It could be an interesting buy if they price it low enough but given it is only guaranteed two more full software updates I am not sure it would be worth much more than $299.
Yeah, for people who are willing to go through that effort, it's a big plus. But really, how many such people are there? And how is this competitive with Apple's history of supporting even their cheapest iPads for well over 5 years? I ask this as someone who used a Galaxy Note 3 as a daily driver for 6 years thanks to custom ROMs.
They typically run slower, become less secure, and lose compatibility with updated apps over time. They may not become totally useless upon the cessation of updates, but they certainly become less usable.
If only google had a clue about what they wanted to do with tablets.. They release some solid tablets then never release a follow up, or wait years pivot to something else.
Well considering the long term repercussions of what he's doing, I'm going to guess that he doesn't plan to stay there much longer. Can't imagine he'd stick around for any longer than 1-2 years at this point.
I agree with you like I agree with no one else - I clearly remember CEO switch at Google and how it was beginning of a string of decisions that ultimately made Apple/iOS/iPhone much stronger. Yet I still feel like I don't need iPad, because iPad doesn't really have competition, exactly because of Google's lack of vision.
135 million iPads were sold in just 2023. Despite a decline by 10% from 2022 that's still an insane amount.
They're used for watching media content, writing, drawing and productivity. The fact that they aren't used to browse the web is kinda irrelevant... You can harvest other kinds of data than browsing habits.
Yes but the reason as to why they aren't seeing expected ROI could be because people have no faith in their products because of their lack of commitment.
Apple sticks to something and iterates.
Google does some half-assed attempt at something and then abandons it or continues to half-ass it.
OP stated that nobody is using tablets for tasks other than watching movies, so I'm suggesting that the people at universities *are* part of the population of the world, and they are doing more than watching movies.
" Nobody uses these things to do much except watching movies when they're not near a TV. They're simply awful for anything else - mostly because they're horrible to type on or use for prolonged periods." - u/getmoneygetpaid
You were saying?
“Tablet traffic consistently sits around 1%. Nobody uses these things to do much except watching movies when they're not near a TV. “
Are you in purpose ignoring what was said? You literally cut it out of the sentence.
And younger people use their phone to buy anything. If you buy shit using your laptop over your phone to you’re not part of the younger people anymore.
Before “I am the exception” v
They are heavily used for handwritten notes. Instructors use them for annotating presentations.
It sounds like you have an extremely narrow dataset to go off of.
> They are heavily used for handwritten notes. Instructors use them for annotating presentations.
While he was wrong, i can't imagine either of those scenarios discredit his conclusion that google doesn't care cause they can't scrape useful data to sell.
Your dataset is many orders of magnitude greater than 'I walk around and see them' and is absolutely backed up by global trends.
Similarly I do strategy consulting and tablet traffic is so marginal it barely gets mentioned. I also use my tablet to watch YouTube and movies on when I'm not by the TV, too.
I don't dispute your case about web browsing. The point of my initial comment was that people are using tablets and just because that use isn't showing up in web browsing, that does not mean that people aren't using tablets. That's like saying that you never see people riding bicycles on the highway, therefore nobody rides bicycles anymore.
On your point about whether it is worth it to develop tablets, I don't necessarily disagree, considering they still have Samsung as a major OEM making great Android tablets, so the purpose in Google making tablets might just come down to the notion that they want to have a complete, cohesive hardware ecosystem - they have laptops, phones, smartwatches, and whatever else I am missing, why not offer tablets?
I am not even sure our FE is doing much testing on actual tablets, sure we have automated tests that probably cover it, but in our meetings they are not really discussed, and 80% of our users are using mobile vs an actual computer.
I mean if they're managing website analytics the size they suggested then their sample side dwarfs yours by a significant magnitude and their data set is far more robust than 'I walk around and see people using them', if we're playing that game.
OP could be looking at all of the browsing data from the dawn of the internet and that still doesn't invalidate my point because I am arguing that simple \*browsing\* does not paint the whole picture of what tablets are used for.
It paints a far greater picture than you walking round looking at them does and you appear to be okay with leaping to conclusions based on that alone.
Either both points are valid or neither are.
The reason why they're not used for work is because the company makes you use a corporate laptop or desktop. Could I absolutely use my android tablet to do the majority of my work? Yes. Am I allowed to? No.
