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The Nexus 7 was Google’s only great tablet, and it has never tried to replace it

arstechnica.com

11–16 of 16 posts

Re: The Nexus 7 was Google’s only great tablet, and it has never tried to replace it

#11
Wasn't this the tablet they bricked (for a lot of people) with an update?

I remember encountering multiple that no longer booted, and trying to unlock the bootloader caused the device to hang during the deletion of the user partition.

Re: The Nexus 7 was Google’s only great tablet, and it has never tried to replace it

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just me then. It was great and then suddenly it became completely unusable. Lineage OS got a few more years out of it. Technically it still works but even Lineage dropped it. Sadly the Samsung Tab A 10.1 that came later also suffered a huge performance drop (like many seconds to open the keyboard) and there's no supported Lineage for it, so it'll probably just go in a drawer and be forgotten. Another family membe…

IIUC LineageOS didn't drop it. Rather it requires repartitioning, and is thus referred to by another code name. https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/flox/

Oh, wow, I completely missed that happening. Well, I know what my evening activity will be!

Re: The Nexus 7 was Google’s only great tablet, and it has never tried to replace it

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just me then. It was great and then suddenly it became completely unusable. Lineage OS got a few more years out of it. Technically it still works but even Lineage dropped it. Sadly the Samsung Tab A 10.1 that came later also suffered a huge performance drop (like many seconds to open the keyboard) and there's no supported Lineage for it, so it'll probably just go in a drawer and be forgotten. Another family membe…

IIUC LineageOS didn't drop it. Rather it requires repartitioning, and is thus referred to by another code name. https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/flox/

I don't recommend doing this. I followed those instructions to the letter, and got a completely broken Nexus 7. I somehow managed to recover enough to reinstall the factory image, but it took many many iterations and blind shots in the dark, consuming several hours of my time.

Re: The Nexus 7 was Google’s only great tablet, and it has never tried to replace it

#14
One thing weird of Android tablets, it's so under underpowered (during the Nexus 7 era). Only recently after m1 ipads, I see good spec tablets coming out.

I like how the Pixel tablets has a charging dock that doubles as a speaker.

Would be cooler if the charging dock has a better graphics card that can be connected to a monitor, mouse & keyboard and turned into a desktop setup.

Re: The Nexus 7 was Google’s only great tablet, and it has never tried to replace it

#15
post #3

The Nexus 7 has been replaced, just not by Google. Small tablets rule the Android world; they're cheap and disposable, everything the Nexus 7 was. Emphasis on the 'disposable' bit, as Asus (N7 OEM) used an eMMC with a high failure rate, in order to meet Google's $200 price point with a 1200p display. No one wants to admit it, but that was a big reason as to why Android tablets are seen as cheap today; you can't every…

I'm using a ~$100 Amazon Fire 8 right now. Is it speedy? Is the hardware amazing? Hell no but it's good enough, cheap enough and feels like it's built out of old Game Boys so I have no problem tossing it around. And it even runs Emacs unlike my old far more expensive and powerful iPad Pro.

I got a Fire thinking it would be a good replacement but the display is so bad I don’t even want to look at it. The N7 had a beautiful screen. The Fire had pretty decent speakers though, I’ll give it that.

Re: The Nexus 7 was Google’s only great tablet, and it has never tried to replace it

#16
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIUC LineageOS didn't drop it. Rather it requires repartitioning, and is thus referred to by another code name. https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/flox/

I don't recommend doing this. I followed those instructions to the letter, and got a completely broken Nexus 7. I somehow managed to recover enough to reinstall the factory image, but it took many many iterations and blind shots in the dark, consuming several hours of my time.

More anecdata: I've done it on two or three devices without issue.

I thought the factory image install scripts rewrote the partition table, so even if you screw it up it should come back as long as you still have fastboot? Or maybe I'm thinking of another model.

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