Google unveiled its new Pixel phones today, as well as the Pixel Slate, a ChromeOS tablet/laptop device that’s basically a cross between an iPad Pro and a Surface Pro. Virtually everything from the event was leaked over the past few weeks, so there were few – if any – surprises. The new devices are certainly interesting, but Google continues its policy of not making these products available in most of the world, so there’s little for me to say about them – I have never seen them, let alone used them.
One thing that stood out to me about the Pixel Slate are its specifications – it runs on Intel processors, and in order to get a processor that isn’t a slow Celeron or m3, you need to shell out some big bucks. I don’t have particularly good experiences with Celeron or m3 processors, and even Intel’s mobile i5 chips have never really managed to impress me – hence why I opted for the i7 version of the latest Dell XPS 13 when I bought a new laptop a few weeks ago. In The Verge’s video, you can clearly see the user interface lagging all over the place, which seems like a terrible user experience to me, especially considering the price of $599 for the base Celeron model without a keyboard.
Time will tell if this machine is any good, but I am quite skeptical.
I picked up a Samsung Chromebook Pro via the developer deal they had at Google IO 2017, and in the past year and a half, the ChromeOS experience has gone from mediocre to excellent. The Pro has an m3 at 2.2Ghz and 4GB of RAM, and while it lags a little running Android Studio via Crouton, browsing and Android apps just whiz right along.
The Pro seems to correspond with the midrange of the Slate configurations (the Slate will have more RAM at that level). I’ll probably opt for the i5 config (second from the top).
One thing that will be interesting to see how much the beefier processors impact battery life.
Edited 2018-10-09 23:38 UTC
It’s still possible to optimize the machine. I remember when I first got my HP Touchpad and it was lagging all over the place (video reviews also confirmed it), but after the first big upgrade, there was hardly any lag left. So it could very well be that Google released it a bit too early and updates will make it run smoother, just like on the HP Touchpad.
No headphone jack, no expandable storage, ridiculous prices for extra storage… no thanks.
> “We’ve integrated Titanâ„¢ Security, the system we built for Google, into our new mobile devices. Titanâ„¢ Security protects your most sensitive on-device data by securing your lock screen and strengthening disk encryption.”
“While our apps siphon you data to our data center, and Google+ leaks it on the internet”
Yup…sounds lovely.