The Android World: A Tale of Two Options

Android phones getting the best apps, android tablets getting just scraps - all this leading to the android world having a big old gap. Other third options included ending the sentence with the following laps naps snaps wraps taps and zaps. What about the fact android tablets are mostly a dead end because updates are a crap shoot? Let's look at the unusual case first.

Samsung made an announcement boasting that updates will be coming to certain tablets, that's great I really applaud what samsung has done for android and android tablets. Samsung brought picture and picture and multitasking to android before google officially did. Then there's dex this allows you to use your phone or tablet in a desktop-like experience, you still have access to your android apps but the whole presentation is reconfigured for use with the keyboard or mouse.

This is all great, Microsoft tried this and it didn't go anywhere if apple came out with a dex-like product I bet you people would be like yeah this is amazing. I digress Samsung announced that several of its android tablets will get support for three generations of android os upgrades. It is infrequent that the manufacturers of android devices tell the customer how long the product will be supported at launch let's go back to apple.

If you take a look at its ipad os page, you'll see that ipad os is supported on a lot of devices including the ipad air 2, that came out in october 2014. Now apple does not outright say that it supports its hardware for a certain number of years but the company does support hardware for years so if you bought an ipad 6 years ago you get the latest ipad os.

Google's Nexus 7 Gen 2 came out in 2013, it stopped getting android updates within around two years. Digging through history in 2014 Android tablets included the nexus 9, the galaxy tab s and the samsung version of the nook, here's an excerpt from a cnet article on the state of android tablets in 2014.

Android Tablets: A Race to the Bottom

The market for bargain tablets was flooded with forgettable models that were notable for being underpowered low resolution and often running out of date versions of the android os. The flood of no names dominating black friday doorbuster sales were often joined by the likes of Toshiba Acer and Lenovo delivering models that are barely good enough for basic tasks and nothing you'd expect to be using 18 months from now.

What I'm saying is if you bought an android tablet years ago it probably is not getting updates. Sometimes newer versions of apps won't run on older versions of android so you're getting locked out on improvements on two fronts, Android and Apps.

Multitasking in theory will get better over time since folding phones tablets seem like the next big thing. You can get some super cheap tablets that can do very specific things for you, you can get a cheap android tablet and use it to display the weather or your calendar or whatever compare that to some kind of smart display.

These cheap android tablets can run a lot of apps and one of Android's cornerstones is that you get to choose your default apps but android tablets still stink. They have ice on them and here's why Google itself quit making android tablets when the maker of android says nope we're out.

You should take that as a sign, remember when Microsoft stopped making windows phone devices that was a pretty good sign not to invest how about when apple said it was ditching power pc for intel not a good time to get a power pc based device. Remember when apple said it's moving to arm yeah not a great time to invest in an intel based mac.

Remember when blackberry stopped selling its own blackberry phones, I think you see where I'm going with this Google's efforts for tablets moved to chrome os with the pixel slate that lasted about a minute or two before google announced its hardware team would focus on building laptops instead. Now looking at chromebooks chrome os is getting more and more powerful by the minute.

You get chrome os android apps Linux apps and even windows apps at this point if Google itself says look we think we took the wrong approach with tablets maybe just maybe they know something so that was fun if you made it this far I commend you, I also think if you can get your value out of the device then no gadget is terrible.

If you bought a 20 android tablet and use it for nothing but a paperweight to thwart your fan from upending your paperwork and it's worth it. Reusing my nexus 7 into a day calendar because I know today is a day that ends in day but the prefix that's a little unclear if you're interested in a chrome os tablet check out the Lenovo Duet.

It's not as powerful as some samsung products but hey it's under 300 bucks, I'm Maya Zakhtar and I will gladly see you online