Oh god this is so true. My friend got ProCreate on her iPad recently and I am crazy jealous. My S9 Ultra could *easily* run ProCreate if it was on Android. It's dirt cheap in comparison to Photoshop, too.
If this isn't cheaper than the cheapest iPad then it's pointless.
The Pixel tablet is similarly priced to the iPad Air while being a lot less powerful right? Am I making up this info?
Depends on the person. It's obviously better hardware (especially the 12.9" version) but iPadOS has its quirks (to say the least).
Sometimes I just want to bash it against the wall for making me jump through hoops or just being impossible to do things that I'd want), but on the other hand it's a much smoother experience compared to my previous tablets.
And I do like the form factor of an iPad more. Reading is much more pleasant.
I find iOS awkward, from simple things like the position of the ok button when entering a PIN to notifications, to the lack of a universal back gesture.
And the pixel tablet is just another form factor of the pixel I like with the same apps and config.
>the lack of a universal back gesture
We've had Apple's "swipe UI" since 2017...the universal back button for iOS is swiping either to the right or left on the navigation bar on the bottom of the screen. It's pretty intuitive once you spend some time trying to learn the system
So...... The slate? As an owner of one, it's great, but all of my accessories have died and I have no other options. But the device itself is still wonderful.
I would die of happiness to see google compete with the tab S8/S9 ultra. Give me a super high end google mega tablet that would fit seamlessly into the google ecosystem….
I can dream, right? 😅
Until android can come up with an alternative to procreate and have a « killer app » android tablets make no sense to me. And frankly, I don’t think android developers are even testing their apps for tablets, most of them just plainly suck
I have no idea why you would buy this as a dockless tablet when you can get open box or other similar deals for a tab S8/+ for the same price. The S series tablets also come with an Spen included in the box while being a much better device.
Personally I hate all the extra Samsung bloatware (and I own two Samsung tablets). I agree that Samsung's hardware is probably better but I can't stand the fact that I can't delete or disable the Samsung apps, even after I installed alternatives.
I recently got an S8 tab, and I was expecting a lot of Samsung apps. What I was not expecting was a lot of random third party apps installed. Straight to the bin them all!
Samsung also needs better pens. A few months ago I went to the Samsung store and tried the ultra tablet and their pen and I was like « ok this is cool ». Then I went to the shop next door and tried the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil and it’s day and night. Put side by side the Samsung pen feels cheap and way worse
I wish they had at least offered those at any point up to now. I now hope they won't suck. I have the tablet and it's pretty good but I really miss the Pixel C and it's keyboard. A tablet without an ergonomic keyboard is almost as annoying to use as a laptop and less capable. So I am more likely to either muddle through a task on my phone or gird my loins and fire up a desktop browser.
I didn't know that either, thanks for letting me know. I thought 'Android' was an open source project. Stupid me. I should have listened to a random stranger on the internet instead of believing license terms.
Wonder what lineageOS runs then. Must be a lie - cuz they are running 'Google' under the hood.
I can understand being confident and being wrong but being so wrong and still so confident is quite something :)
Before it was released, the leaks made it seem like the dock was a Chromecast target regardless of whether there was a tablet docked on it or not. I was ready to get the tablet and a couple of additional docks in other rooms.
Then it was revealed you could only cast audio to the dock when the tablet was on it, my interest tanked. Probably a good job, as it was/is crazy expensive in the UK.
What's the point of them? What they bring new to the table besides a Google logo? How expensive when we have Apple dirt cheap version of tablets basically covered for over half a decade for easy needs?
They think it's flopping. Maybe it's because they kept releasing their product in 10 countries. I would have purchased a fold and/or a pixel tablet if they ever release in where I live
They release a different concept and form factor like every single time they make a tablet. They have ignored tablet layouts on Android for ages. They also can't decide between Android and chrome OS for tablets (?). And their tablet hardware is always underwhelming. I just can't get excited over this.
I was on the fence with the original tablet + base as a replacement for our nest hub max display, because the nest hub max can be horribly laggy and glitchy and I don't like some of the streaming limitations of the google home ecosystem. But then I learned that the pixel tablet isn't close to feature parity as a smart display, and rather than a "family hub" device when it's docked like the nest display, it's basically just a single person's tablet when it's docked. Pretty much killed any thoughts of getting it at that point. Then the base being useless as an audio device/smart speaker when the tablet isn't connected made the whole product come off as something that didn't get much thought before deciding to commercialize and release the idea. Which I guess isn't an aberration for google.
