I briefly got to try one and the pen on screen feeling is sublime, though different nibs can get close to it.
Do they still have that nonsense about not being able to transfer files across USB?
I just had to ramble a little further and say that even if they make virtually no changes, I may still be locked in for the M2 iPad Pro. I’m just too comfortable with my iOS/Procreate workflow, the App Store is still too good, etc. Nevertheless, it still just seems inconceivable to me that there wouldn’t even be a soft refresh — like they literally just improve the latency a bit and change the color.
You have to imagine how much they focus tested when they developed the pencil. They always seemed to have a close relationship with Disney, who can’t be far from Cupertino, and I always wondered if a ton of their artists straight up endorsed the hard tip — or maybe it was more like they had to opt for it to solve an engineering problem at the time.
If it’s really going to be Pencil 2 for another generation then at least they’ll probably be using updated gorilla glass. (Right?) My discipline is so lacking, but if they seriously make everything identical to M1 besides having MagSafe (which seems unlikely; all rumors point to redesign), maybe I can actually willpower my way to waiting for the Pixel Tablet next year. I have weirdly high hopes that it’s going to have a fantastic stylus that stands up there with the best, maybe even hit a crazy sweet spot on price the way the Pixel 6a did for phones.
AMEN 
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Those hopes seem odd.
Google have shown little interest in styluses and the Pixel line hasn’t had anything exceptional apart from the camera software, which even then is partly subjective.
Let us not forget the Pixel Slate either. Or the problems the current Pixel 6 Pro is facing.
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Isn’t the Pixel 6a basically phone of the year for midrange? Ars raved about it, anyways.
Anyway, supposedly they really want to compete with the Tab this time around.
The only reviews I saw mentioned that unlike other years, the A line wasn’t as much a knock out success. Basically I heard it was no better than other mid ranges at its price point without offering anything to differentiate it.
Since Samsung uses Wacom, I’d lean more towards a Sammy tablet than anything Pixel personally. I just with Samsung made more portrait friendly aspect ratios. 4:3, 3:2, anything like that would be much preferred. It’s the main reason I haven’t considered one for my smaller portable sketch option.
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I don’t know, you guys. You sure you didn’t miss this one? Pixel 6a review: Google pares down the Pixel 6 to perfection | Ars Technica
I think literally the sole complaint he had was they still only give 3 years of updates.
FWIW If the tablet had that same aesthetic, with the soft turquoise look, all I can say is I would really dig that. I’m legit picturing a stylus that resembles a fountain pen with that aesthetic lol.
You guys could definitely be right, but I guess you never know. IIRC Google has been out of the game for like 6 years since their original tablet flopped. Maybe they poured virtually unlimited resources into coming back with a bang.
I’m not saying it’s not good. I’m just saying that the A line in previous years was leaps and bounds ahead of the mid range competition, and this year, it’s basically not. There are other phones with similar price tags with similar performance and features.
IDK for sure. I have the Pixel 6, and it’s fine, nothing special to me though. The fingerprint reader is a pain, there are software glitches quite a bit still on random things, like closing apps. Very often it will freeze in the middle of trying to close an app from the multi tasking screen or whatever they call it, and I have to turn off the screen, then turn it back on to get it to work right. Also, the predictive auto correct drives me crazy on it. I use proper English and know what I’m doing. I know the difference between it’s and its and for some reason it’s always changing them. What’s crazy is, it changes them both ways. You would think it would think I always mean one or the other, but nope, it tries to change it no matter which one I write, and after having this phone for over 6 months, it hasn’t gotten any better at predicting what I’m typing.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I miss Windows Phone. It was smooth and easy to use across the board. Granted, half the apps I now use weren’t there, but still, the OS was really nice.
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Yeah, but so much of the seems to be about ‘stock Android’, which is really subjective and over the last several years the Android skins have often been better than ‘stock Android’ in a lot of ways.
Even before, the modified skins often offered a lot of features that stock didn’t, it was just many were a bit too resource intensive for the SoCs at the time.
It is quite pathetic that Google themselves have so many issues making bug-free devices for their own OS.
The Pixel 6a is pretty nice. I’d say the Nothing Phone 1 is a good competitor though, and I’d personally pick the Sony Xperia 10 IV (a shame about no physical shutter button).
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FWIW, everything we’ve heard is that the stylus on the new Pixel Tablet will be USI 2.0. While that’s an improvement over 1.0 (the latency is somewhat improved) so far on the couple of Lenovo devices we’ve tested anyway, it’s about MS Surface Pro 6 levels IMHO
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Way to bring us back on target ish. But I do think Google is probably going more for acceptable as a note taker than competitor for Apple Pencil and Samsung’s Wacom. Who knows, maybe they think they can get there with software.
I neglected to mention this but there was this other article about 4 weeks ago about the possibility of there not only being an eraser, but it basically having a twisty mouse wheel-looking function for cycling brushes or dialing opacity or whatnot. As long as it’s not a mechanical dial and rather touch-based, seems like something that would be pretty damn cool and not draw any objections from anyone.
This seems like something way more likely to happen than my carpenter-style because they’re obviously not going to want to break compatibility with all the iPads that now have the magnetic charging strip. But I mean, I’d be happy AF, and sold on it, if this thing like the artist’s rendition came along and also came with some latency improvements we talked about and a slightly revamped nib (or there are just improvement to the durability of the glass — heck, maybe even etched glass like Wacom MSP — so this hard nib doesn’t put any hairline scratches in it).
Counting the days to Oct 7…