that was the last major change I've noticed since Android 10. Other than that, it's just a bunch of small details.

All the good stuff is delivered independently through things like Play Services and general app updates. You can easily run an Android 10 tablet that's gotten all the nice bonus features of any other tablet without ever upgrading the OS itself.

This is different from iOS, where any major software feature is delivered as part of an an OS upgrade. Almost all of the features I listed in the "new in iOS 16" change list would be pushed to Android as app updates, except maybe for Focus which integrates deeper (though Google can easily add it through Play Services if they cared).

Take passkeys, for example: new in iOS 16, but on the Android side they've been automatically added to any device running Google Play and Android 9 or later.

Lineage may have worked a few years after release. But in the 2020s the old nexus tablet is just too outdated. Can no longer play even YouTube videos well :(

Got a cheap fire tablet to replace it. At some point I'll look at switching that to lineage to get out of Amazon's weird launcher and app store.

My Nexus 7 v2 is mostly used to play youtube videos at 2x speed

The Nexus 7 is from 2012 or 2013, depending on which one you have.

And they did it very dirty after a very short time. I had one, loved it, felt burned by google after they abandoned it. I guess they thought it was going to eat into the huge phone segment.

Nexus 7 experience was positively stellar compared to Nexus 10 or Nexus 9...

My Lenovo Smart Display is completely borked since they removed the ability to view the web on it - simply because it's a "third party device"

I had a previous generation Pixel C some years back and they absolutely don't provide software updates for nearly long enough, it became useless junk within a couple of years. contrast to iPads which work for 5+ years. i have a pixel phone but for tablets it's only Apple.

What made it useless junk for you? I still use my Pixel C daily.

whatever apps we needed to use don't run on Oreo

Similarly keen on sticking with Pixel handsets.

As a sibling noted, LineageOS would be the answer to 'what to do when Google EOL's this', in no small part because this is going to be a popular device.

My old top-of-the-line Samsung 12" lost support within a few minutes of it being released, but LineageOS support there is also good, and predictably it was faster without all the Samsung cruft.

Right now to replace that Samsung device it'd be a toss-up between this tablet, and the Lenovo P11 (at half the price). I'd prefer a slightly larger screen (1:1 ratio to physical text ebooks) but I expect both would have similar after-market life (via lineage).

My Nexus 7 became unusable because of the storage issue. You must have a 2013.

I did love it though. I got an iPad thinking I would chase that feeling but it’s too big and heavy.

The display on the pixel 7 was just great at the time, the rubbery back was nice to play with while reading, it was light and fit in jeans pockets.

I guess one could get a big phone and the size is almost there, but then you have to lug that around all day. I miss my nexus 7 + nexus 4 combo.

Indeed, that was my combo too and it was damn near perfect.

People don't realize how awesome the Nexus 7 was. Lightweight and cheap, with pure Android. I badly miss those days of the Nexus line of products.

https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_tablet?hl=en-US

for those not in the US

I wish the post url was updated to this, right now it gets redirected to the local frontpage with no information about the tablet

I guess it depends on the country, for me in France it redirected on the French version of the store and you can buy the tablet for 700€.

Wow, it's $499 in the USA.

Before tax.

Typically, European prices include VAT. If you remove the VAT from the Dutch price, you'd end up with about €561.

Especially when taking into account the currency conversion, it's still definitely cheaper in the US, but the difference is less exaggerated when you take taxes into account.

Googles pricing doesn't make sense when you compare it to themselves.

Pixel 7a: $499 or £449. At current rates, the 7a works out cheaper in the UK - it should be £480 inc. VAT.

Pixel Tablet: $499 or £599. The US price for the tablet is the same as the 7a, so you would expect it to be £449 in the UK. Even if they just did a straight currency conversion and added VAT, it would be £480. So £599 is extortionate.

Pixel Fold: $1,799 or £1,749. This is the one that is actually about right. It would be £1,723 on currency conversion and VAT, so £1,749 is alright.

Of course there is also the cost of doing business in Europe. But the fact is that comparing Google's own product line with itself just shows that the pricing doesn't make sense.

> Typically, European prices include VAT

Small nitpick - not typically, _always_ outside of b2b settings where they're provided with and without VAT (because depending on certain criteria, some companies don't pay VAT when buying). It's mandatory for prices to be all things included, not the American bullshit of only $300 (before this tax, that tax, "gratuity", fee for that, fee for that other thing, so actually the total is $600).

It's 679€ in the Netherlands.

It's not only the US. It redirects correctly for Australia with information.

> redirected to the local frontpage with no information about the tablet

Gotta love stores that make it difficult for potential customers to see their products..

Well, better late than never.

Many, many years ago when Android 2 was all the rage, Motorola has shipped Xoom tablet with Android 3. That Android version turned out to be a dead end, and the whole line of tablets went nowhere. Next Google's attempt at tablets was Nexus 7 device, which was actually great, esp 2013 version that still lays around somewhere in my office and sees occasional use. But then, Google kind of forgot tablets exist and ignored the category completely. It was left for Samsung and some obscure manufacturers making devices, running apps that are usually not really adapted to tablets. So maybe it is finally time to have nice tablets on Android with stock OS, and maybe a special category for apps adapted to tablets in Google Play.

