It looks like Google is desperate to move more Pixel Tablet units, with the company widely using notifications from the Google Home app to promote the new tablet launched earlier this year. Many people report seeing a “Meet the Google Pixel Tablet” banner in their notifications, with a tap on it sending them straight to its product listing on the Google Store. Samsung received hefty criticism for a similar approach to promoting new devices in the past, but it still seems like Google is attempting to jump on board with this strategy.
Disgusting. Samsung, Apple, and Google are now all guilty of this, and it should be illegal.
Google needs a cheap entry level model that doesnt skimp on cpu / memory. I can get an ipad 9 at $549 here while the cheapest tablet is $899. (AU).
It’s fun to see how much Android tablets have mirrored Windows machines. Back in the day, you almost couldn’t find a good quality Windows laptop that wouldn’t implode in a year or 2. Android tablets are in exactly the same pickel (while also being entirely too expensive for what you get). So are Chromebooks.
It’s like the industry can’t learn from previous mistakes.
The deeper, even more interesting part, is that this is a last-mile point of sales problem (phones have a similar problem). The places people go to buy this stuff put prices first, and (usually badly expressed, partially redacted) specs second. So you get this weird mix of misinformation on the specs, and downward pressure on price. Apple figured this out ages ago, which is why they have their Apple Stores, and special deals for sales in side big box stores like Best Buy.
And yet, no one else seems to understand exactly why Apple has done that (maybe Samsung, but they are more copying the style, rather than the substance – I’m not sure they know the why, even if they are going through the motions to some extent).
I don`t get what you mean. I have great Huawei tablet (MediaPad M5) from 2020 and it work great (and awesome sound, better than HP Elitebook for 3000$. Still quick and responsive. I`ve replaced it with Lenovo Tablet this year because here is 5G support. If you spent 300$-400$ for gear it can be good, high quality and last long.
I use it all the time – Spotify, Youtube, Baldur`s Gate. Because integrated JBLs are good quality I don`t need bluetooth speakers around anymore.
Maybe you`ve looked at crap for 100$, then yes. They aren`t good.
What I mean is that bulk of the of the tablet products are of the cheap/slow variety, that means the bulk of the sales are among those units. That does represent the reputation of “Android Tablets”. The same as true for Windows laptops for a good 10 years (and is still the rep for HP laptops).
I get the idea of “you get what you pay for”. The point is, you can’t buy a crappy iPad new. They are all goin to be snappy and wonderful, at least for a while, at any price (that’s even mostly true for used units). The same is NOT true for Android – those are almost all going to be slow cheap garbage (it’s not quite as dire as Windows laptops were, but it’s close. Also, don’t get me wrong, Windows laptops are still hobbled in a lot of ways.)
CaptainN-,
I find it disappointing how many laptops still have such low resolution. It’s beyond me why manufacturers still put laptops with only 720 vertical pixels. hose are 2000s era laptop specs. It’s so frustrating to have so little operating space, nothing should be less than 1000 pixels high these days.
Modern keyboards are another point of contention for me. Naturally they’re not as comfortable as desktop keyboard, but even so it seems like they’re getting worse in terms of cramming and overloading keys with new modifier combinations. There’s very few I can touch type on anymore, it’s like the manufactures all agreed to compete on form over function, which is a terrible goal for a keyboard!
It’s felt like android tablets are second class citizens for a long time. I’ve bought several from different brands. Many apps are no longer compatible. A lot of apps require more RAM than lower tier tablets have. Samsung, for instance, dropped support for my Samsung tablet to access smartthings, only 9 months after purchase. I went back to Apple iPad after that. Even my very old iPad (2 android tablets in between) could still work with smartthings.
I’m ok with paying around $500 for a tablet that will actually be usable in 3 years. Google doesn’t seem to want that to exist.
Huawei MediaPad. I have for 3 years, everything work and sound is nice. And it doesn`t seems to end.
“A lot of apps require more RAM than lower tier tablets have.”
The same is with phones. You buy cheap – you`ve unusable stuff.
Thom Holwerda,
Don’t leave out microsoft. I see ads for their products when using teams and office 360.
Ads are the future of computing and the future is now. Exciting times.
There is no tablet market, there is an iPad market. Tablets are content-consumptions devices first and foremost, and the iPad has the richest set of apps (and by extension content). There is a market for the small e-reader Android tablets, but the regular landscape tablet form-factor belongs to the iPad.
Even Google has thrown in the towel, with Material Design being a major step back in landscape support compared to Holo.
But in a typical PHB way of thinking, Google execs think that cramming notifications on people’s notification tray is going to change anything.
Is Apple guilty of this? I’ve never seen a notification come in for tablets.