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ThermoPhysical posted:http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/09/30/editorial-i-used-the-pixel-c-and-it-seems-like-a-pretty-bad-idea/ Pretty much everything in that article is correct. Android isn't built for what google is trying to do with the pixel C. Using a keyboard with the OS sucks, there's no multi-window view (lol come on google, even loving Samsung has had this for like 4 years now and it works great there) and why buy a $500 android tablet that you'd just watch netflix on or whatever when a lovely $150-250 samsung tablet would do that job just fine for normal people that dont care about *~official google tablet*~?
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Sep 30, 2015 17:05
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It really would be better with multiwindow, but Google can't bring themselves to just adopt Samsung's version.
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Sep 30, 2015 17:05
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Google with Android proper is now the only tablet OS without any sort of multiwindow, so yeah, they're lacking. I'm sure it's great hardware (as far as a nvidia chipset in 2015 goes) but as an owner of a Surface 3 there's absolutely nothing I don't think the S3 does better.
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Sep 30, 2015 17:19
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Protocol7 posted:Google with Android proper is now the only tablet OS without any sort of multiwindow, so yeah, they're lacking. I'm sure it's great hardware (as far as a nvidia chipset in 2015 goes) but as an owner of a Surface 3 there's absolutely nothing I don't think the S3 does better. Multiwindow is definitely a feature in M, it's hidden and for a bit you could activate it. It's not working anymore, since the later OTA of M Preview.
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Sep 30, 2015 17:22
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SIR FAT JONY IVES posted:Multiwindow is definitely a feature in M, it's hidden and for a bit you could activate it. It's not working anymore, since the later OTA of M Preview. So to the 99.9 percent of normal people that would never bother to jump through the hoops required to activated it (when it was still possible) it's not a feature.
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Sep 30, 2015 17:23
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But more importantly, it means it's something they're working on and we can expect to see sometime in Android 6 - 10.
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Sep 30, 2015 17:25
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At this point, google should just say "Anything over 8 inches should be chromeOS" and then focus their large screen efforts on that. Still want my mythical 3gb Snapdragon 808 (with quickcharge), 1440p Nexus 7 successor.
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Sep 30, 2015 17:27
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chocolateTHUNDER posted:why buy a $500 android tablet that you'd just watch netflix on or whatever when a lovely $150-250 samsung tablet would do that job just fine for normal people I think the keyboard is dumb and don't see a purpose for it, which is a shame because the industrial design and attachment system look really nice. But am I interested in a high quality Android tablet with a great screen? Yep, definitely. It's an iPad running Android. Is that a thing that most people would want or a thing that I would recommend to random friends who want a tablet? Absolutely not. It's a niche device, just like the Chromebook Pixel was. But the keyboard is weird and Google are pushing that side of it too hard.
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Sep 30, 2015 17:35
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The problem with this thing is it's unwieldy. It seems to be made well to be sure, but it's too bulky to really be used WITHOUT the keyboard stand. Size, aspect ratio, and thickness all make it an awkward thing to hold. It really is meant to be used almost exclusively with the keyboard stand. But that falls down because of the lack of built in pointing device which makes the whole thing awkward. Put a first class trackpad on the keyboard and throw chromeOS on there for the same price and you have a compelling device.
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Sep 30, 2015 17:48
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bull3964 posted:At this point, google should just say "Anything over 8 inches should be chromeOS" and then focus their large screen efforts on that. They really shouldn't, since slightly improved Android would be a thousand times better. Unless they're going to port all my purchased Android stuff to it and have them work 100% correctly.
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Sep 30, 2015 18:07
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I've been seeing a lot of "Android isn't designed for a large screen" type content lately. I'm not exactly sure what that means apparently. I have an iPad and any number of Android tablets, and never once have I thought "iOS really knows how to use it's large screen well". I mean, iOS still has apps specifically designed for phones OR tablets, I haven't seen an Android app with an issue going from one to the other in ages. What is it that people are griping about with Android and large screens? Edit: Multiwindow is working fine with no crazy hacks to make it work on the latest OTA of M on my Nexus 9 (worst purchase ever).
