Pixel C reviews are pouring in, and they’re all virtually the same: pretty awesome hardware, but Android on tablets just isn’t any good. The Verge:
But the performance issues, the lack of apps, and the lack of split-screen functionality show that, right now, Android isn’t really even trying to participate in that future. Simply put: the Pixel team has mostly delivered something really good, the Android team has not. Android may not be Google’s answer for the next generation of computing on a tablet. Maybe that will have to wait for whatever weird hybrid ChromeOS / Android thing that Google is supposedly working on.
Ars:
iOS and Windows are both much better suited to a larger form factor device. Maybe some day Google will implement that “experimental” multi-window mode, which will help. However, right now it’s selling a $650 tablet/keyboard combo that can display a single app at a time. Even with a hypothetical split screen mode, you’d still have to deal with a sea of phone apps from developers that are reluctant to implement a large-format layout, in part because even Google doesn’t take its own tablet platform seriously.
They’re all right, of course. That being said, it’s clear the Pixel C isn’t really intended as a mass-market product – at least, not right now. No, the real purpose of the Pixel C is to serve as a development device for Google’s Android developers, who are currently, by all accounts, working hard not only on combining Android and Chrome OS, but also on bringing more traditional functionality, such as multiwindow, to Android.
Android is movin’ on up, and the Pixel C is nothing more than the ladder Google’s Android developers need to get there.
I’ve had one Android tablet or another since the Xoom, and I always scratch my head when I read these flailing rants about how terrible Android on tablets is. While thinking about it today, it occurs to me that almost everything I do on a tablet, I want it to be full screen:
* Reading ebooks and standard sized PDFs
* Reading comics
* Browsing the web
Apps like GMail and Evernote have UIs that adapt well to the tablet form factor, so they treat me just fine as well. It’s all been great.
That said, one of the things that makes me glad about the Pixel C is the notion, as the original post says, that this is showing that Google is starting to throw some muscle behind Android tablets, which have been somewhat ignored since the days of the Nexus 10.
Ordered my Pixel C this morning, it’ll be replacing a Jide Remix as my “tablet-book” if it lives up to its promise.
Edited 2015-12-08 23:54 UTC
The keyword here is almost. When you buy a 650 dollar tablet with a keyboard you are leaving normal tablet-land and enter productivity tablet-land. In productivity tablet land you want multi-window.
And while in normal tablet land you want full-screen apps, but you want them to use the entire screen real estate. What you don’t want is blown up apps which are all too common on Android (and iOS).
Tablets haven’t received the love from developers that has been given to phone apps
It was my impression, that anything with the name “Pixel” from Google was intended for developers who wanted premium hardware to test with.
Pretty much my impression as well. But Google engineers are often proud about their work and want to share it with the world…which is a very good thing.
The result is that a tool made by Google engineers, for Google engineers is now sold in the wild….and that is not a very good thing.
The pixels are very high up on my list of great hardware (USB-C on the left and right so you can choose where to charge, and a LUDICROUS SPEED model to make me drool) but the software and LUDICROUS PRICE make it a nogo
I would add “Games” as something which is also better served full screen.
People may tend to multitask yet not necessarily with a focus on a single device…..
You are making reference to the Xoom. From what I remember, the Xoom was initially in the same price range as the Pixel C on its own. With respect to the optional keyboard, the Xoom one, while less expensive than the Pixel C one, was not as convenient.
My beef is with the OS UI. As a Xoom owner you must remember the Honeycomb UI, which IMO was much more well thought out and easier to use on a large tablet than the current “phone UI”. Around 4.1-4.3 they started to phase out the the tablet UI on the grounds that it was “confusing”. I think the whole Windows 8 fiasco showed everyone that one UI for all form factors doesn’t make sense.
I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and the Galaxy Note Pro. Both of which support multiwindow mode. Sure, stock android sucks on tablets, but stock android sucks in most things outside of performance. There is a reason the manufacturers mostly brew their own. Granted they have the opposite problem of shit performance, but a lot of features. It’s a hard trade off. Good example is Amiga OS. You take the raw setup of OS3.9, it is really pretty snappy, but to make it far more usable to a modern user, you need to add a lot to it, and it tends to slow down. Granted even the current low end Android hardware could run circles around the fastest 68060 these days, so Android shouldn’t really have a performance excuse anymore, so add the extra shit in already, Google!
Nonsense. Nexus phones beat all other Android phones on usability simply because all the other crap the phone manufacturer cram into the OS is just that: crap. Yes, they also have superior UI performance, which contributes to usability.
I own a Galaxy Note 10.1 2014, and the UI is horrid and extremely laggy compared to my Nexus 4. Practically nothing Samsung added to it has any use.
… for you.
Sure. If you have found some useful Samsung-specific features, just name them.
Sure.
– S Pen is fantastic. S Note makes very good use of it.
– S Finder is a good search tool focusing on data on your device. No equivalent on stock Android AFAIK.
