
Revisiting the Google Pixel C – Better, but Not There Yet - netinstructions
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9996/revisiting-the-google-pixel-c
======
modeless
> Android itself still has issues with responsiveness and latency that bother
> me

> Chrome in particular is really bad regarding responsiveness and latency

This can't be emphasized enough. The Android and Chrome teams should be
absolutely ashamed of the current state of performance. On my Nexus 5X I
regularly have to wait 5 full seconds or more after pressing the app switcher
or home buttons before I can perform another action, while animations chug and
jank. Screen transitions within apps are often delayed multiple seconds before
starting. Launching apps like Twitter or Facebook or Google Maps sometimes
takes 10 seconds or more. Scrolling in every app is constantly interrupted by
multiple missed frames as new items load. Loading websites like The Verge is
just a terrible experience as the whole page jumps up and down for many
seconds while scrolling is completely impossible. It's infuriating.

~~~
JohnTHaller
One possible contributing factor is that the Android app switcher is a
cluttered mess. On phones, instead of Chrome having some sort of tab manager
in the app, you wind up with one entry in the app switcher for every single
tab you leave open as you switch to other apps. The same occurs with the
Google search app. So the app switcher becomes more a cluttered stack of
browser and search history than a proper app switcher.

~~~
modeless
You can disable that in Chrome (which brings back the swipe down gesture to
open the tab switcher, which is nice). However, the way the Google Search app
interacts with the app switcher and back button is awful and there's no option
to fix it. For example, using the app switcher to go back to a voice action
result will often re-execute the action. Or sometimes no entry gets added to
the back stack, so you can't go back to a results page. Or sometimes clicking
something in the results opens Chrome and sometimes it doesn't. I just avoid
the search app whenever possible and use Chrome.

I could go on about the clusterfuck that is "OK Google", but maybe I should
stop now before I get too worked up.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Nice! Thanks for the heads up. I must have missed that when I hunted for it a
while back.

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bigtones
An interesting story. Ars Technica [1] dug up a few months ago the the Pixel C
was never meant to run Android - all the way through designed and development
it was tested with the Chrome OS loaded. At the last minute, the now unified
Android / Chrome OS team decided to switch it to Android as a flagship device
of their new Android direction and phasing out of Chrome OS in favor of
Android. Result was a mess and probably the crappiest device Google has ever
shipped, which anandtech rightfully pointed out.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/12/the-pixel-cs-bumpy-
ro...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/12/the-pixel-cs-bumpy-road-from-
chrome-os-concept-to-android-adoptee/)

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
A ChromeOS tablet probably _would 've_ been a better end-product as far as a
productivity tablet goes. The problem is that ChromeOS's app selection is
pitiful for entertainment apps, and I suppose Google figured that no one would
pay $500 for a "premium" productivity tablet when a cheap clamshell Chromebook
would work nearly as well.

~~~
digi_owl
That has been Google's problem ever since ChromeOS went from being a "can it
work?" research project to something they wanted to monetize.

If you look at the timeline, Android was poised to go "productive" with the
3.x for tablets. But at that very time the first Chromebooks hit the market,
and the push was strongly towards the corporate (their unveiling even had a
demo of Citrix client support).

I can't help speculate that there was some backroom jousting between Rubin
(Android) and Pichai (ChromeOS) about who should carry the corporate push,
with Pichai winning and Rubin moving to X-labs.

It seems that Google has renewed their focus on productive Android recently
though, in large part thanks to incorporating Samsung's Knox tech and such.

This likely because even though ChromeOS is a lovely "terminal", its not a
phone platform.

Bascially the corporate world lacks a proper upgrade path from Windows
CE/Mobile that has been powering all manner of mobile devices. Going Android
would allow quite a bit of flexibility, and choice in equipment suppliers.

It would not surprise me that as with the previous Pixel, the Pixel C is as
much for Google internal use as it is for retail. As i recall, the Chromebook
Pixel was in part a push to provide an alternative to Macbooks for Google
employees (i swear that Google may well be Apple's biggest corporate customer,
possibly tied with Facebook).

~~~
whatusername
Don't forget IBM in the list of apples corporate customers.

