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.
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.
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%.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.)
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 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. :(
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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?
"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.
> 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.
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.
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.
"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."
> 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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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!!
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
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.
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.
> 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.
- 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.
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.
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
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?
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?).
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.
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?
520 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 326 ms ] threadI'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...
But the best way to save your batteries is to not charge to 100%.
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.
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?
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%.
Btw, you basically just asked people to know when they are wrong. Seems very optimistic...
I'm genuinely curious but you don't give details or you simply answer with a question...
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...
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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
You mean, a whole other processor + memory + firmware + microphone + network + ... ?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/10/15/apple-ipad-dock-smart-h...
I wonder if we'll see the same with these docks.
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.
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!
Apple is saying "this is for the creatives" while Google is saying "this is a home console".
Huh?
My point stands: Apple has pen as primary accessory, Google has dock.
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.
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.
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
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.
Also - I don't know if Apple's 15w Qi is strong enough for a tablet.
I might have to give the cables a try next time I replace my battery, see how it affects longevity.
[0] https://www.magfast.com/magfast-news/does-wireless-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.
They're pretty good at changing how you charge every few years and charging you for that change though.
Can't agree: Cupertino constantly changes charging copling and consequently can charge for that change.
Digital cameras, and other devices do have a habit of picking other connectors.
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?
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
They are good at charging you money
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.
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.
"Charging via Charging Speaker Dock (included) or USB-C® charger (sold separately)"
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.
Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XSC_UG5_kU
[0] https://www.phonearena.com/news/HP-TouchPad-Touchstone-Charg...
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)
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.
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.
I think the palm rejection are good enough that think bezels are no longer an issue
/s
That would be terrible product design.
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?
which is exactly what I think I want it for
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.
The US price is pre-tax (since there are several thousand sales tax rates that could apply, based on customer location).
GBP 500 x 120% = GBP 600 (rounded)
* 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.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me 73 times, shame on me.
Can you name a better one?
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.
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.
In the EU.
For consumers, can iPad OS do multiple users yet?
Android tablets are usually given to kids or used as basic retail displays.
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.
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.
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.
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
You are 100% correct.
Source: was part of two such pushes while working at goog
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'm not hopeful enough to go buy a tablet, however.
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.
What is it supposed to be?
Anytime someone opens a sentence in such a way, verbally, it rarely paints them in a positive light. It sounds snarky.
Was always disappointed that they didn't stick with the form factor but with more RAM / storage / better CPU.
Until the Android Lollipop update rendered it so laggy it was unusable two years later?
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
Its marketing, by locking that feature 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.
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
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.
If I could flash android onto it, I would buy it right away
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?
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
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.
For the record: I don't remember my family having different accounts on our home computer as a kid.
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.
And PCs even nowadays don't have so many installed apps that require login, unlike mobile OS apps.
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.
Google is so good at killing off products that nobody remembers the previous attempts at tablets?
No, its the first generation Pixel Tablet (note capitalization: “Pixel Tablet” is a new branding.)
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.
It's even worse than that. They actually do!
But managed for education/enterprise only...
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!!
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.
Probably the reason why I don't have one. Aside from money.
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.
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 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).
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.
>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...
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.
https://www.sven.de/dpi/
One reason I WFH is that it’s the only way I can use a decent monitor at work (outside of the laptop one).
[0]: https://remarkable.com
Would a decent laser printer be in that ballpark?
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!
There's interesting history behind these numbers.
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.
For a mid-range screen in the early 90s, right?
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.
There's also a serious red tint to the screen [0].
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/zmht0j/lenovo_p11_p...
BTW. Is there a good tablet that has a screen that one can comfortably keep in hands, like around 8 inches?
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.
The 600€ high end Samsung will maybe get one Android OS update.
https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-sets-the-new-standar...
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 also had the latest Android version. iirc they promised 3 years of OS upgrades
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.
- 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.
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).
Except the Nest gear, including home security system, that we’ve just announced we’re disabling.
I can’t imagine these working in 2 years nor would I want to deal with their customer service.
[1] https://chromeenterprise.google/os/chromeosflex/