– actually working multi window
– good, simple file manager ootb
– battery saving modes
– sensible volume control instead of that stock Android nonsense
is what comes to my mind now. Some are major features, some are secondary, but they are all very useful to me.
Other than that, I absolutely loathe Samsung’s idiotic RAM management that kills background apps without reason whereas the same version of stock Android keeps them open. That alone makes me angry at Samsung. But this does not mean their software is all useless or bad.
I agree on all points. If I could get a phone with a Stylus that has remotely the functionality that the Samsung ones do, I’d go to a different manufacturer in a heartbeat, because I do loathe the horrible memory management.
My Note Pro 12.2 inch tablet out of the box constantly ran out of memory, or became unusable. After rooting it and putting a tweaked rom on it, it runs a whole lot better.
They also have S-Health, though I think they ended up putting that in the Play store finally. Granted some people hate it, but I quite like it (I have some other apps that feed information into it, plus the Gear S).
Google looks like a university student overwhelmed by the different “modules” having to attend to.
“Let’s build Android for TVs and Cars”… “oh crap, our version for phones got buggy with memory leak issues and bad performance”… “well, let’s polish the phone version in the next version! BTW, did anybody had time to do this Nexus Player refresh we talked about and put some new features into Android TV. And is this new multiwindows features for the new Pixel C first fleshed out yet or what?”
Edited 2015-12-09 02:01 UTC
And you didn’t even mentioned the quality of the whole SDK/NDK experience!
I also didn’t add the perpetually broken/buggy Bluetooth, which causes A2DP audio stuttering and of course the bluetooth keyboard problems outlined in the article, because I had to get off the bus and the edit time-window run out.
Google will find some time to fix that among other things… someday…
Edited 2015-12-09 16:10 UTC
I’m curious why you think the SDK/NDK isn’t great. Are you specifically referring to the NDK or the SDK overall. I find that the reference is adequate, but the tutorials and samples are out-of-date or missing.
Edited 2015-12-09 18:47 UTC
How many applications have you done for Android?
Just out of my head:
– 43877 entries at https://code.google.com/p/android/issues
– Every single SupportLibrary release needs a patch release shortly afterwards
– Documentation is scattered across developer website, android team blogs, G+, Google IO talks, DevBytes videos
– No completion or debugging support for Renderscript
– No completion or debugging support for GLSL
– Every Android release breaks the Gradle DSL somehow
– Gradle still slower than using Ant
– C++ tool handled as an afterthought
– C++ is considered just as a means to implement native methods or implement games, lacking the same support level that C++ devs enjoy on iOS and WP devices
– Two years later C++ support on Android Studio still lacking to what Eclipse ADT/CDT offered
– NVidia and Microsoft are able to provide better debugging experience, C++ support and emulators than Google for their own OS does
– Java 6 fork for 4.4 and lower devices
– 5.0 and newer devices will probably be stuck with the current Java 7 fork forever
– The upcoming Android Studio 2.0 is lacking some of Android Studio 1.5 features
– Broken firmware across vendors that one has to work around due to the whole update mess
– Bugs in the AOSP that are worked around by the Google teams, but seldom become part of the AOSP. As an example the whole issues with material support for widgets like the FAB.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, surely someone doing Android development professionally will gladly add a few more bullets.
It may not be an exhaustive list, but it sure is an exhausting one. I’m in the process of writing apps on Android (after spending a few years writing apps for FIrefoxOS). I really appreciate your list And before that it was HTML5 and before that Win32.
I want Steve Ballmer to come over to Google and yell, “Developers, developers, developers” at them for a few hours.
I want good books, tutorials, and sample code. The problem seems to be that each version of Android seems to break the last. It seems like Google wants me to sit down and read the entire API every time there is a new version. But maybe I just haven’t found the secret yet. Where’s that one small simple trick for Android development? 🙂
You nailed it.
Not being able to run two apps side by side is now the definition of a useless tablet OS. A year ago it was being defended as a differing paradigm for a different device. I wonder if anyone significant happened to add that feature in that time frame…
edit:- time flies but apparently I only mean 6 months, but its less catchy as a title
Edited 2015-12-09 10:47 UTC
I’ve always been consistent in stating as such.
I know You have (been coming here long enough!) My comment was more directed at the mainstream reporting/reviewers.
I just find it interesting how much opinions “shift” when a certain someone adds a feature. Next a tablet without a pen(cil) and keyboard will also be useless..
Lucky for me my Surface Pro is becoming more and more The ideal device the longer I have it. All Apple needs now is to add an intergrated kickstand and it will be perfect!
So have a whole bunch of other people, including Microsoft that made the Surface Pro…and actually made advertisements where Siri says “2 windows at the same time, sorry, I can’t do that”
Tablets are great for simple usage, single task, but those tablets are the cheap tablets that nobody cares about.