Well, there was the Pixel C in 2015. It was Android based and went nowhere.

Then there was the Pixel Slate in 2018. It was Chrome OS based, and also went nowhere. If you bought a Pixel Slate, a new Google tablet has been five years in the making.

Except that the Pixel Tablet isn't really a replacement. It's back to Android, and this time, no keyboard or pen options in sight.

It says it supports USI styli but not prioritizing it for the price they are asking seems like a bad move in 2023.

Google has no long-term strategy for tablets. Best I can tell, every few years some product owners get together to once again do Google's Big Push For Tablets For Real This Time We Swear and the initiative goes until they get their promotions and then it's forgotten until the next round a few years later.

If you buy this tablet and like it, don't expect a successor. They'll release something completely unrelated in a few years, it might be running Chrome OS, it might have a keyboard accessory, it might have a pen accessory, it might have absolutely abysmal performance[1]. It's a complete grab bag.

And this applies to basically all Google products and services.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOh6d_r63Bw

> Best I can tell, every few years some product owners get together to once again do Google's Big Push For Tablets For Real This Time We Swear and the initiative goes until they get their promotions and then it's forgotten until the next round a few years later

You are 100% correct.

Source: was part of two such pushes while working at goog

You figure google could ever change their ways? Like if enough backlash hit their products? Anything?

It would require a change of leadership. The incentives that make this happen come from the top. Until the board and starts firing some of the top leadership, I wouldn’t hope for much change.

I've got an Android phone but I'd never waste my money nor time on an Android tablet knowing Google are going to lose interest in it in six months.

The iPad was my first Apple product. Was super in the android ecosystem at the time but the Android tablets were just non existent.

I was so impressed by the ipad, which was second hand, several years old, and still getting updates. Ended up switching to an iPhone and Macbook as well.

Feels like Google has been bleeding users for a while by just ignoring tablets for so long.

I hope this docked version does well because I really like the smart home hub meets tablet meets household shared device vision.

I'm hopeful that they'll somewhat keep the tablet form factor working because it'll be used when a foldable device is open; it's just a bit bigger.

I'm not hopeful enough to go buy a tablet, however.

The Pixel C got launched and then more or less ignored. There was a startup / auth big that more or less killed the device off. I ended up getting a full refund for mine. :(

Holy crap, I can only assume someone has done the Monty Python skit of the castle that kept falling into the swamp with Google devices. It was basically impossible for me not to hear that voice in the second paragraph here. :D

I briefly owned a Pixel C and found it to be a buggy mess. Ultimately returned it. Wouldn’t be a surprise if that were a major factor in it being a flop.

Uhm wasn't the Nexus 7 the tablet that literally bricked itself within a year by the storage degrading to floppy speed?

The 1st gen Nexus 7, yes

https://www.anandtech.com/show/7185/android-43-update-brings...

That's the 2012 model. Easy mistake

I really liked that one, until it stopped working. In my opinion, it was the perfect size for reading and browsing the web. I haven't used a tablet as part of my daily life since then.

No, mine is still going strong. Obviously not running the latest version of Android since it's a decade old, but it's perfectly fine as an eReader or for light web browsing (it does struggle a bit with JS-heavy sites)

>Uhm

So strange to see these fillers typed out on HN and reddit.

>wasn't the Nexus 7 the tablet that literally bricked itself within a year by the storage degrading to floppy speed?

The 2012 version that I owned did precisely that. It was a great device for the time, and it is unfortunate that they discontinued it after just a few iterations.

It's not a filler in this context

>It's not a filler in this context

What is it supposed to be?

A textual version of a vocalization of doubt.

>A textual version of a vocalization of doubt.

Anytime someone opens a sentence in such a way, verbally, it rarely paints them in a positive light. It sounds snarky.

Not a year, I definitely got way more use than that. But yes.

I bought many secondhand Nexus 7 2013 devices for peanuts (€100-120 iirc). They were great devices and there was even a version that would take a SIM card so you could use it on the go without WiFi (no calls though) which was a game changer at the time.

Was always disappointed that they didn't stick with the form factor but with more RAM / storage / better CPU.

I think this form-factor didn't stick because it was undermined by smartphones growing bigger and bigger, eventually becoming phablets, which usually have 6"+ screen sizes.

> Next Google's attempt at tablets was Nexus 7 device, which was actually great

Until the Android Lollipop update rendered it so laggy it was unusable two years later?

I while ago I got a $300 Nvidia Shield android tablet which had great specs for the price, and they provided OS and software updates for 5 years or so.

Apparently they never made an updated model because the Nintendo Switch came out shortly after and it basically used the same SoC and the Nvidia tablet, so all production went to that.

Funny, I just replaced my perfectly acceptable, but canceled and unsupported Pixel Slate (2018) tablet with an iPad Pro. No regrets.

Right, I don't understand who buys into the Google/Pixel ecosystem now knowing it will be unsupported in a few years.

I held on for a long time, and still have a lot of lock-in to unwind. Switching costs are pretty high, even for individuals.

I won't be putting all my chips on Apple either. I have a mix of file storage options, password managers, Linux laptops, 'hub' devices, and so on.