------
nextos
I believe this would be a fantastic Linux machine. But sadly with all the
closed components it's not trivial to get an ARM distro running, despite
Coreboot.

~~~
gh02t
They're based around a Tegra X1 SoC aren't they? I know Nvidia releases Linux
for their X1 devkits ( [https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/linux-
tegra](https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/linux-tegra) ). Dunno what else
is in the Pixel-C hardware wise, but at least that gives me some hope. I'd
consider buying one if you could put a real Linux distro on it.

~~~
nextos
Yes, let's see. It's really nice hardware. The only slight annoyance is the
lack of some standard keys.

Perhaps Surface 3 (non-pro) could be a good alternative. It's x86, but getting
Linux running there is tricky too. [1]

[1] [http://reddit.com/r/surfacelinux](http://reddit.com/r/surfacelinux)

------
Synaesthesia
So they fixed the issues of touches not responding and maybe some of the worst
unexpected crashing, but the major issues remain like almost all apps still
being built for phone sizes, lack of multitasking and the fact that most apps
only run in portrait mode, all of which are really not acceptable on 10"
tablets.

~~~
nathanasmith
I follow you on everything else but

>> most apps only run in portrait mode

What? That's not even remotely true. I think out of the hundred or so apps I
have on my Android tablet, there might be one that is stuck in portrait mode.

~~~
Synaesthesia
My apology this is what I inferred from reading review of it, on The Verge:
"It gets worse with third-party apps. The Pixel C wants to be used in
landscape mode, but too many apps assume that they’re on phones. Popular apps
like Slack, Twitter, and many more toss you into portrait mode even when the
keyboard is attached."

From Ars Technica: "A new entry of late is the "pillarboxed phone app," which
is made by designers that see the above issue and say "No problem! We'll put
big margins on the left and right of the screen! It's a tablet app now!"

~~~
josteink
Issues like this with one of the first Android tablets/netbook-convertibles
(the TF101, running original Honeycomb 3.0) drove me to develop this app:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.kjonigsen....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.kjonigsen.straitjacket)

I see from the discussion here that it is obviously still needed.

------
pluma
As a content Android user (don't own or plan to own a single iOS device though
I have used iPads at work) and I replaced my Nexus 7 (2013) with the Pixel C.

So far my only criticism has been the price tag. The keyboard is pretty much
mandatory to get the full experience and with the keyboard and two spare
cables I ended up with ~€800 for the whole package.

Yes, some apps can get laggy (more so than they should) and it's good to see
the firmware is getting some updates but it's far from "completely
dysfunctional".

------
jbk
I'm probably stupid, but I honestly don't understand this device and Google
startegy...

It's called Pixel instead of Nexus, (it's running Android), so it's confusing
to many people, on the market positioning side...

At the same time, on the technical side, Android team, after telling us to use
Fragments to have nice tablets+phone experience for a few years, seems to not
care about fragments anymore. Notably appcompat and design libraries don't
work correctly in Fragments anymore... And the Google apps show this very
clearly.

If Google apps are not supporting tablets correctly, why should we?

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
The original Google Pixel was so named for the following reasons:

1) It was developed in-house at Google

2) It reflected the hi-DPI of the screen.

Evidently they decided to turn "Pixel" into a brand, and I suppose they
figured that the in-house tablet they developed warranted the title (if you
look at the thing, its aluminum design does resemble the panel half of a
Chromebook Pixel).

So I suppose they now use the Pixel brand to either represent that style or to
indicate that it's in-house hardware.

~~~
digi_owl
Also the Chromebook Pixel may have been an attempt to get Google employees to
use something other than Macbooks.

Meaning that it may be in part aimed at dogfooding the Android platform
internally, much like how Microsoft employees run beta version of their
software to root out early bugs and such.

Also offering the device for sale may provide some means of covering the
expense of having them made, as usually factories demand certain minimum
amount ordered before they start a production run.

~~~
arthurfm
> Also the Chromebook Pixel may have been an attempt to get Google employees
> to use something other than Macbooks.

I think it's most likely due to Apple's weak enterprise management tools for
OS X [1] and the mid-2009 cyber attack on Google (Operation Aurora [2]) which
was the result of one or more Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerabilities.

[1]
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/27/google_mac_support/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/27/google_mac_support/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora)

------
itsjoesullivan
Picked one of these up last week. Sending it back this week. Had I known the
current state of the Android tablet experience, I would have been more upset
when ChromeOS lost the Pixel team.