Everyone is trying to upscale their tablets to reach “productivity levels” and to compete with the Surface Pro and for that you need multiple Window. And no, iOS current multiple window is absolutely not good enough for the simple reasons that you can have only 2 windows sidebyside and even more importantly because you cannot start an app twice (so no 2 browser windows next to each other)
I don’t get why running two apps side-by-side is so important. Android has a very nice task-switching paradigm. Just use the “Recents” button, pick the app you want, copy-and-paste, hit the “Recents” button again, and you’re there.
Of course the habit of naming everything something different and/or cute is a hassle for people coming from somewhere else. Activity = Window, Intent = Message, etc. I can’t remember, is it Lollipop, Marshmallow, or some other sweet treat? Too much cuteness. Reminds me of … Bob!
I still have a BlackBerry Playbook, which uses QNX as underlying OS. Fast, responsive, good build quality, very nice calendar and email apps. It was such a pleasure to use, if only more apps were ported to it…
Maybe, very maybe, KDE will deliver something in the near future that I might want to try on a tablet.
Edited 2015-12-09 12:31 UTC
Unfortunately, for the BlackBerry Playbook as well as the HP Touchpad, and maybe eventually the MS Surface, there is not much room in the market place for a third ecosystem beyond iOS and Android.
The Playbook does not yet feel obsolete for most of the uses thrown at it within my household. At least not against a cheapo Android tablet.
CyanogenMod 13 provides an “experimental” split view functionality, but it just highlights how crap the state of Google apps in general is. For example, placing a couple of Google’s own apps side-by-side is quite ugly since the apps have different border sizes and so on. Not pretty. And they also crash all the time, as Android’s core doesn’t really like windows that aren’t 100 % of the screen size.
Edited 2015-12-09 12:34 UTC
I agree that Android on tablets isn’t a completely perfect experience. Having said that it’s hard to bag on the Pixel C’s weaknesses when you compare it the iPad Pro. Both devices have a lot to prove and probably do not live up to expectations in their initial releases.
I get that Android is still very much a work in progress but the iPad Pro should not have been an IOS device at all.
What should it have been? OS X isn’t exactly touch-optimized, and I’d not like to see Apple go down Microsoft’s route and try to shoehorn a touch UI on to what is primarily a keyboard and mouse-centric operating environment.
I don’t know what it should have been but neither does Apple. With the passing of Steve Jobs it is apparent to me that Apple no longer innovates, but simply regurgitates.
Taking OSX back to its underpinnings and creating a truly innovative touch UI for it could have blown away the Surface but Apple went short. I think Jobs would have had bigger balls.
Probably not. Jobs valued control too much. If Apple could have gotten away with locking down OS X the way they have locked iOS then jobs would’ve jumped at it years ago. You’re right though, that would’ve taken big balls.
As for taking OS X down to its underpinnings and making a touch UI for it… they did that. It’s called iOS.
Now that MS isn’t completely boneheaded and can make decent hardware, and since they’ve already done their requisite 4 iterations before not being total trash,
i’d say windows is back and a real player on the convertible touch-desktop space. i’m not totally convinced that’s a real space but ya know.
if i was going to buy a convertible it might be running windows because i know they’ve been going at it for years now. iOS is still growing to be in the larger space, but has most of the basics down, and it is very fast and slick.
android on the tablet has been crap for so long, in fact android in general has been crappy for so long, just a hack of linux and advertising, that it’s amazing how the marketprice can inform consumers.
in the usa, if you have an android phone it’s usually because you can’t afford apple or hate apple, it’s not because it’s superior or ‘open’ (yeah right). it was usually free or the cheapest plan. or you hate apple.
i guess the pricing is hidden in the mobile bill here, i pay $100+ per month for each iPhone on AT&T and i blame AT&T more than apple even knowing what I know.
Wow, judgmental much? Maybe people like using SD-Cards, want a smaller or a larger phone? Actually like some Android apps that aren’t available for iOS? You know, basically have some need that isn’t met by the 2 iPhone models per (2) years. There is also a big difference between “can’t afford” and “don’t want to pay so much money”.
Please don’t try to make Android the phone/OS for “Apple-haters and poor people” that is just ridiculous
(I personally use a Nokia/Microsoft 1520 because is is the device that I like more than any other. I can afford a 950XL but don’t think it adds enough value to justify that upgrade. I paid 125 dollar for the phone and 10 dollar per month for unlimited phone/text/1GB)
Edited 2015-12-10 12:13 UTC
Some more info here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3w3x7p/hi_im_andrew_here_at_g…
Saying Android sucks on tablets is pretty overblown. Even the reviews say the main problem is multi-window support, and *some* apps – mainly apps that mostly make sense on phones anyway (like Twitter).
I had a Nexus 10 for a while and found it not at all lacking in the apps or usability department. I still eventually replaced it with an iPad, but that was mostly because I was looking to upgrade and the Nexus 9 was a disappointment, not because I was dissatisfied with the Android tablet experience overall.
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