> ...unsupported Pixel Slate...

What's unsupported about it? I picked this up on a fire sale and it still gets updates.

Nothing. It's supported for at least another 3 years. ~2026

I'm charging it up and we'll see. It was fairly quiet for a while.

I have a specific use in mind, leveraging on-device speech recognition. Ideally I'll be able to achieve parity with the iPad.

Were you already in the Apple ecosystem?

The Pixel Slate is supported until 2026: https://support.google.com/pixelslate/answer/9413910?hl=en

existing software support*

Any hardware issues (mind you, the failure rate is pretty high, especially keyboards), and you're left with a broken device.

> Easily control your home with the Google Home app.

Except the Nest gear, including home security system, that we’ve just announced we’re disabling.

Not in a market that we sell to means you aren't even allowed to look at the product? I recall this being a problem years ago on the Google store, but it's still a thing?

Apple lets me look at the store of any country I want. And they anyways launch products globally at the same time.

No mention of it supporting Google’s Kids Space out of the box, which is the ONE killer feature the Android tablets have over iOS in my house.

We are currently using throwaway Fire Tablets with Amazon’s version but would migrate to the actual Google version if we could with a reasonably good device. We’d even sooner swap to iOS but they don’t seem to want to support that use case.

Note: Son is non verbal and autistic, so tablets are learning, play, and communication for him. Kids space helps him navigate.

Am I having a stroke? 700€ for a tablet? That doesn't support a pen? That doesnt have a good ecosystem?

I get that Pixel is supposed to be a premium brand but it looks to me like they're trying to out-Apple Apple in pricing while at the same time trying to establish a new product category (let's be honest, Android tablets are kind of a joke right now).

I'm glad Android tablets might make a comeback, but at that price?! Hopefully the a-Version isn't too far.

I'm in the same place -- I can't understand what is the case for buying this instead of an ipad. If anyone can make a case, I'm curious.

For me personally, I would definitely consider it if it comes with good custom ROM support (esp. GrapheneOS).

I guess I might be the target audience, kinda.

I do like the polish of macOS and macbooks, but I'm not a fan of anything else made by Apple.

I used to own two iPhones before I switched to Androids.

Cables that fray and cost £30 to replace sucks. This happen tow personally, and I'm not one of those people that rides cables like horses. iPhones are brittle and bend or shatter in people's pockets, and half the time users get blamed, that also sucks. This didn't happen to me, but it was all over the media.

The AppStore I'm conflicted about, since it has a lot of boons in theory, but sucks in practice since there's still scams apps, even with the 30% apple tax. The other anticompetitive and predatory policies also suck; they sugar coat some of them as technical reasons, but they're stills just that: sugar coating. OTOH their privacy promises are indeed nice, but I don't know how much of that is true or PR (not that those are mutually exclusive, but you get the idea).

Android and Google suck in different ways though. But at least it feels like the lesser evil, and one that's also less expensive and doesn't become redundant as quickly.

The accessory space for Apple products is bigger, which is kind of a boon, but also a downside since it's annoying having to vet everything for whether it's shit or not.

US pricing is basically identical to Apple:

Pixel Tablet: 128GB for $499 or 256GB for $599

Current iPad: 64GB for $449 or 256GB for $599

If you want to use a pen with the Pixel Tablet, you can use any USI 2.0 stylus you'd like. And the Pixel Tablet has a laminated screen unlike the 10th gen iPad, which makes for an arguably better stylus experience. I personally hate non-laminated tablet screens.

Oh, I was actually lamenting the lack of a stylus for Android tablets, mostly because I never "heard" of one.

Do you know if it's worthwhile getting an Android tablet (like the Pixel Tablet) and the USI2 pen for digital painting? I mostly used Krita and a graphic tablet (although recently I'm doing it more traditional media to "unplug", so maybe getting a tablet is a step in the wrong direction)

I've never used an Apple stylus but my experience with the Samsung stylus is quite good, especially the higher end tablet models. Not having to charge the stylus and the fact they come bundled with their tablets is a nice bonus (often skewing many price comparison websites because they don't take the extra $100 for the stylus into account).

Software support in all art apps I've tried has been excellent. The Android version of Krita on tablets is just the desktop version repackaged into an app, for better or for worse.

I'd assume a USI2 pen will be equally good if not better, as it will also work with other models and brands. That said, I haven't tried these active pens myself, but if my Samsung tablet experience is anything to go by, I'd definitely be willing to give it a go.

I'm already a Krita user, so this is great news to me! I might seriously consider buying a nice tablet to replace my old setup.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply!

You can use any USI 2.0 pen you want, it just doesn't come with one.

NGL, I expected that if it supported one, it would be stated prominently.

Hopefully good USI pens can actually be purchased nowadays :)

I lost all interest in Google tablets after they abandoned the Pixel C instead of iterating over the concept of the portable keyboard they shipped it with. It was way ahead of Apple's Magic Keyboard for iPad and if they had doubled down on improving tablet support around 2015/2016 they wouldn't still be playing catch-up after the third or even fourth "we're serious about tablets now!" proclamation.

Android update support is also quite terrible considering they're on their own SoC by now.