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Sep 30, 2015 18:08
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Gerdalti posted:What is it that people are griping about with Android and large screens? Google's own newstand app doesn't even support immersive mode which robs a ton of real estate from magazines from the google play store since many of them are formatted in a way that almost exactly match the aspect ratio of the Nexus 9. Material design puts nearly all top level app interaction in the upper left which is nearly the worst place to put it for a tablet. They corrected some of the notification issues in Marshmallow since the pulldown is adaptive and no longer centered, but it's still a bit of a pain to use right. Google still doesn't have a properly adaptive keyboard layout. Granted, I'm not really seeing things as much better on the iOS side of things either other than a few standout examples (and you can find standout example on Android as well.) For the most part though, the usability of these tablets start to fall off once they get much beyond phablet range. Beyond that, just go with a convertible design or a full notebook form factor. With a 5.7 inch device now, I'm questioning how much increased utility my Nexus 7 gives me and I barely pick up my Nexus 9 anymore. If i need a real browser and keyboard, I pick up my Toshiba Chromebook 2. Otherwise, I'm on my N7 or phone. If I REALLY need a heavy lifting PC for something, then the Surface Pro 3 gets picked up.
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Sep 30, 2015 18:30
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Yeah, when I'm doing real work I want my desktop with multiple monitors. Disregarding phone time, 95 percent of the rest of my time my tablet is all I need and for the rest when I want a keyboard my chromebook is great. Though, by the number of people I see working on iPads with a keyboard, there's some sort of market for tablet plus keyboard...
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Sep 30, 2015 18:46
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Gerdalti posted:I've been seeing a lot of "Android isn't designed for a large screen" type content lately. I'm not exactly sure what that means apparently. I have an iPad and any number of Android tablets, and never once have I thought "iOS really knows how to use it's large screen well". Instagram on iPad 
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Sep 30, 2015 19:09
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bull3964 posted:The problem with this thing is it's unwieldy. It seems to be made well to be sure, but it's too bulky to really be used WITHOUT the keyboard stand. Size, aspect ratio, and thickness all make it an awkward thing to hold. It really is meant to be used almost exclusively with the keyboard stand. But that falls down because of the lack of built in pointing device which makes the whole thing awkward. Put a first class trackpad on the keyboard and throw chromeOS on there for the same price and you have a compelling device. To be fair, if i hadn't dropped my Tf201 one too many times and broke the dock connection, and if the Tegra2 SoC didn't suck so much cock i'd still be using it as my primary device. If Asus ever makes another 10 inch android transformer tablet that doesn't use nvidia chipsets i'd be all over it in a heartbeat. But this is just one persons terrible opinion.
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Sep 30, 2015 19:21
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That article has a point, but it's lost in this sort of weird agenda the author is promoting about people "rediscovering laptops" and how tablets are over, etc. He admits to having a cutting edge iPad and no idea what to do with it. I admit that I loved my Nexus 10 the past few years in terms of handling everything I threw at it; but the only thing keeping Android competitive in a consumer context is aspect ratios better suited to tv and comic books. I don't want Android on a professional product because I want a real device backup, I don't want slow staged rollouts of services where I have to wonder if I'm going to get Update x/y soon without installing APKs from third party web sites and feeling like I'm compromising my security. And most importantly I don't want a product that will be abandoned because "we didn't feel like it"; which is what Google did with the Nexus 10's dock (jump to 1:00 in and laaaauugh) and is doing again with it's missing Marshmallow update even though it really needs the battery help. The Nexus 10 is a niche product with few customers, but at least it actually has customers; and I wouldn't be surprised if the Pixel C sells even less units. Sure, even Apple has trouble selling iPads, but it's having it for the opposite reason: they're selling tablets that are more powerful than current needs (some speculate multitasking was already in mind when putting the Air 2 specs together) and supporting them for a very long time. When you bolt the iPad 2's innards into an iPad Mini and try to support that for a few years, you have people with older hardware who aren't facing software obsolescence and don't buy new hardware. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Sep 30, 2015 |
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Sep 30, 2015 20:28
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I'm probably going to get the C since this next update is probably the last one my 2013 7 will get. It's got a nice screen, good performance (going off of Anandtech's X1 benchmarks) and I'm guessing Nexus-like updates which is all I really want.
