Looks like an iPad, right?
Got the flat edge, the rounded liquid retina corners,
smart connector, four sets of speaker grills,
but it's not an iPad. It's a Samsung Galaxy Tab S8.
On a Mac channel? Yes, because I've often long wondered
why people buy Android tablets. Sure, there are many options available,
especially at lower prices, but from what I've read in tech publications
and reviews, Android is just nowhere near iPadOS in the tablet space.
And yet, one of my best friends has been an Android tablet faithful for years.
And real recently, my dad made me help him find a suitable Android tablet,
despite my mother and I insisting on an iPad.
They may not be many, but people are buying Android tablets.
And I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. Maybe Android is worth some attention.
So, I used this one for 10 days to find out.
Can I get a white mocha?
At Google's latest I.O., they announced an upcoming Pixel tablet.
And that might actually bode well for this guy, because it means that Google's putting effort
into making Android work for tablets.
The thing is, they've tried this before, many times in fact.
Let me rewind. A year after the launch of the iPad, Google released Android version three,
Honeycomb, made exclusively for tablets. It featured a two-pane UI for email and contacts,
browser Windows with tabs, and a larger keyboard for larger screens.
The hope was that developers would write tablet apps like they were doing for iOS, but they didn't.
So, what we ended up getting is just very wide phone apps.
The Nexus 7 released a year later was more reasonable.
Basically, a big phone before phones got really big.
The extra real estate made it nicer for watching and reading,
but didn't push the capability. And because it was only $200,
people didn't have huge expectations for it either.
Apple dutifully and incrementally worked away at their iPad in that time,
making it more useful through some multitasking, new features, and accessories.
This evolution was a test of patience, but it's quite staggering how much more capable
the iPad is than its predecessor or its competitors.
Oh, right, the Samsung.
Sales-wise, Samsung is the only game around in the Android tablet space.
And this, their brand new Galaxy Tab S8 is the flagship model.
It's available in three sizes and many prices. This is the smallest and provides the closest competitor
to the recently updated iPad Air. I'll happily admit that it's a decent tablet.
Performance is snappy and the high refresh rate screen looks nice.
It's a pleasant departure from the experience I had with the Samsung Galaxy A53.
And it even has many compelling features that the iPad doesn't even offer.
The webcam is in the correct place on the long side.
There's a fingerprint reader and face recognition. And perhaps the feature I'm most envious of
is the micro SD card slot for expansion. Handy if you wanna back up photos taken
with a non-mobile phone camera, or just expand storage without shelling out hundreds of dollars.
This is what made the iPad a non-starter for my dad.
So yes, it has an SD card slot, but look at it.
It's not centered. Neither is the USB-C port either.
Okay, so this is pedantic hardware niggles.
But take a look at this. If I have to continue to type on this on-screen keyboard,
I'm going to pull a phalange. These wide buttons are just ridiculous.
Apple and their wisdom kept their on-screen keyboard proportional.
Samsung isn't even that bad. Look at Google's. I swear their Honeycomb keyboard was better.
Unfortunately, there are some great tablet apps that I use regularly that aren't even available on Android.
Craigslist and Procreate to name a few. And most of the ones that are available
are just so much worse on Android. It's not even close.
Here, take a look at this. On iPad, Twitter takes thoughtful advantage
of portrait and landscape orientations. Whereas on Android, it doesn't.
Look at my tweets. They span the whole width. This is too big.
Some apps like Auto Trader or Kijiji won't even rotate to landscape.
Same with Instagram. Wait, what? You can get Instagram on a tablet?
That's it, I'm buying Android. Figuring out multitasking
has been a pain point on the iPad for a while now. But on the Galaxy, whoa, is it ever an intuitive?
You wanna go into split screen? You have to tap on an app icon in the app switcher.
But instead of that going next to the app you already have open,
it asks what you wanna fill the other space with. The app I had open.
Another option is to drag over this little nub,
which conceals a dock from where you can drag apps out.
And there's more. You can make apps free-floating,
a bit like slide over with some more flexibility at the cost of usability.
And if you go back home, they become a little bobble that groups together
if you have multiple floating Windows. Which reminds me of Samsung's DeX feature,
which turns your Android tablet into a desktop computer ready for a mouse and keyboard.
It looks like a big Samsung phone. Some people got mad at Riley for ignoring DeX
in his ShortCircuit Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra unboxing.
But there's really nothing to see here. On a small screen like this,
it's really more of a hassle to be managing and moving around all these Windows that are even smaller.
If you think that this is going to be a suitable computer replacement, well, good luck to you.
This is the opposite of how the iPad works.
Since Apple assumes you probably have multiples of their devices, they've given us universal control.
So instead of extending your tablet into a computer, the iPad becomes an extension of your Mac.
But with iPad OS 16, Apple appears to be going in Samsung's direction
with stage manager. It allows for the sort of app windowing
people have been pining for. This, however, is not a desktop.
Windows can be grouped, resized and moved, but not to anywhere on the screen.
And we're still in beta, so we'll have to find out how it works later on.
Though this seems like the iPad is getting closer to DeX,
Apple is taking the approach of trickling concepts from the desktop to the tablet in an intentional way,
instead of just dragging the platform, picking and screaming with existing desktop paradigms.
So this year, we've been working hard to make Android tablets amazing.
With their tablet announcement, Google showed the progress they made
on their tablet interface for Android 13, and they updated apps to take advantage
of the larger screen. Sound familiar?
I have the beta installed on this Lenovo, and yeah, there are some good ideas in here.
They're so good, I swear I've used them before.
Hmm. It's neat to see Android make sense in this form factor.
It's taken long enough. Though we might actually see some progress this time around.
Though they're gonna have to act fast. Because as folding phones become more viable,
developers are going to want to make sure their apps work well on them,
and folding them is a good way to do it. Apps work well on them,
and folding phones are just small tablets.
That's a long ways off, but what about now? Well, if you have an iPhone, then you should get an iPad.
And if you have an Android phone, well, you should probably still get an iPad.
And if you want even a decent Android tablet, you're not even gonna save all that much.
This starts at $700. This iPad Air is $100 less.
Sure, it's missing half the Samsung storage, but the Samsung is missing so much more.
I missed GarageBand. I missed Universal Control. I missed the snappy app switching.
I missed the square more flexible aspect ratio. I missed Slideover.
I missed all the tablet optimized apps. I missed iMessage.
I always debate people from our sister channel LTT about the iPad.
They don't really understand how a focused tablet-like device can be useful.
Why am I paying for two devices when I can get one foldable laptop that does it all?
Well, maybe this mindset is present at Google too.
I mean, they still do sell Chrome OS tablets for some reason,
but it's the form factor, stupid. And if you don't get it, you won't commit to it,
which is why after 11 years, Google is starting all over again with Android.
I wish them luck. And maybe in a decade, I'll give it another go.
Thanks for tapping into this Mac Address. If you like the iPad more than Android,
give this video a like. And if you have an Android tablet, looking enviously at us with iPads,
then you must subscribe. Now, when I wrote this script,
I didn't know about Apple unveiling state manager and the windowing mode in the iPad OS.
So it sort of changes the perspective just a little bit from what I initially thought.
But I'm curious how you feel about the iPad
becoming a little bit more desktop-like. Does it make it even better than an Android tablet?
Or a little bit more like an Android tablet?