Meh. Will probably grab the OnePlus Pad once it's on sale or if I can save 50-100EUR by getting it 2nd hand/refurbished.

I confess when I was getting a tablet for the family, I was expecting I could find one in the google store. Shockingly, there were no options at the time. And, I now confess that I'm not clear I would want to go with their option at this time. I can't bring myself to think this will have a good lifecycle of support. :(

I can't bring myself to think this will have a good lifecycle of support.

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me 73 times, shame on me.

Uh, it gets the same support as Pixel phones do. 3 years of major OS updates, 5 years of security updates.

3 years is appalling. For something like a tablet I would be expecting 5-6 years major updates.

Better than most Android tablets that never see any updates, security or otherwise, and ship with an old version of Android out of the box.

Can you name a better one?

No, I can't name a single Android tablet worth buying. It makes no sense to buy one over an iPad, even if you have no other Apple products.

Can the iPad do background sync of third-party file storage services like Nextcloud without having the app open in the first place yet?

iOS only just got push notifications for PWAs too.

Can't yet sideload on an iPad and are at the mercy of the App Store and the devs keeping up their subscription to keep niche apps up.

> Can the iPad do background sync of third-party file storage services like Nextcloud without having the app open in the first place yet?

Yeah it can. I believe apps get free access to background jobs while the device is plugged in. Not too sure the details but I use Google Photos and the photos seem to background sync fine without me thinking about it.

Sideloading is hopefully coming soon with the new EU laws. Though I wouldn't consider it much of a sales point considering the App Store selection is much larger than the Play Store tablet apps + sideloadable options.

If it has to be plugged in, what good is it as a tablet? People need constant, real-time sync to avoid conflicts and make sure people from the field get their data back to whoever needs it.

In the EU.

For consumers, can iPad OS do multiple users yet?

Have a look around, these people out in the field are all using iPads. Somehow they manage.

Android tablets are usually given to kids or used as basic retail displays.

Bold of you to assume I don't actively research and keep up with the latest products and OS.

iPads are also not uncommonly given to kids too; what kind of counterargument is that? Puerile.

The point still remains: the iPad doesn't do what I and others require. If you love the iPad, great, but it's not everything to everyone.

What about the OnePlus Pad? Been hearing great things about it

An iPad? Seriously, if the comparison is "All these other shit sandwiches have really bad shit, but this shit sandwich only has the freshest shit", maybe it's time to get a different sandwich.

Call me when iPad OS does multiple users in non-enterprise scenarios and supports background sync of third-party apps like Nextcloud on battery and supports sideloading globally without a jailbreak or punishment.

The shit sandwich analogy sucks BTW. It's a tool. If you need a screwdriver, why buy a nail gun? If you need x feature and y doesn't offer it, you buy x, even if it isn't supported in the long-term because it's a tool doing work today. I'm not going to accept an iPad as a substitute for what an Android tablet does today for the sake of it getting updates for longer (wtf?), but I might buy an iPad again if Apple ever pull their finger out on features that matter to me.

Is it so difficult to accept that x isn't appropriate for you but it is for others? Likewise, is it so difficult to accept that an iPad has major shortcomings and limitations for others? The egocentrism on display is bizarre.

If you like the iPad and it works for you, great. I want to like it, it doesn't do what I need.

So approximately a "Stadia" amount of support

"I'll trust Google to make this tablet great and support it in the long run" - no one ever

OTOH their hardware tends to get the best support in alternative Android flavors like Lineage and Calyx.

$499 / £599 / €679 / CA$699 What are these prices? I would have expected 549€ with the conversion rate and taxes and all that.

Can somebody explain me why Europeans should pay 679 Euro which are around 740 Dollar? I assume something around 540 Dollar in the US with sales tax?

And why we should also pay for the needless dock? Last time I bought a ThinkPad the offered good docking-stations but this was optional. Things which are not need for normal use should sold separately. Waste of resources.

Note: Rate Euro to US is 1,09.

european prices typically include VAT, US prices don’t

But even with US sales tax there's a big mark-up in the EU. Meanwhile, the Pixel 7a is the same price as the tablet in the US but significantly cheaper in the EU. Really odd pricing.

As said I already tried to accounted for that a reasonable estimate.

Without sales tax the US price is 499 Dollar.

The dock is a main feature of this device. You can even buy additional docks to place around the house for charging/speakers. If you don't need the dock, I guess it's not for you (though maybe they will release a dockless version later… and reduce the price). And unless you are really into the Google ecosystem (which can be compelling, but also annoying when they abandon products or gut them) it's not well priced in any market if you're just looking for a tablet.

I’m afraid you’re right. I don’t need a dock. And I don’t want locked into an eco-system.

The removal of Miracast was already a nightmare. The Chromecast image quality is worse, latency is worse and you need to the online. Thanks to Google „eco-system“.

Actually the „tablet” itself looks like a good device. At least more money left for ThinkPads and Linux ^^

Yeah, I've stuck with Google for a somewhat more open version of the best of tech without trying to do everything myself, but I also run Linux everywhere, my own mail server, node-red, etc and would love to one day either free myself from the Google, or see them fully accept and work with the open world.