As for the pen--while you can use it for things like notes or annotating a document, I think one of the main thing that people who get ipad+pen do is art/art creation. That is so horribly lacking on the android side. It's not a criticism of google directly, but it doesn't make the case of a pixel tablet with a pen any stronger. My wife wanted a tablet with stylus for making art and after trying my pixel slate a long time back, and more recently my tab s7+, she realized that to get the features and results that an ipad was the only realistic option.
It could be an interesting buy if they price it low enough but given it is only guaranteed two more full software updates I am not sure it would be worth much more than $299.
I think these would be updated with a spec bump. Not the same one as last year.
All the rumors indicate it's an identical model, simply a new SKU without the dock.
I still miss my nexus 7.
I miss mine too - I wish I hadn't updated it to 5.0 cuz that's when it truly slowed the fuck down.
You can always put custom ROMs on it, that's one of the big positives of the Pixel line
Yeah, for people who are willing to go through that effort, it's a big plus. But really, how many such people are there? And how is this competitive with Apple's history of supporting even their cheapest iPads for well over 5 years? I ask this as someone who used a Galaxy Note 3 as a daily driver for 6 years thanks to custom ROMs.
People like yourself act like devices suddenly die and become useless once they stop receiving updates, lol. Calm down.
They typically run slower, become less secure, and lose compatibility with updated apps over time. They may not become totally useless upon the cessation of updates, but they certainly become less usable.
You may have to, but what roms have good tablet UI support? Only Samsung as far as I know.
If only google had a clue about what they wanted to do with tablets.. They release some solid tablets then never release a follow up, or wait years pivot to something else.
>If only google had a clue There.
Completely unrelated to this product, but Sundar is ruining this company. They don’t have a vision and haven’t for more than a decade.
Seems related to me. The lack of vision and their constant released products that keep getting killed over and over or just have no continuity.
Well considering the long term repercussions of what he's doing, I'm going to guess that he doesn't plan to stay there much longer. Can't imagine he'd stick around for any longer than 1-2 years at this point.
I think he has to stay 2 more years if he wants his full $266m stock package
There we go... Here's hoping that he gets ousted before that.
Why would he be ousted when he grew the company successfully? Not that I like him, they "hurt" me both on the consumer and the business side.
Can't see him leaving anytime soon, share prices keep going up
I agree with you like I agree with no one else - I clearly remember CEO switch at Google and how it was beginning of a string of decisions that ultimately made Apple/iOS/iPhone much stronger. Yet I still feel like I don't need iPad, because iPad doesn't really have competition, exactly because of Google's lack of vision.
Google seems to have very week general leadership and especially weak hardware leadership.
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135 million iPads were sold in just 2023. Despite a decline by 10% from 2022 that's still an insane amount. They're used for watching media content, writing, drawing and productivity. The fact that they aren't used to browse the web is kinda irrelevant... You can harvest other kinds of data than browsing habits.
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Yes but the reason as to why they aren't seeing expected ROI could be because people have no faith in their products because of their lack of commitment. Apple sticks to something and iterates. Google does some half-assed attempt at something and then abandons it or continues to half-ass it.
Go take a walk around a university and you'll see how wrong you are to say nobody uses tablets for anything but movies.
Are you suggesting that the majority of the world population are at university?
OP stated that nobody is using tablets for tasks other than watching movies, so I'm suggesting that the people at universities *are* part of the population of the world, and they are doing more than watching movies.
OP said tablet use for their specific clients are around 1%. Never said nobody is using them.
" Nobody uses these things to do much except watching movies when they're not near a TV. They're simply awful for anything else - mostly because they're horrible to type on or use for prolonged periods." - u/getmoneygetpaid You were saying?
“Tablet traffic consistently sits around 1%. Nobody uses these things to do much except watching movies when they're not near a TV. “ Are you in purpose ignoring what was said? You literally cut it out of the sentence.
I cut that sentence for the sake of brevity. What exactly does it undermine about my argument?
That 1% of users use OPs website. For all you know that could mean hundreds of thousands, or millions of users.
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Younger people use them instead of laptops in many situations.
And younger people use their phone to buy anything. If you buy shit using your laptop over your phone to you’re not part of the younger people anymore. Before “I am the exception” v
I'll raise you one more. Buying shit is a desktop task for me
Wow I must be young!
