I’ve been using the new iPad Mini for a month and change, and I like it a lot: with flagship-level build quality and performance in a compact body, it’s just such a great little tablet for casual stuff like jotting notes or reading. And it might not seem like it on paper, but its 8.3-inch screen is actually meaningfully bigger than even a very large phone — like, for example, the 6.4-inch Pixel 6 I’ve been using alongside it for the past couple weeks.
As great as the little iPad that could is at most of the things it does, it’s still very much an iPad. Compared to Android, iPadOS’s notifications are all but broken, settings are positively arcane, and it costs a lot for a secondary device: 500 bucks. Plus, if you couldn’t guess, I really like Android — and Google’s funky, customized spin on Android 12 is my favorite version yet. Using the Pixel 6 and iPad Mini at the same time, sometimes literally, I’ve been thinking a lot about how much more I’d like a tablet with this footprint running the same flavor of Android as the Pixel 6.
Google’s new Android 12L offers a tantalizing glimpse of that very possibility. It’s all about large-screen enhancements like multitasking improvements, a rejiggered notification pane, and APIs that make it easier for developers to make apps that better take advantage of big-screen real estate. Google’s been showing these features off in images and animations that stretch Pixel-style Android 12 over larger canvases, which has a lot of folks freshly excited about the prospect of a Google-branded folding phone. But I’ve used folding phones, and honestly, I’m not a fan — devices like the Galaxy Z Fold3 are too bulky, too expensive, and too delicate for me. I’m over here salivating at the thought of a new Pixel tablet.
Android 12L promises to adapt better to bigger displays.
Google’s no stranger to tablets, of course. Its Nexus 7 was the first tablet I ever owned, and it was pretty well-loved by Android geeks at the time, but its larger Nexus 10 was less popular. The Pixel C, with its clever magnetic keyboard, is the only Google tablet I never owned — but I used the ill-fated Pixel Slate as my primary computer for a full year. After that Chrome OS tablet’s critical and commercial failure, Google infamously gave up on tablet hardware altogether; it apparently didn’t think it was worth the hassle of competing with the likes of the pervasive, segment-definng iPad or Samsung’s ever-popular Galaxy Tab series. A lot of those Samsung tablets are pretty great; I’ve used a bunch of them, and the best ones are snappy and feel very premium — unlike Google’s tablets.
My iPad is jealous of Android 12L’s notifications.
But the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are some of the best hardware Google’s ever made. They’re not flawless: priced to undercut similarly capable competition by hundreds of dollars, their fit and finish isn’t quite on par with top-tier devices from Google’s peers. But they’re competently built devices with a unique new look, and thanks to Google’s custom Tensor chipset, they’ve got the horsepower to keep up with just about any other Android device on the market. With that level of hardware finesse and Android 12L’s newly revitalized large screen support, it feels like Google’s poised to make a tablet comeback.
This but Android, please.
I realize manufacturing a tablet is more complicated than “take a phone and make it bigger,” but the pieces are falling into place: Google makes good hardware and has started prioritizing how its software works on screens bigger than the ones its phones have. If the company could jam its high-performing Tensor CPU into a tablet that both apes the Pixel 6 series’s unique styling and maintains its absolutely crazy value proposition? I’d ditch my iPad for that in a heartbeat — and I’d bet money I’m not the only one.
Read Next
About The Author
