
Google was never serious about tablets - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/21/18700394/google-tablets-android-chromeos-priorities-cancellation
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rchaud
Gadget/tech journalism has always positioned Google as a 1:1 competitor to
Apple, which leads to a very skewed perspective on Android. Google's own
Android hardware always gets compared to Apple, even though OEM's
implementations have usually been superior. Google built a good enough base
for OEMs to improve upon.

For all the breathless 2000-word articles iPad Pro productivity, Android has
for me been far better as a laptop replacement as it has for years supported:

\- mouse + KB

\- USB OTG (external storage)

\- microSD slots

\- MHL/mini-HDMI (for external displays)

Samsung introduced multi-tasking and pressure-sensitive pen input with their
Note series of tablets in 2014, whereas Google's official Android didn't
support split screen until Android N in Aug 2016. iOS 11 started offering it a
year later. Samsung's DeX gives you a limited version of Linux on Tab S4 and
S5e, which makes the desktop experience even better.

~~~
hrktb
> Android has for me been far better as a laptop replacement

Just curious, but how many of these are you using with any regularity ?

I have never seen a Samsung dex in the wild, even in hip coworking spaces, nor
people seriously using android tablets, even less with a mouse and keyboard
(closest to it was the multi-OS transformable laptop I think, but the person I
knew owned it only used the windows side)

~~~
rchaud
I haven't seen them either. But I don't make my purchase decisions on whether
other people have them. I only know my own use case.

My boss, a marketing director, uses an iPad Pro w/keyboard case. It serves no
purpose for him besides email and PowerPoint, which makes sense when you don't
even have mouse input. Yet we would consider him a 'serious user' because he
takes it with him everywhere.

------
Mindwipe
It must be said, the initial report said that the reason the two devices were
cancelled was because they were not passing QA. That seems... quite
believable. The Pixel C was a great design for a tablet, amazing aspect ratio
that sadly nobody else has copied, looked fantastic... but reliability was
terrible.

The screen connector was too close to the graphics chip and disconnected
(fairly reliably) after about a year, it had a string of early bootloader
responsiveness problems, the team promised HDMI output over USB-C and could
never get it to work, early screens had response problems etc etc.

Google had good aftersales support, but I know a lot of owners who went
through at least four of them.

I'm not so convinced that this is about tablets. I think it's about more
fundamental issues at Google's hardware divisions and their inability to fix
reliability issues and engineer in ways that stop them cropping up like
Samsung and Apple have (odd exceptions notwithstanding, before you mention
keyboards or the Note 7 at me) generally done.

It seems like virtually all Google hardware has problems. And I wonder if some
of that is because of the Google's seeming inability to maintain long term
focus on something. The hardware team will never get as good at Apple at
reliability if it's unable to stick to engineering the same product for more
than eighteen months. I also suspect this is the end for ChromeOS as a tablet
OS.

So, in conclusion, Samsung, please make a tablet with a 1:√2 aspect ratio.
Please! The Pixel C was the best comic reading tablet ever made.

~~~
fphhotchips
Can confirm - loved my Pixel C but had screen problems twice and rather than
try to get a third one I just bought a Galaxy Tab S4 instead.

Honestly I think Samsung is going to take up the mantle here. DeX may not be
the best UX ever, but it's much better than anything Google is doing itself.

~~~
jandrese
I cracked the glass on my Pixel C several years ago and have never been able
to find a replacement. I've even called professional shops and they've just
shrugged their shoulders. The tablet itself is great, but there are zero
accessories or repair options for it.

------
PaulHoule
What this story misses is that Amazon dominates the low end of tablets -- and
the low end is where tablets can really shine.

Amazon's Fire 7 tablet is not brilliant, but it is cheap, and really adequate.
When mine fails I can get another for $50, so I have no problem with the build
quality being a bit worse than a Nexus 7.

Amazon subsidizes the tablets to give people a reason to be in the Prime
ecosystem, so it has scared away competitors for low end tablets.

Microsoft was interested in tablets, I think, because they saw the possibility
that tablets would eat away at the PC from the low end. A really good tablet
could eliminate many things from the BOM; Microsoft wanted to run Windows on
tablets as a bastion against that, but it didn't work that way because Windows
is much bigger (and feature rich) than Android, intel made crummy chips for
tablets, PC manufacturers got obsessed with "2-in-1" machines, etc.

High end tablets have their own problems since they get encroached by phones
and PCs. There is a certain kind of person who gets $799 of value from giving
their child a chunk of electronics that costs $799, but for just a little more
you can get them a laptop a good AMD GPU.

~~~
WorldMaker
Interesting tangents:

> PC manufacturers got obsessed with "2-in-1" machines, etc

It's Microsoft that has been long obsessed with the "2-in-1" and its the other
PC manufacturers that have begrudgingly followed (then been surprised that the
efforts make money). Microsoft's interests in Tablets have long seemed more in
service to 2-in-1 goals than simply Tablets for the sake of tablets. (The
Surface was the first big "2-in-1", the Surface Laptop pushed thinking in
2-in-1 design, such as shifting the battery between both parts and complex
multi-GPU arrangements.)

Microsoft isn't just worried about tablets (and phones) eating the PC from the
low end, but about the very definition of PC falling out from under them.
Microsoft seems pretty adamant in their marketing that a PC isn't just one
form factor (desktop or laptop or tablet or phone) and isn't just one HCI
paradigm (keyboard/mouse or keyboard-only or touch or AR/VR), but that a PC, a
computer, should flexibly be all of those things, respond to any and all input
paradigms _as the user decides_. Their message continues to be hardware form
factor shouldn't matter, because software should be capable of adapting to
user interest. It's precisely the argument to expect from a Software company
that deals in hardware only begrudgingly and only if it has something to prove
about Software (such as the OG HW reason for them: that mouse wheels are
extremely useful in productivity applications such as Excel).

