I enrolled on the Android Beta and am typing this on my phone plugged into a USB-C dongle that provides HDMI and USB.
The idea is it’s supposed to turn your phone into a portable “real” computer.
I think it needs some work, it’s a bit unstable. The idea is there, and it works very similarly to a Chromebook, just they don’t quite know what to do with the phone’s screen. Interacting with that really confuses everything.
Also apps are completely unaware of what’s going on. Trying to use Firefox is … interesting.
I had to take this “screenshot” with my phone’s camera, because I couldn’t find any other way. Pressing Print Screen on the keyboard took a screenshot of the phone’s display.
Also sometimes the phone’s display got confused with what it was trying to show
No idea what’s going on here, but I’m fairly sure apps in windows are not supposed to appear on the phone. Pressing the “X” in the window makes the entire phone close all apps and lock itself.
Maybe it’ll turn into something good, and in a few years time I bin my Chromebook, or Google will silently kill it off by December. The concept is good, but I don’t really have random monitors, keyboards and mice lying around waiting for something to plug into them. I have computers, or a laptop.
It’s not amazing, it’s not crap. Android tablets have always been a bit weird, either oddly sized with strange screen resolutions or manky and broken addon software. Or they’re fine but never receive an Android update ever and do strange things like crash if you rotate them.
My iPad is on its way out. The battery gets to about 50% and then the device just switches off. No low battery warning, it just dies. Yes I’ve rebooted it, yes I’ve farted about in the settings, no nothing works. Also no I’m not going to open it and replace the battery it’ll break the screen.
Also there’s bits of iOS that are really starting to annoy me every time I try to use the device. The predictive text is nonsense – I remember when this used to just fix spelling, now it looks at grammar and will swap words based on what it thinks you’re typing. And copying and pasting is still garbage. Why can’t I highlight text inside a Facebook Messenger message?
So I got an Android tablet. It’s a Lenovo P11 or something. It has a real keyboard and a little kickstand. It’s like Lenovo looked at the Surface Pro and thought “we’ll have some of that!”.
It’s alright. It’s not that fantastic, and the out of box experience was terrible. Like, half the time the Android setup wizard called it a “phone”, and then kept tripping over itself with updates appearing over the wizard, and the wizard trying to redo parts it had already done.
You know, typical third party Android device behaviour. And I had to uninstall some free games. And try the update to Android 12 three times before it would install it.
The keyboard is a strange thing. Clipping it on activates “productivity mode” where it all becomes a bit like a Chromebook. There’s a little taskbar and apps go into windows that can be moved around the screen. It’s not bad.
It has some bizarre quirks though. Android 12 seems to have some wanky “Entertainment Space” that hovers at the side of the screen. And no matter how many times I tell Android to turn this off, it just gets turned right back on every time I rotate the display or detach the keyboard.
Being used to a Surface Pro, and an iPad with a “smart cover” I’m used to shutting the lid and the device going to sleep.
Despite this being the official keyboard from Lenovo, with little magnets to hold it shut, closing the keyboard to the screen doesn’t put the device to sleep.
Do people not use the devices, think about stuff and go “hey, we need to shut the screen off when they close it…” or “my, when we rotate the device with the keyboard attached the wallpaper goes a funny size and the icons get mixed up”?
But, you know, it was cheaper than an iPad and has a metal case. It’s alright. I managed to fix my website using SSH through it and the lack of an escape key didn’t cause too much of a hassle.