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Oct 1, 2015 03:02
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It's not a Nexus device. It's a Pixel device. For example, I wouldn't count on flashable factory images. Not saying it won't happen, but I wouldn't assume it will be treated like a Nexus device.
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Oct 1, 2015 03:12
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bull3964 posted:It's not a Nexus device. It's a Pixel device. For example, I wouldn't count on flashable factory images. Not saying it won't happen, but I wouldn't assume it will be treated like a Nexus device. Yeah, I'd wait until I saw confirmation of images being available before I bought them, if I was hoping for that. However, I haven't even bothered to unlock the boot loader or root or do anything on my N5, seriously, there's little reason for it now. Backups yada yada I know but I don't really have any games I absolutely need. If you don't do that nonsense, then factory images aren't any issue. I guess for updates they could be, but whatever.
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Oct 1, 2015 03:16
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SIR FAT JONY IVES posted:Yeah, I'd wait until I saw confirmation of images being available before I bought them, if I was hoping for that. Given that simply the presence of an unlocked bootloader precludes use of Android Pay, I'm curious to see just how solid this Marshmallow backup solution is in practice. I'd still probably forgo Android Pay in order to flash factory images but at least then I could understand not unlocking the bootloader.
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Oct 1, 2015 06:33
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LastInLine posted:Given that simply the presence of an unlocked bootloader precludes use of Android Pay, I'm curious to see just how solid this Marshmallow backup solution is in practice. I'd still probably forgo Android Pay in order to flash factory images but at least then I could understand not unlocking the bootloader. Removing the secure lockscreen will actually wipe all cards from Android Pay. It forced a secure lockscreen on my tablet...which I don't even take with me anywhere. So, when I tried to remove the lock, it warned me that, unless I put it back on, I'd lose all of my cards in Android Pay.
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Oct 1, 2015 06:51
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ThermoPhysical posted:http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/09/30/editorial-i-used-the-pixel-c-and-it-seems-like-a-pretty-bad-idea/ I really hate the tired "there are not tablet Apps on Android" poo poo. I use 4 Android tablets daily, and all the best Apps for a task have fine tablet UIs. Even more Apps are built in a way that it doesn't matter/you don't notice it, since the content windows dynamically scale unlike with iOS, where the lack of a tablet UI really, really hurts (Google Music until a few months ago...). Only very few Apps I use regularly are clearly made made for phones (large white space, no rotation to landscape). It's not a perfect situation, but hardly anywhere as dire as he describes. Which is no wonder, since he is a self-declared user of iPads and Android phones, not liking Android tablets, so his knowledge of them is (as he shows again and again) very passing. But I agree with the rest of his article. Neither iOS nor Android are anywhere suited for productivity stuff. Not even Windows 10 in tablet mode is. You can use them for certain tasks, especially limited tasks, but nearly everything is more awkward, slower and more difficult and complicated than on a laptop or desktop. But that's even true for the Surface Pro, the best of the bunch. Even there you can only be really productive when you add enough stuff to ape a laptop. In tablet mode you are limited to a few tasks that work as well or at least not marginally worse than on a laptop/PC. And if you buy a "professional grade" tablet price and weight already approach that of an ultrabook, so you don't even have that as big advantage - the small and light tablets are too weak and small to do much outside of content consumption in the first place. After 4 years of using tablets daily they are for me still a pure consumption device/simple controlling device. Looking stuff up, playing videos, controlling Chromecast/Kodi, looking up pictures, browsing SA/Reddit, reading comics, playing some limited scope games- they are great for this. Taking some notes, drawing something - they can work in a pinch, but it usually sucks. Writing a book, doing some spreadsheet work, doing photo editing, even writing posts - all an exercise in masochism, that you might make hurt less by making your tablet more into a laptop (bluetooth keyboards, stands, battery packs etc). ThermoPhysical posted:Removing the secure lockscreen will actually wipe all cards from Android Pay. But can you still define locations where the secure lockscreen will be switched off automatically (for example when it connects to a certain bluetooth device or at the Home location)? Decius fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 08:18
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Yes Smart Unlock doesn't get rid of your secure lockscreen and works just fine with Android Pay.
