Zoom in / This wasn’t a real slide from Google I / O 2022, but it could have been.
Google / Ron Amadeo
Google held its I / O conference earlier this month, and for longtime Google observers, the event looked like a session. Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage for his keynote address and directed the spirits of Google’s long-dead products. “I hear … something about an Android tablet? And a smart watch? ”He seemed to say.
In my opinion, the “resurrection of the past” is about half of the company’s main messages. In all these cases, Google would have been in a much stronger position if it had committed itself to the long term and kept repeating that plan.
Unfortunately, the company does not have such a top-down direction. Instead, for most of the resurrected products, Google is trying to catch up with competitors after years of downtime. There is a question we need to ask for each message: “Will things be different this time?”
Android tablets are back
How long are Android tablets dead? Some companies, such as Samsung, have never given up on the idea, but Google’s last actual tablet hardware was the Pixel C in 2015. The Android tablet’s user interface has disappeared for a while. Its development peaked with the initial release of Android 3.0 Honeycomb in 2011, and each subsequent version of Android and an update to the Google app diluted the tablet’s interface until it disappeared. Application developers took Google’s disregard as a sign that they should stop producing Android tablets and the ecosystem fell apart.
After the launch of Pixel C in 2015, Google left the tablet market for three years, then launched the Pixel Slate Chrome-OS tablet. He then left the tablet market for another three years. Now he’s back. Will the company’s new plans produce another one-year miracle like the Pixel Slate? Advertising
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Google is bringing back tablet interfaces to its range of applications.
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Google Play.
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The YouTube tablet app.
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Google Maps.
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Google Messaging.
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There are even some third-party apps built into Android tablets.
Google
Some of the biggest news about tablets coming from the show was that Google is really committed to redeveloping tablet apps. The company announced that it will provide tablet interfaces in more than 20 Google applications and showed screenshots for most of them. Tablet versions of Google Play, YouTube, Google Maps, Chrome and a host of other heavy players were shown. Google has even led some third parties to commit to creating Android tablet apps, including Facebook, Zoom and TikTok. All this will help the Android tablet to experience something worth investing in.
Google has also announced a new tablet, the Pixel Tablet, with a release scheduled for the very distant date “sometime in 2023.” It’s a widescreen, big-looking tablet, and ordinary phone apps won’t look good on it. I’m speculating here, but the Pixel tablet seems cheap. I’m not saying this as a cure for the product; I mean, it seems to be aimed at competing more with Amazon Fire tablets than with the iPad.
The product only received a 30-second Google I / O teaser, but Google showed something that looks like a thicker tablet, which is usually a hallmark of a cheaper device. The only camera in the back looked like a bargain camera with holes in the basement, and the back might even be plastic. If Google wanted to focus on the iPad, we would probably see a slimmer design and a bunch of accessories, such as a pen and keyboard. Advertising
Chasing the Fire tablet would make sense. They are the most popular (split) Android tablets on the market. Given Google’s immature tablet ecosystem, it would be easier to win people over with a cheaper product than charging a premium straight from the gate. This would not be new either, as the Nexus 7 line determined cheap tablets for several years, until Google lost interest.
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The Pixel tablet coming in 2023
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Side view of the Pixel tablet. It looks pretty tight.
Ron Amadeo
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The last seconds of the Pixel Tablet presentation show these pogo pins on the back. They are probably for a docking station that would allow intelligent display functionality.
Google’s presentation also coincides perfectly with the rumor that the company’s next “smart display” will be a detachable tablet. The last thing the teaser showed was a set of pogo pins that could be for a smart display dock. Google also highlighted support for Google Nest’s smart home camera, which is currently a smart display feature. Docked smart display mode is something Fire tablets are doing today, giving more credibility to the idea that Google wants to compete with Amazon products.
So far, all this work makes it seem that Google is trying to get back what it threw away shortly after the launch of Honeycomb. The company has already released a tablet-oriented Android update in March – Android 12L – but it was much less ambitious than Honeycomb. Android 13 will continue with a little more work with tablets.
The rise of folding devices has also changed the market, and these devices need tablet applications to work well. If people with Android flagships suddenly have devices that open into tablets, the market for tablet apps will be much stronger. Assuming that the folding future has indeed happened, more and more devices will require large-screen application designs, even if the standalone Android tablet is completely unloaded.
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