For all of Android’s dominance on smartphones, Google’s never been able to nail the tablet experience. Now it seems companies are getting ready to give up on it altogether for a more sensible alternative: Chrome OS.
Asus today announced the Chromebook Tab 10. It has a 9.7-inch 2048 x 1536 display, 32 GB of storage (expandable) and 4GB of RAM. It’s powered by an OP1 processor, an ARM chip designed to Google’s specs specifically for Chrome OS. It also comes with a stylus, and will sell for $329.
It’s the very first tablet to run Chrome OS. I expect there will be many more.
While we’ve seen Google’s browser-based OS on everything including laptops, desktops, convertibles, and even tiny thumb-drives, tablets have always been the realm of Android. That hasn’t turned out great; Google has built some wonderful tablet hardware, but has not given Android itself the tools it needs to compete with iOS and the iPad.
Multi-tasking feels like a second thought, decent tablet layouts in apps are rare, and tablets rarely have specs better than the average flagship phone. And though brands like Huawei and Samsung have tried to augment the lackluster Android tablet experience by adding their own gamut of features. There are simply too few reasons to use an Android tablet over a phone with a large screen.
Google’s Pixelbook is thin enough to make a decent tablet.Google hasn’t said it plans to abandon tablets on Android, but it certainly appears to be preparing for Chrome OS to take over. Last year, it partnered with Samsung to introduce the first Chrome OS devices that could run Android apps out of the box, and the first ones to come with a stylus.