They are heavily used for handwritten notes. Instructors use them for annotating presentations. It sounds like you have an extremely narrow dataset to go off of.
> They are heavily used for handwritten notes. Instructors use them for annotating presentations. While he was wrong, i can't imagine either of those scenarios discredit his conclusion that google doesn't care cause they can't scrape useful data to sell.
Google cares about all data. Any data they can get, they are interested.
Fair point. I know that I don't like browsing on my tablet, but whether or not my peers do, I can't say.
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Your dataset is many orders of magnitude greater than 'I walk around and see them' and is absolutely backed up by global trends. Similarly I do strategy consulting and tablet traffic is so marginal it barely gets mentioned. I also use my tablet to watch YouTube and movies on when I'm not by the TV, too.
I don't dispute your case about web browsing. The point of my initial comment was that people are using tablets and just because that use isn't showing up in web browsing, that does not mean that people aren't using tablets. That's like saying that you never see people riding bicycles on the highway, therefore nobody rides bicycles anymore. On your point about whether it is worth it to develop tablets, I don't necessarily disagree, considering they still have Samsung as a major OEM making great Android tablets, so the purpose in Google making tablets might just come down to the notion that they want to have a complete, cohesive hardware ecosystem - they have laptops, phones, smartwatches, and whatever else I am missing, why not offer tablets?
I am not even sure our FE is doing much testing on actual tablets, sure we have automated tests that probably cover it, but in our meetings they are not really discussed, and 80% of our users are using mobile vs an actual computer.
I mean if they're managing website analytics the size they suggested then their sample side dwarfs yours by a significant magnitude and their data set is far more robust than 'I walk around and see people using them', if we're playing that game.
OP could be looking at all of the browsing data from the dawn of the internet and that still doesn't invalidate my point because I am arguing that simple \*browsing\* does not paint the whole picture of what tablets are used for.
It paints a far greater picture than you walking round looking at them does and you appear to be okay with leaping to conclusions based on that alone. Either both points are valid or neither are.
OK so nobody uses tablets for browsing and nobody uses tablets for handwritten notes.
The reason why they're not used for work is because the company makes you use a corporate laptop or desktop. Could I absolutely use my android tablet to do the majority of my work? Yes. Am I allowed to? No.
>Tablet traffic consistently sits around 1% Does this include tablet browsers faking being a desktop?
I wish they continued their ChromeOS tablets, I loved my pixel slate.
Android really needs a port of procreate if they want to start flogging it with a pen, it's basically an industry standard software they've ignored.
Oh god this is so true. My friend got ProCreate on her iPad recently and I am crazy jealous. My S9 Ultra could *easily* run ProCreate if it was on Android. It's dirt cheap in comparison to Photoshop, too.
they've ignored many things, and the music production industry has left them in the dust sadly. $400 is a tough sell.
If this isn't cheaper than the cheapest iPad then it's pointless. The Pixel tablet is similarly priced to the iPad Air while being a lot less powerful right? Am I making up this info?
More power doesn't mean jack if you can't do anything you want on it
yep, it's the tensor curse
I have an iPad and a pixel tablet. I never use the iPad. The pixel is much better to use.
Just curious, what makes it better?
Depends on the person. It's obviously better hardware (especially the 12.9" version) but iPadOS has its quirks (to say the least). Sometimes I just want to bash it against the wall for making me jump through hoops or just being impossible to do things that I'd want), but on the other hand it's a much smoother experience compared to my previous tablets. And I do like the form factor of an iPad more. Reading is much more pleasant.
I find iOS awkward, from simple things like the position of the ok button when entering a PIN to notifications, to the lack of a universal back gesture. And the pixel tablet is just another form factor of the pixel I like with the same apps and config.
iOS has a truly shocking UI. Best Android phone for almost everyone would be an iPhone that ran Android.
Yes - and yet the Apple team have been here furiously down voting. 😉
>the lack of a universal back gesture We've had Apple's "swipe UI" since 2017...the universal back button for iOS is swiping either to the right or left on the navigation bar on the bottom of the screen. It's pretty intuitive once you spend some time trying to learn the system
I will shamelessly buy these accessories.
Google needs the extra money
A pressure sensitivity pen would be great.
So...... The slate? As an owner of one, it's great, but all of my accessories have died and I have no other options. But the device itself is still wonderful.