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enguys it makes almost no sense to get an android tablet it's a bad investment but i as you say doesn't samsung make some awesome android tablets and i'll say yeah they do but that's a low bar making an awesome android tablet is like saying a cow made an awesome cow pie i mean it can be objectively true but of very little use shall we continue the best android tablet is one made by amazon amazon sells its fire tablets at a super low cost to the consumer what's the trade-off you get a tablet that runs amazon's flavor of android that means that if you want to access google's play store you're going to have to jump through some hoops otherwise you'll be stuck with amazon's app store is that terrible no is it annoying a little if you're just looking for a media playback machine or you're in love with amazon's prime world you'll love the fire the fire is a wonderful example of android's flexibility in that developers can use android as a solid operating system but make it their own the downside is that the amazon fire is essentially an android tablet at heart but not in spirit now i'm getting a little metaphysical there so let's leave this before i go down a rabbit hole oh rabbit hole i didn't realize wearing this shirt the alternatives to android tablets are just better you ever tried one of those ipads hardware wise great fit and finish software wise solid want to use it for years because you'll have os support check how about great tablet apps check multi-user support nope look this isn't a love fest that's still a very strange missing feature on the ipad windows tablets also exist although i'm not including the surface pro x on this because that's a whole other can of worms the tablet apps may not be the best but you still get the ability to run you know full applications and crazily you can run multiple apps at once how does windows handle having lots of apps up on the screen with windows other tablets are all look i can run three apps at once windows tablets are like yeah good for you android tablet apps what's the big deal for the longest time android tablet app development has been underwhelming at best apple had distinct guidelines for tablet apps and phone apps so if you got an ipad you had a real selection of tablet apps now in the old days you could run iphone apps on ipads and zoom them in but that's like a blip in history meanwhile android tablet apps were mainly just big phone apps tablet optimized versions did not happen with any great speed and do you know whose fault this is the whole android phone industry but namely samsung samsung's note began a trend of bigger android phones than bigger phones in general why would developers create apps optimized for tablets when a large phone will suffice android developers made apps for phones because phones are more essential than tablets so we've got big big android phones getting the best apps android tablets getting just scraps all this leading to the android world having a big old gap other third options included ending the sentence with the following laps naps snaps wraps taps and zaps what about the fact android tablets are mostly a dead end because updates are a crap shoot let's look at the unusual case first samsung made an announcement boasting that updates will be coming to certain tablets that's great i really applaud what samsung has done for android and android tablets samsung brought picture and picture and multitasking to android before google officially did then there's dex this allows you to use your phone or tablet in a desktop-like experience you still have access to your android apps but the whole presentation is reconfigured for use with the keyboard or mouse this is all great microsoft tried this and it didn't go anywhere if apple came out with a dex-like product i bet you people would be like yeah this is amazing i digress samsung announced that several of its android tablets will get support for three generations of android os upgrades it is infrequent that the manufacturers of android devices tell the customer how long the product will be supported at launch let's go back to apple if you take a look at its ipad os page you'll see that ipad os is supported on a lot of devices including the ipad air 2. that came out in october 2014. now apple does not outright say that it supports its hardware for a certain number of years but the company does support hardware for years so if you bought an ipad 6 years ago you get the latest ipad os google's nexus 7 gen 2 came out in 2013 it stopped getting android updates within around two years digging through history in 2014 android tablets included the nexus 9 the galaxy tab s and the samsung version of the nook here's an excerpt from a cnet article on the state of android tablets in 2014 android tablets race to the bottom the market for bargain tablets was flooded with forgettable models that were notable for being underpowered low resolution and often running out of date versions of the android os the flood of no names dominating black friday doorbuster sales were often joined by the likes of toshiba acer and lenovo delivering models that are barely good enough for basic tasks and nothing you'd expect to be using 18 months from now what i'm saying is if you bought an android tablet years ago it probably is not getting updates sometimes newer versions of apps won't run on older versions of android so you're getting locked out on improvements on two fronts android and apps before we get to number one let's uh take it aside there's always two sides to every story here's why android tablets don't suck multitasking in theory will get better over time since folding phones tablets seem like the next big thing you can get some super cheap tablets that can do very specific things for you you can get a cheap android tablet and use it to display the weather or your calendar or whatever compare that to some kind of smart display these cheap android tablets can run a lot of apps and one of android's cornerstones you get to choose your default apps but android tablets still stink on ice and here's why google itself quit making android tablets when the maker of android says nope we're out you should take that as a sign you remember when microsoft stopped making windows phone devices that was a pretty good sign not to invest how about when apple said it was ditching power pc for intel not a good time to get a power pc based device remember when apple said it's moving to arm yeah not a great time to invest in an intel based mac remember when blackberry stopped selling its own blackberry phones i think you see where i'm going with this google's efforts for tablets moved to chrome os with the pixel slate that lasted about a minute or two before google announced its hardware team would focus on building laptops instead now looking at chromebooks chrome os is getting more and more powerful by the minute you get chrome os android apps linux apps and even windows apps at this point if google itself says look we think we took the wrong approach with tablets maybe just maybe they know something so that was fun if you made it this far i commend you i also think if you can get your value out of the device then no gadget is terrible if you bought a 20 android tablet and use it for nothing but a paperweight to thwart your fan from upending your paperwork and it's worth it i reused my nexus 7 into a day calendar because i know today is a day that ends in day but the prefix that's a little unclear if you're interested in a chrome os tablet check out the lenovo duet it's not as powerful as some samsung products but hey it's under 300 bucks i'm maya zakhtar and i