Probably because labor laws, taxes, and fuel being 2x more expensive in Europe than in the US make logistics more expensive? Operation cost vary by region.

Also 740 is with tax, which for example in France is 20%, so the comparison price would be 592. So about $100 difference.

A 20% price increase before VAT is still expensive, especially because American wages are much higher (and often come with a higher cost of living, yes, but that still makes it easier to save up for a tablet).

Another advantage is that most of Europe is more densely populated. Google sells their 500 dollar tablets for the same price everywhere within the states, whether you live in the center of New York or the middle of the Nevada desert. They already need to cover the costs for this, so I don't think transportation costs cover the price difference.

Perhaps EU labour laws protect warehouse workers better, that's a possible reason for such a steep price hike, but I don't think warehouse workers earn that much more here.

Is it? We’re both speculating here. I’m sure they evaluated the market and found that’s the price they need to sell at. My best friend works doing supply planning and has worked for multinational companies in a variety of fields from pharmaceuticals to electronic components, to clothing. Through talking to him I learned that costs vary by region greatly, and it’s never because of what you think. It’s less “just taxes”, and more related to localized political situations, union, small supply chain variables or just simply marketing.

The iPad has the same price hike, so I assume European tablet prices are just higher for some reason. When the competition raises their prices, you can raise your prices and still be competitive.

A 10th gen iPad starts at €589 here while the USA price is listed as $449. Including VAT after currency conversion that price should be around €500, but Apple skims off an extra €89.

Luckily, Google devices don't keep their high prices after the market develops so in a year or so I expect the tablets to be priced much more reasonably. For some reason people are willing to pay near purchase price for a second hand iPad, keeping the cost of older models in stores high, but Android tablets go for much less.

As far as I'm concerned, the only real market for this is as an upgraded Nest Hub hardware. It's not really competitive as a tablet (go to Samsung or Apple for that), but it doesn't really do anything differentiated, either.

If it is indeed the next gen of what would have been the Nest Hub Max, then this is what the first gen of that product should have been. The detachable tablet is a great idea, as is building a speaker into the base. It would be compelling if the MSRP was $349 or so, but not $499. For that amount, I could just buy two Nest Hub Maxes, or a quite nice iPad (or nice Samsung Android tablet).

At $329 the entry level iPad is a great deal. I agree this would be a killer at $350 as it includes a stand…but $500 gets you an iPad and $170 left in your pocket for accessories

Has anyone tried loading the Chromecast app onto an existing phone or tablet? It looks like there's just an android app that runs but it probably isn't quite as simple as that, but I also haven't tried.

That you can cast to this seems like such a basic & obvious step.

I recall Google briefly supporting using ChromeOS as a Chromecast "target" but only for specially blessed "education" Chromebooks.

Chromecast seems pretty locked down but it would be really freaking cool to retrofit old devices (or something like a raspi) into a Chromecast simply by installing an app.

There is a great lovely w3c spec to do Chromecast, but as an open protocol. A remote control protocol for the web. https://github.com/w3c/openscreenprotocol

I really hope we can do it. So far it's almost exclusively Google putting the work, to take their tech (derived from Netflix's common sense/simple Dial protocol) & re-protocol-ize it again.

Such amazing benevolence, in my view. But if you want tech to succeed, you need to set it free. If you love it set it free. Create more value than you capture. Again here as in many places, I can say, thank you Google. You empower a great connected medium. It is good. These acts are great.

So basically what happened with HTTP/2 and HTTP/3. Really cool, thanks for sharing!

I have had a lot of problems with Chromecast (and apple play for that matter). It just never seems to work properly. Bluetooth is better, but every now and then I have to fiddle with it for a minute or two for it to work properly (and yes, also on iPhone). I have started just connecting using a 3.5mm plug.

Which this tablet lacks.

I imagine once the software gets out, XDA developers will be all over it.

I'm using GCam on my phone right now just like many other people running custom ROMs. Even if the Chromecast thing is more than just an app, I imagine there will be ways to get that functionality on other tablets soon after.

It’s nice to see key accessories (in this case, the dock) and an acceptable amount of storage included by default.

I’ve always held off on impulse buying an iPad because my cart total starts creeping towards MacBook prices once accessories and storage are added.

> I’ve always held off on impulse buying an iPad because my cart total starts creeping towards MacBook prices once accessories and storage are added.

I have that, too, but also think it’s a bit irrational. It shouldn’t be surprising that a tablet that is about as powerful as a laptop costs about the same as a laptop (iPad loses on connectivity, but is less voluminous, making it harder to give it high battery live)

Even the base iPad can get pricey. Apple's prices for iPad keyboards are nuts. $250 for a keyboard and trackpad! It's over half the price of the tablet. I thought Microsoft's prices for type covers was high when they launched the Surface but they look like a steal at $130 these days.

> The tablet only Google could make.

So, we should expect no ownership of hardware issues [1][2][3][4] and a discontinuation shortly [5] ?

Even the actual product page is broken already. See footnote 7 on tech specs page [6]:

> [...] See g.co/pixeltablet/updates for more information.

That link ... is broken... no such article exists...

Come to think of it, this IS the update policy, probably. Expectations are being set early on.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34494129

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/10yf7yp/google...