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Oct 1, 2015 08:25
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What the pixel needs: go to chromeOS when I'm laptop mode and android in tablet mode. Also, have a trackpad on the keyboard for Chrome. Done... I'd buy it.
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Oct 1, 2015 14:34
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LastInLine posted:Given that simply the presence of an unlocked bootloader precludes use of Android Pay, I'm curious to see just how solid this Marshmallow backup solution is in practice. I'd still probably forgo Android Pay in order to flash factory images but at least then I could understand not unlocking the bootloader. They said rooting effects Android Pay, but I didn't see anything about boot unlock. Also, even with a locked bootloader you can sideload OTA updates with ADB.
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Oct 1, 2015 14:39
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SIR FAT JONY IVES posted:They said rooting effects Android Pay, but I didn't see anything about boot unlock. Also, even with a locked bootloader you can sideload OTA updates with ADB. Everything I've read says just having the bootloader unlocked on a stock, unrooted ROM will prevent Android Pay from working after it runs its check (meaning you might get one use after adding the card). And while you can use the stock recovery to flash OTA updates it means you can't use fastboot to just flash the stock system image which is something I don't think I'd be willing to give up regardless. It's just solved too many problems for me in the past. None of this is really germane to tablets as I'm not going to miss having Android Pay on them regardless, your post just reminded me that even if factory images are available it isn't much help if you have to wipe your system any time you want to make use of them.
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Oct 1, 2015 15:30
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LastInLine posted:Everything I've read says just having the bootloader unlocked on a stock, unrooted ROM will prevent Android Pay from working after it runs its check (meaning you might get one use after adding the card). quote:This definitely should have passed: we don't look at the bootloader lock status.
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Oct 1, 2015 16:44
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Protocol7 posted:Google with Android proper is now the only tablet OS without any sort of multiwindow, so yeah, they're lacking. I'm sure it's great hardware (as far as a nvidia chipset in 2015 goes) but as an owner of a Surface 3 there's absolutely nothing I don't think the S3 does better. I am trying to decide between the LTE Surface 3 and the LTE Tab S2 for our sales team. They basically just need a web browser, a email client and the verizon connection. Surface 3 - Gets them full blown windows with Office and Outlook. I get more control of them with active directory and group policy. Surface 3 with 4gb ram, LTE and accessories would run about $900-$1000 Tab S2 - All the sales guys have S6 phones, which gives them some nice Samsung only features like taking calls through tablet. Using the same charger for your phone and tablet seems like a nice quality of life thing. LTE Tab S2 with a keyboard would run about $500-$600
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Oct 1, 2015 17:09
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Calidus posted:I am trying to decide between the LTE Surface 3 and the LTE Tab S2 for our sales team. They basically just need a web browser, a email client and the verizon connection. So are you asking me a question, or...? If you are, the Surface 3 seems like overkill.
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Oct 1, 2015 17:13
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LastInLine posted:Everything I've read says just having the bootloader unlocked on a stock, unrooted ROM will prevent Android Pay from working after it runs its check (meaning you might get one use after adding the card). And while you can use the stock recovery to flash OTA updates it means you can't use fastboot to just flash the stock system image which is something I don't think I'd be willing to give up regardless. It's just solved too many problems for me in the past. Wait, so flashing the stock image completely wipes the phone, right? fastboot oem unlock fastboot flash images fastboot oem lock use android pay Done.