will gladly see you onlineguys it makes almost no sense to get an android tablet it's a bad investment but i as you say doesn't samsung make some awesome android tablets and i'll say yeah they do but that's a low bar making an awesome android tablet is like saying a cow made an awesome cow pie i mean it can be objectively true but of very little use shall we continue the best android tablet is one made by amazon amazon sells its fire tablets at a super low cost to the consumer what's the trade-off you get a tablet that runs amazon's flavor of android that means that if you want to access google's play store you're going to have to jump through some hoops otherwise you'll be stuck with amazon's app store is that terrible no is it annoying a little if you're just looking for a media playback machine or you're in love with amazon's prime world you'll love the fire the fire is a wonderful example of android's flexibility in that developers can use android as a solid operating system but make it their own the downside is that the amazon fire is essentially an android tablet at heart but not in spirit now i'm getting a little metaphysical there so let's leave this before i go down a rabbit hole oh rabbit hole i didn't realize wearing this shirt the alternatives to android tablets are just better you ever tried one of those ipads hardware wise great fit and finish software wise solid want to use it for years because you'll have os support check how about great tablet apps check multi-user support nope look this isn't a love fest that's still a very strange missing feature on the ipad windows tablets also exist although i'm not including the surface pro x on this because that's a whole other can of worms the tablet apps may not be the best but you still get the ability to run you know full applications and crazily you can run multiple apps at once how does windows handle having lots of apps up on the screen with windows other tablets are all look i can run three apps at once windows tablets are like yeah good for you android tablet apps what's the big deal for the longest time android tablet app development has been underwhelming at best apple had distinct guidelines for tablet apps and phone apps so if you got an ipad you had a real selection of tablet apps now in the old days you could run iphone apps on ipads and zoom them in but that's like a blip in history meanwhile android tablet apps were mainly just big phone apps tablet optimized versions did not happen with any great speed and do you know whose fault this is the whole android phone industry but namely samsung samsung's note began a trend of bigger android phones than bigger phones in general why would developers create apps optimized for tablets when a large phone will suffice android developers made apps for phones because phones are more essential than tablets so we've got big big android phones getting the best apps android tablets getting just scraps all this leading to the android world having a big old gap other third options included ending the sentence with the following laps naps snaps wraps taps and zaps what about the fact android tablets are mostly a dead end because updates are a crap shoot let's look at the unusual case first samsung made an announcement boasting that updates will be coming to certain tablets that's great i really applaud what samsung has done for android and android tablets samsung brought picture and picture and multitasking to android before google officially did then there's dex this allows you to use your phone or tablet in a desktop-like experience you still have access to your android apps but the whole presentation is reconfigured for use with the keyboard or mouse this is all great microsoft tried this and it didn't go anywhere if apple came out with a dex-like product i bet you people would be like yeah this is amazing i digress samsung announced that several of its android tablets will get support for three generations of android os upgrades it is infrequent that the manufacturers of android devices tell the customer how long the product will be supported at launch let's go back to apple if you take a look at its ipad os page you'll see that ipad os is supported on a lot of devices including the ipad air 2. that came out in october 2014. now apple does not outright say that it supports its hardware for a certain number of years but the company does support hardware for years so if you bought an ipad 6 years ago you get the latest ipad os google's nexus 7 gen 2 came out in 2013 it stopped getting android updates within around two years digging through history in 2014 android tablets included the nexus 9 the galaxy tab s and the samsung version of the nook here's an excerpt from a cnet article on the state of android tablets in 2014 android tablets race to the bottom the market for bargain tablets was flooded with forgettable models that were notable for being underpowered low resolution and often running out of date versions of the android os the flood of no names dominating black friday doorbuster sales were often joined by the likes of toshiba acer and lenovo delivering models that are barely good enough for basic tasks and nothing you'd expect to be using 18 months from now what i'm saying is if you bought an android tablet years ago it probably is not getting updates sometimes newer versions of apps won't run on older versions of android so you're getting locked out on improvements on two fronts android and apps before we get to number one let's uh take it aside there's always two sides to every story here's why android tablets don't suck multitasking in theory will get better over time since folding phones tablets seem like the next big thing you can get some super cheap tablets that can do very specific things for you you can get a cheap android tablet and use it to display the weather or your calendar or whatever compare that to some kind of smart display these cheap android tablets can run a lot of apps and one of android's cornerstones you get to choose your default apps but android tablets still stink on ice and here's why google itself quit making android tablets when the maker of android says nope we're out you should take that as a sign you remember when microsoft stopped making windows phone devices that was a pretty good sign not to invest how about when apple said it was ditching power pc for intel not a good time to get a power pc based device remember when apple said it's moving to arm yeah not a great time to invest in an intel based mac remember when blackberry stopped selling its own blackberry phones i think you see where i'm going with this google's efforts for tablets moved to chrome os with the pixel slate that lasted about a minute or two before google announced its hardware team would focus on building laptops instead now looking at chromebooks chrome os is getting more and more powerful by the minute you get chrome os android apps linux apps and even windows apps at this point if google itself says look we think we took the wrong approach with tablets maybe just maybe they know something so that was fun if you made it this far i commend you i also think if you can get your value out of the device then no gadget is terrible if you bought a 20 android tablet and use it for nothing but a paperweight to thwart your fan from upending your paperwork and it's worth it i reused my nexus 7 into a day calendar because i know today is a day that ends in day but the prefix that's a little unclear if you're interested in a chrome os tablet check out the lenovo duet it's not as powerful as some samsung products but hey it's under 300 bucks i'm maya zakhtar and i will gladly see you online\n"