[3] https://www.phonearena.com/news/Pixel-7-Pro-is-turning-into-...

[4] https://www.techradar.com/news/google-pixel-6-problems

[5] https://killedbygoogle.com/

[6] https://store.google.com/product/pixel_tablet_specs?hl=en-US

...and also not available in Europe.

What is Google's thinking here? Do they have too much money and don't want to get more of it? Or is their supply chain so limited that they can't produce enough?

The charging dock being a speaker is a nice gimmick. However, at $499... that's not the price Google needs in my mind, and it reminds me about the Pixel Watch; too little, too late.

You can get a basic iPad for $329, an iPad mini for $399, or a modern iPad for $449. The ecosystem of apps on Android is hardly tablet-optimized, and there's no option to add a keyboard or pencil later. Also, if you learn how to use an iPad, there's no risk of it being killed after the 1st generation (looking at you Pixel Slate - if you bought that thing, it's been five years waiting for this replacement).

Software support is another issue, with the average iPad getting at least 6 years of full upgrades followed by 1-2 years of just security updates; while the Pixel tablet promises only three new Android versions and 2 years of security updates afterwards. Considering my 5-year-old iPad is still widely used here, I think that lifecycle may be too short.

Does anyone know if this supports USB-C to HDMI?

It saddens me to have to ask this on HN but there's no info I can find about this. After having OnePlus devices for years, I got very used to being able to plug in a USB-C to HDMI cable into the charging port and be able to use an external screen with no problems. After getting a Pixel 5a and my wife a Pixel 7, I discovered that Pixels do not support that (which surprised me greatly). Supposedly one can buy some expensive special hardware and install a 2/5 star rated app with bad privacy policy to give the feature, but that is quite unpalatable to me.

If this device has that feature, I would buy it because it's otherwise excellent. But plugging in to our van's HDMI port to play movies and such for kids on long road trips is a must-have feature for me.

They still don't manage to sell their devices world-wide. Even in Europe. Clicking on the above link I see only their useless nest devices.

It's available in France:

https://store.google.com/fr/product/pixel_tablet?hl=fr

679€, they have no shame, les bâtards ! And I thought the last Ipad was really expensive.

Does it make more sense to place a camera at each corner of the device for two cameras at anytime to feed the A.I. chip stereo vision? The single camera midpoint on the longer side forces a double think before docking the device like early USB plug.

A Google Nest Hub Max is $229. This seems like the upgrade pick at $499, which lets you use it as a tablet, too.

My use case is video calls for an elderly relative. I wonder if it would work as simply (once set up), or whether it would complicate things.

I would have liked to see a 512G memory version, or in the alternative, a Micro SD Card slot. Phones have more memory.

Yep, my $300 phone has 8GB of memory...

I am not really am Apple person, but I always wondered why the iPad is almost always better priced or in the same range as Android tablets when they are clearly better. At the same time I have an Android phone and don't know why a comparable iPhone is 2x the price. Not saying this is a bad tablet, and I like my Pixel phone, but if they will fight the iPad they need to be competitive on pricing and this isn't, especially not in Europe.

Because people are willing to pay it. I also think it's worth looking at the lifespan of an Apple device compared. Lots of chatter on these threads about iPads getting release updates for years following release, where Pixels get 18 months if they're lucky. I am content spending 2x the price on a device if I can keep it for 2x+ years.

Better priced means the iPad is cheaper, and this despite being (imho) better

The tablet that only google could make... The $500 LCD tablet that only google would try to sell.

That's a really interesting consideration to me, I'll say the same about a phone - but feel like I'd seldomly plug my high end headphones into a tablet?

I think the combination of tablet and smart display is the right idea.

The Nest Hub copied Amazon's ill conceived idea of a locked down device with anemic specs. Amazon's goal was to saturate the market to help push the Prime "flywheel", but who knows what Google's plan was. Home automation license fees? Without any other real business model, the result for Amazon was a fleet of bandwidth sucking machines and a $10 billion loss. Losing money on every device but making it up in volume, so to speak. Fuchsia is simply Google's foray deeper into that black hole of stupidity.

Launching a more capable device with a decent OS and proven developer ecosystem could finally make smart displays more useful. I predict if Apple ever launches one, it will have similar properties and run on an iOS derivative rather than some underpowered, minimal functionality, closed device only used for weather and music.

What is the revenue/profitability situation for Google's consumer electronics?

When Google originally got into the biz... with Android and earlier versions of this pixel range, the goal was to compliment search and such.

That did kind of work. Google's position is seemingly better than it would have been in a world where Apple (and msft?) dominate mobile OS.

That said... Google is still 80% ads, 10% cloud, 10% pixels. Is that 10% even profitable?

With the www increasingly decreasing and GPTs starting to eye web search's dominance as the way to access information...

Google's thousand flowers bloomed, then withered. Some came back stronger. None of them became meaningful businesses. I don't understand why.

US Price: $499 UK Price: £599

I get that technology companies don't just directly convert USD at the appropriate exchange rate, but this is ridiculous. Especially as the conversion rate they used on the Pixel Fold is 1 USD = 1 GBP.

