Android Tablets Suck, But There’s a Solution in Sight (Premium)

We have to point all the way back to 2013 and the second-generation Nexus 7 to find an example of an Android tablet that doesn't suck.

This confuses me.

Without understanding the history of what's happened, it's natural to believe that Google's strategy with Android would work just as well with tablets as it did with phones. But that most certainly hasn't been the case.

And to be fair to hardware makers, the issue isn't really the devices themselves. There are some truly great-looking Android tablets. There are even some Surface-like 2-in-1 designs that suggest that a completely different outcome was possible.

And yet. That never happened. There isn't a single Android tablet out in the world today that is worth a damn. Not one.

Given this, our attention turns to Android itself. But Google actually worked, over several Android versions, to improve the system so that apps could take better advantage of the larger screen sizes and other unique tablet---and, later, 2-in-1---capabilities. From a platform perspective, everything is in place. This should work.

But it doesn't work. And while I believe that a quick survey of available Android tablets proves my point nicely, I have an even better proof-point for this contention.

It's called Chrome OS.

A few years back, Google could justify supporting both Android and Chrome OS because they served different markets. Android was for mobile devices, like phones and tablets. And Chrome OS was for PCs, mostly laptops. Each focused on different usage scenarios, with Chrome OS taking on the role of a Windows PC-like productivity solution with a hardware keyboard and trackpad, and a large screen.

Today, however, Android and Chrome OS are merging, sort of. No, this isn't the rumored Andromeda project, which either has or has not been quietly canceled. Google, as you know, is adding Android app compatibility to Chrome OS. And in doing so, it is creating a truly powerful hybrid solution.

Put another way, the first Android tablet since the Nexus 7 that does not suck may, in fact, be a Chromebook.

That tablet is not the Google Pixelbook that I've been testing recently, though it comes close. The Pixelbook, like Microsoft's Surface devices, can work with a high-resolution active pen that supports advanced features like tilt. As a convertible, it can be used as a tablet, too, with touch, though it is a bit thick and heavy in that mode.

But it's not hard to imagine Google or one of its partners delivering a Pixelbook-type device that is a true detachable, like Surface Pro. Again, such devices do exist in the Android world---Google made one called Pixel C---but they are all failures. Perhaps hitting this market from the Chrome OS angle, especially now that Android app integration seems to be mostly working---is perhaps the answer.

When I look at the Pixelbook and imagine what it would be like to just use the screen part of the device as a tablet, I see the makings of a succ...