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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
> 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
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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_.
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.
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.
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 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.
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]
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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].
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.
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.
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!!
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.
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?
"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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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. :(
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.
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.
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)
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.
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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...
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.
They're pretty good at changing how you charge every few years and charging you for that change though.
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 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.
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.
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
[0] https://www.phonearena.com/news/HP-TouchPad-Touchstone-Charg...
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.
Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XSC_UG5_kU
The case just looks nicer. the keyboard case is more functional for me.
https://www.logitech.com/en-ca/products/ipad-keyboards/slim-...
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.
[0] https://www.magfast.com/magfast-news/does-wireless-charging-...
Also - I don't know if Apple's 15w Qi is strong enough for a tablet.
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/10/15/apple-ipad-dock-smart-h...
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.
"Charging via Charging Speaker Dock (included) or USB-C® charger (sold separately)"
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...
> 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
But the best way to save your batteries is to not charge to 100%.
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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 is saying "this is for the creatives" while Google is saying "this is a home console".
Huh?
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.
Considering i'd only watch 1-2 hours a day that's a week of TV per charge. I love it.
We did quite some work back then (:
https://9to5google.com/2019/08/09/google-pixel-c-update/#:~:....
Note that major OS updates != security updates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPadOS_15#Releases
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_.
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?
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.
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]
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.
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 even worse than that. They actually do!
But managed for education/enterprise only...
Google is so good at killing off products that nobody remembers the previous attempts at tablets?
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Dead Comment
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 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.
There's also a serious red tint to the screen [0].
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/zmht0j/lenovo_p11_p...
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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!!
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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 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.
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.
BTW. Is there a good tablet that has a screen that one can comfortably keep in hands, like around 8 inches?
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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
Gotta love stores that make it difficult for potential customers to see their products..
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.
Was always disappointed that they didn't stick with the form factor but with more RAM / storage / better CPU.
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.
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
Until the Android Lollipop update rendered it so laggy it was unusable two years later?
https://www.anandtech.com/show/7185/android-43-update-brings...
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.
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.
Any hardware issues (mind you, the failure rate is pretty high, especially keyboards), and you're left with a broken device.
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.
What's unsupported about it? I picked this up on a fire sale and it still gets updates.
I have a specific use in mind, leveraging on-device speech recognition. Ideally I'll be able to achieve parity with the iPad.
Except the Nest gear, including home security system, that we’ve just announced we’re disabling.