Back when it was $2 = £1 prices seemed to be converted at a 1 - 1 rate (and VAT was 17.5% then). This seems to be a long standing problem.

The 1:1 at least had some rationale given UK VAT and greater expenses. But this is 50% more expensive ($499 is £399 at current rates). And why use different rates for the Fold than the Tablet?

1:1 then meant a 100% markup compared to the US price. That isn't accounted for by 17.5% VAT. I can't imagine expenses were really twice as high.

The UK price is VAT inclusive. (Advertised prices in the UK must generally include tax.)

The US price is pre-tax (since there are several thousand sales tax rates that could apply, based on customer location).

UK value-added tax is 20%. $499 * 1,20 = $598.8, which is about £478. Selling it for £499 would have more than covered the tax difference at current exchange rate, so where do the other £100 come from?

As was pointed out earlier in other comments, Google generally uses a 1:1 convention for USD->GBP for pricing. (This 1:1 generally accounts for minor f/x fluctuations and for customs duties for importing goods into the U.K.)

GBP 500 x 120% = GBP 600 (rounded)

Then how is the Pixel 7a only £450 when it's $500 in the US?

one reason might be is that in the US taxes usually arent included in the price advertised

Some reasons, not all of which are applicable to this exact situation:

* Differences in tariffs and taxes.

* Differences in what deal they can make with local distributors.

* Cover cost of different consumer protections/warranty requirements etc.

* They think the market will sell enough units at the higher price to make it more profitable than a lower price.

At least it's available in the UK. Ireland (home to Google's EMEA HQ) gets... The Pixel 7a.

And Google duly thanks the Irish for not enforcing days protection laws!

“Brexit means Brexit”

679€ in Germany, which is about the same as the UK price. Or about $740. Even if you remove the taxes, that's still $622.

it's actually insane, obviously this isn't google but it is actually cheaper for me to fly from prague to the US, buy a new macbook and fly back than it is for me to buy one locally. It makes absolutely no sense

Is it though? When I went to the US recently, an M1 MacBook Air from the physical Apple Store + taxes was about the same as I paid for it in the UK. I was considering getting an iPhone while I was there but the shorter warranty and same price out me off.

I don’t consider buying premium Electronics from Google. I look to them for free and cheap products and services.

I can’t imagine these working in 2 years nor would I want to deal with their customer service.

"The only tablet engineered by Google."

Pixel C and Pixel Slate may have a question about this.

Back to the point, I think the only thing that Pixel Tablet solved is it has a magnetic charging station.

Suffers from ecosystem problem. iOS ecosystem is way better. I have owned Nexus and Pixel phones, Nexus tablets, and Moto 360 and Galaxy Gear. Switching to Apple ecosystem was way better world.

The problem is that some things have ecosystem network bonus and if you can't work yourself up to that threshold, you don't get it.

Positioning as home device is interesting since that's the one place I use Google devices. But if they don't use modern LLM stuff there, I think that one is for the rubbish heap.

I have one of the original Nest Hubs in my bedroom. Just as a dynamic photo frame it has justified its existence. One of the killer features is zero cameras anywhere on the body. I can imagine buying one tablet with several docks throughout the house, but the cameras on the front and back are no-gos for certain rooms. They need to sell attachment that will physically block the cameras in order for the tablet to dock. None of the cases look to have optional camera blockers.

like a piece of tape?

I would go for an Oneplus Pad, which as a better screen ratio (7:5), which is 1 step further than iPad in matter of ergonomy.

In my experience, 1536x2500 is not a good ratio, even if it is a nice resolution.

Google just copied Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi screen format.

I don't know about cpu and gpu specs but in my experience it doesn't matter as it feel mostly equals past a certain treeshold point.

Also, it costs 200 euros less.

And you make nobody jalous. With Oneplus Pad, Uncle Sam AND Uncle Xi potentially spy on you.

Feel like I've been waiting for a Chrome tablet since before Sundar was CEO. Then a few years later there was that expensive Pixel laptop. Now they're finally shipping this in 2023. I've always wondered what was holding back a launch of this.

Edit: I realize this is Android and not ChromeOS. I just can't believe they didn't ship a flagship tablet all this time.

The specs feel... underwhelming?

12 hours battery life? My Pixel 7 Pro gets a claimed 2+ days.

8GB RAM? Even if it's mostly unused, my Pixel 7 Pro has 12GB.

The display has a nice resolution, but the bezel around it is huge.

My Galaxy Tab S6 from 2019 has the same or better specs... and is thinner to boot.

It kind of feels like this was a tablet that should have arrived a few years ago.

Bezels are actually pretty useful on tablets because of how they're held. But I agree in general the specs are just a tad underwhelming. The display is LCD as well, which is a bummer.

LCD is probably a necessity to prevent burn-in since the screen will always/frequently be on in docked mode.

Good point! Hadn't considered that.

> Bezels are actually pretty useful on tablets because of how they're held

I think the palm rejection are good enough that think bezels are no longer an issue

It's more about holding it in my lap to watch or read something and my thumbs are covering part of the display at the edges.

You don't need bezels on a phone because you can cradle it in one hand, but they're useful on a tablet because you've often got to grip/pinch it at the edges to hold it.