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Oct 1, 2015 17:20
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SIR FAT JONY IVES posted:Wait, so flashing the stock image completely wipes the phone, right?
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Oct 1, 2015 17:34
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Protocol7 posted:So are you asking me a question, or...? If you are, the Surface 3 seems like overkill. Just general thoughts on your surface 3 really.
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Oct 1, 2015 17:47
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Management of android devices from a corporate side is still incredibly annoying and incomplete and Chrome for Android is still several steps behind desktop chrome. So I would go with a Surface 3 for that use case. With the Surface 3 they can use the same charger as phones since the Surface 3 uses microUSB (unlike the proprietary connector on the Surface Pro 3.)
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Oct 1, 2015 17:52
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Tunga posted:This is wrong, or at least it is a bug if it is correct. An Android security engineer has been posting in the thread on XDA about it and confirmed this here: Thanks! That's actually the thread I was following about this but he hadn't answered that when last I looked. Do you know offhand if you have to have the stock recovery on the device? SIR FAT JONY IVES posted:Wait, so flashing the stock image completely wipes the phone, right? No, as Tunga said you can just fastboot flash the system.img if you want to update without losing data or in the cases I've needed to do so, fix a problem without starting over. One example would be on one of the KitKat versions for the Nexus 5, you could completely corrupt the wpa_supplicant file by turning on and off the wifi hotspot. This would cause the wifi to be stuck permanently in a state of "Turning on..." There were two fixes, either deleting the file with root and rebooting, hoping the new file wouldn't be corrupt or reflashing the system image over top. Neither would be possible without starting from scratch with a locked bootloader but is trivial to fix with an unlocked one. I guess the point is moot though if they don't check bootloader lock status. ClassActionFursuit fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 18:07
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Got the Lenovo tab 2 A10. I was able to update it to Lollipop and it seems pretty good. The screen doesn't get dark enough though, even with Lux.
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Oct 1, 2015 20:01
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LastInLine posted:Do you know offhand if you have to have the stock recovery on the device?
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Oct 1, 2015 22:18
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Calidus posted:Just general thoughts on your surface 3 really. Well most of your questions seem to revolve around managing the device e.g. via Group Policy, which I have no experience with so I can't really help there. But they're fairly durable devices (as I found out within minutes of opening it), they're perfectly usable as both a laptop and tablet, and I think they're a decent aspect ratio for tablet usage. For a web browser and Office machine, they'll certainly do the trick, if you've got the money to spare. If you need a browser for a webapp, you may need the Surfaces only because desktop browsers are much, much better about fancy web poo poo. But I even run Visual Studio/NetBeans for development (.NET vs C++ w/ GCC development) and it'll even handle a virtual machine, so they aren't gutless despite what the specs may lead you to believe.
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Oct 1, 2015 22:37
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Yeah, I don't even see how it's a question for Surface vs SamsungTab. I'm assuming you have a domain setup in your corp network? If yes, no question. If no, get a domain jesus gently caress what is wrong with you. Edit. Reread, and you've got AD. Yeah, go with Surface. Way better build quality and support.
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Oct 1, 2015 22:58
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LastInLine posted:Everything I've read says just having the bootloader unlocked on a stock, unrooted ROM will prevent Android Pay from working after it runs its check (meaning you might get one use after adding the card). Not affecting me at all here and I've used Android Pay several times. I always unlock my bootloader but remain otherwise stock. I like being able to force the situation if I absolutely must.
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Oct 2, 2015 00:11
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I recently aquired a Fire HD 8 (NOT the 8.9, the 8). How hard is it to root one of these? Google doesn't seem to have much on the subject since the thing just came out.
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Oct 2, 2015 13:44
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