Android tablets...?

ScottHerman

ScottHerman

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Is samsung the only one keeping Android alive in the tablet industry? I am going to be in the market
for a tablet in the next month or two and it seems like it's either buy a Samsung tablet.. or the obvious
a iPad.. Is there any other android tablets that isn't on my radar?
 
Coming from someone who despises Apple as a company and has owned all Android devices as well as tablets in the past, my only reccomendation in 2020 is an iPad.

They're just better.
 
ScottHerman said:
Is samsung the only one keeping Android alive in the tablet industry? I am going to be in the market
for a tablet in the next month or two and it seems like it's either buy a Samsung tablet.. or the obvious
a iPad.. Is there any other android tablets that isn't on my radar?
Click to expand...

There's Amazon if you count its take on Android, and Huawei outside of the US (for people who can live without Google apps), but... yeah, the Android tablet situation doesn't look great. And the iPad ecosystem is honestly much better right now as it is.

There's a bunch of blame to go around for that. Part of it is that Android is afflicted by the same race-to-the-bottom mindset that hurts the Windows PC industry: vendors can't really compete with each other on software and don't feel they can compete on quality, so they compete on price. That's why the Android tablet market devolved from high-end hardware like the original Galaxy Tab and Xoom to rudimentary devices that are basically dedicated Netflix viewers.

I would also lay a large part of this at Google's feet. Simply speaking, Google has no idea how to support Android on any platform that isn't a phone. It bungled Android tablet support early on by being slow to encourage tablet apps in the first place, and then insisting that you could magically make apps tablet-friendly by adding in a few lines of code. Throw in Google's ongoing refusal to offer a dedicated view for tablet-native apps and you have a situation where there not only aren't many tablet-native Android apps, but users usually have to guess which apps are tablet-native.

I'd also say Google has been slow to add tablet interface elements compared to Apple or Samsung.

Apple's advantage, to some extent, comes down to one thing: it actually takes tablets seriously. It focuses on higher-end hardware and releases it fairly consistently. It has not only invested more in a tablet UI, it actually forked iOS to give tablets more attention. It offers genuinely good tools for developing tablet-sized apps, and viewing the App Store from an iPad shows you -- gasp -- iPad-native apps by default. If you want an analogy: if Apple and Google were sports teams, Apple would win every time because it's the only one that's consistently eager to play. Google, much like Microsoft in the 2000s, expects to win merely by showing up and wonders why it keeps getting thrashed.
 
I bought a fairly high end Samsung Tablet instead of an iPad and in hindsight, I should have got an iPad.

Samsung never offered an Android upgrade, it shipped with Kit Kat, and was never upgraded beyond that.

If you want a tablet, get an iPad. Even their lowest end HW is top notch, and they support it for many years, and the ecosystem is better as well.

I bought the Samsung because I wanted "freedom" to install whatever I wanted (never mattered at all), use a storage card (This is handy, but just buy more storage initially), IR transmitter to use as s remote (tried it once to see that it worked) and the built in GPS on the non-cellular model (never used it even once).

None of the extra Android features/freedom ever really mattered, and I ended up with Abandoned HW, running less polished SW, in a weaker ecosystem.

If I ever buy another tablet for myself or family, it will be an iPad.
 
For android, there's samsung, or buy what is effectively a disposable device from lenovo or asus. The LG mentioned upstream is nicer than most, but also pricier.

Honestly, the decent android tablets have risen enough in price, and apple has dropped the base ipad enough in price that there's no reason to go android unless you need the ecosystem. Jsut cough up the $30-40 more for the ipad. I've had my kid on android tablets because he was a bit rough on them, but he's gotten better, and next one will probably be an ipad. if there is a next one.
 
I'm curious, let us know which one you end up keeping!
 
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