Boy, I love covering my screen whilst I hold it.

That would be terrible product design.

> 12 hours battery life? My Pixel 7 Pro gets a claimed 2+ days.

That's 12 hours of screen on, displaying video. I assume that's not what you're doing on the phone when getting 2 days of batter life?

It's also like half the price of your Pixel 7 pro.

Considering Google has no other "flagship" tablet offering, the pricing or positioning is not stellar. This in-lines this brand new Pixel device with ho-hum disposable tablets.

Samsung builds high end tablets with Android if you need that. This is an option for people who want something different.

I get the impression its been design specifically for the kitchen..

which is exactly what I think I want it for

I've had bad experiences with the hardware maintenance of Google devices. Things break down and Google don't provide good ways to repair them if the device is older than a couple years, so while it's cool, I don't think I'll go for this.

I wish the price was slightly lower so this could be no-brainer, but I'm a fan. The speaker dock seems like a gimmick at a glance, but I think it's compelling. It gives the device a definitive home at rest, and bi-modal utility. This is the kind of thing that fits super nicely in the kitchen.

> Does the Pixel Tablet have a cellular plan option?

> No, the Pixel Tablet is only available with Wi-Fi connectivity.

and I am out. we have about 300 iPads at work, and I would be interested in swapping some to this, but it MUST have cellular data, no exception. otherwise its just a toy. Dumb move Google.

I might buy this, I do wish it had NFC, but alas not many tablets do.

The killer feature for me is GrapheneOS support.

Honestly, if it wasn't for GrapheneOS, I probably would never bother with buying a Pixel, especially jumping hoops to just buy the phone.

The spec seems a bit underwhelming, but this experiment seems to try paving the road to merging home devices, tablets and set top boxes (yeah, it has Chromecast built-in) into one form factor. The narrative itself seems plausible, let's see how it plays out.

The weirdest part of this product, to me, is that Google went all-in on beige. You may pick from three shades of beige. Google corporate branding is usually so much more colorful, but I guess times change.

The website is pretty much broken on Firefox on a Macbook Air M1.

You can only see the left upper 3rd of the device at the default zoom and the animation doesn't play.

You have to zoom out before it works as expected.

Does it run ChromeOS Flex? [1]?

[1] https://chromeenterprise.google/os/chromeosflex/

What’s with google in last few weeks? Tons of AI and a couple of new pixel devices! Are they really pulling everything in their arsenal in a short window to keep Wall Street happy?

Google IO is this week.

It's Google I/O this week. They're packing a bunch of announcements into a single big hype event that's ostensibly for developers. Apple does the same with WWDC and Microsoft with their BUILD events (is it still called that?).

Everyone accuses Apple of “price gouging” but they objectively make a better product at a lower price. They sell the iPad much cheaper and it has Apple Pencil support!

I have been a big fan of Google phones, but am being forced to switch away due to their horrendous parts prices. Their replacement LCD's cost ~$200.

> Video and video calling:

> Video formats: HEVC (H.265) and AVC (H.264)

> Video playback:

> Supports H.263, H.264 AVC, H.265 HEVC, MPEG-4, VP8, VP9, AV1

So no AV1 encoder?

No pen/stylus?

Supports stylus (USI2 standard like Chromebooks) based on spec sheet. No first party one or a dock space though.

Missed the mother's day window badly! I would have easily picked this up at Target for my wife. With the dock? No brainer, 100% cop.

People enjoy gifts outside of prescribed gift giving holidays!

Does anyone else think it's a weird decision to force people to sign in to their google accounts before viewing the google store?

Yes. It keeps asking me to change my region.

I love my Nokia T20 and it's less than half the price. It's plenty fast enough for browsing the net and watching shows.

So is this competing with Echo Show or Samsung S8 / iPad Air? I just cam't understand why they would go with the former?

This really feels like a replacement for Nest Hub.

Next version will offer a version of the dock with Nest features (mic, iot support).

If I wanted an iPad, I’d pay the same price for the actual thing.

No one wants a luxury Android tablet, we learned that over 10 years ago.

I really hope GrapheneOS will run on it!

A Tensor processor, nice. I heard of it but forgot about it. It is indeed a reference to TensorFlow.

Another fail on the aspect ratio side of things. Pass until they release a 4:3 aspect ratio tablet.

No headphone jack, no sale.

If this had a headphone jack I would be seriously considering a purchase.

Alas, it does not.

Will GrapheneOS run on it?

It uses the same processor as other supported devices, so it’s likely.

Is this the first mainstream tablet without an audio jack?

No, iPads don’t have them either.

How about multi-user? Or do I have to buy 4 of it?

Unleash the 60 Hz LCD display power in 2023!

Nice, charging docs are super useful

On a side note, how hackable is the nest hub? I'd like to mess around with a production fuchsia release.

so is this an echo show competitor or Samsung S8 / iPad Air?

5 years of updates.

is android usable these days or is it still "usable" in the way linux desktops are?

Considering the number of Android devices in the world, I'd say it's clearly the most usable smartphone OS available.

It is "usable" in the way that Windows desktops are.

It follows Unix philosophy better than the Linux desktop.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com