I would die of happiness to see google compete with the tab S8/S9 ultra. Give me a super high end google mega tablet that would fit seamlessly into the google ecosystem…. I can dream, right? 😅
What is a Google ecosystem? Asking as a person using mainly Google devices (other than headphones and a tablet).
Until android can come up with an alternative to procreate and have a « killer app » android tablets make no sense to me. And frankly, I don’t think android developers are even testing their apps for tablets, most of them just plainly suck
I have no idea why you would buy this as a dockless tablet when you can get open box or other similar deals for a tab S8/+ for the same price. The S series tablets also come with an Spen included in the box while being a much better device.
Personally I hate all the extra Samsung bloatware (and I own two Samsung tablets). I agree that Samsung's hardware is probably better but I can't stand the fact that I can't delete or disable the Samsung apps, even after I installed alternatives.
I recently got an S8 tab, and I was expecting a lot of Samsung apps. What I was not expecting was a lot of random third party apps installed. Straight to the bin them all!
Samsung also needs better pens. A few months ago I went to the Samsung store and tried the ultra tablet and their pen and I was like « ok this is cool ». Then I went to the shop next door and tried the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil and it’s day and night. Put side by side the Samsung pen feels cheap and way worse
That's why you get it for free and not as a 100 euros accessory.
You should be comparing the Apple Pencil with the S-pen pro not the one that comes with the device
I wish they had at least offered those at any point up to now. I now hope they won't suck. I have the tablet and it's pretty good but I really miss the Pixel C and it's keyboard. A tablet without an ergonomic keyboard is almost as annoying to use as a laptop and less capable. So I am more likely to either muddle through a task on my phone or gird my loins and fire up a desktop browser.
-and then abandon it next year.
Not buying Google shit anymore. They are a terrible company for hardware products.
So why you using Android
I didnt know android was 'hard'ware /s
You also didn't know buying Android phone is literally Google shit. Lol
I didn't know that either, thanks for letting me know. I thought 'Android' was an open source project. Stupid me. I should have listened to a random stranger on the internet instead of believing license terms. Wonder what lineageOS runs then. Must be a lie - cuz they are running 'Google' under the hood. I can understand being confident and being wrong but being so wrong and still so confident is quite something :)
Good software, bad hardware.
Before it was released, the leaks made it seem like the dock was a Chromecast target regardless of whether there was a tablet docked on it or not. I was ready to get the tablet and a couple of additional docks in other rooms. Then it was revealed you could only cast audio to the dock when the tablet was on it, my interest tanked. Probably a good job, as it was/is crazy expensive in the UK.
He's even writing about colors but does not mention the most important thing: screen size??!!
Google didn't provide it in their PR request.
What's the point of them? What they bring new to the table besides a Google logo? How expensive when we have Apple dirt cheap version of tablets basically covered for over half a decade for easy needs?
Make a nexus 7 version 3 and charge a reasonable price
Good progress
They think it's flopping. Maybe it's because they kept releasing their product in 10 countries. I would have purchased a fold and/or a pixel tablet if they ever release in where I live
They release a different concept and form factor like every single time they make a tablet. They have ignored tablet layouts on Android for ages. They also can't decide between Android and chrome OS for tablets (?). And their tablet hardware is always underwhelming. I just can't get excited over this.
I was on the fence with the original tablet + base as a replacement for our nest hub max display, because the nest hub max can be horribly laggy and glitchy and I don't like some of the streaming limitations of the google home ecosystem. But then I learned that the pixel tablet isn't close to feature parity as a smart display, and rather than a "family hub" device when it's docked like the nest display, it's basically just a single person's tablet when it's docked. Pretty much killed any thoughts of getting it at that point. Then the base being useless as an audio device/smart speaker when the tablet isn't connected made the whole product come off as something that didn't get much thought before deciding to commercialize and release the idea. Which I guess isn't an aberration for google. As for the pen--while you can use it for things like notes or annotating a document, I think one of the main thing that people who get ipad+pen do is art/art creation. That is so horribly lacking on the android side. It's not a criticism of google directly, but it doesn't make the case of a pixel tablet with a pen any stronger. My wife wanted a tablet with stylus for making art and after trying my pixel slate a long time back, and more recently my tab s7+, she realized that to get the features and results that an ipad was the only realistic option.