1y ago

The Pixel Tablet is actually just a few spare parts in a half-empty body

arstechnica.com The Pixel Tablet is actually just a few spare parts in a half-empty body

Why is this $500 tablet full of so much empty space?

I am not sure where I land on this issue, I am not entirely sold that it should have been filled to the brim and packed tightly but it does seem like they could have done better either for repairability or at least having things like a headphone jack and maybe better speakers (I have read that speakers can do better with more hollow space without adding much weight but I'm not knowledgeable enough)

The comments have a lot of good viewpoints

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1y ago

The Pixel Tablet is just a few spare parts in a half-empty body

arstechnica.com /gadgets/2023/09/the-pixel-tablet-is-actually-just-a-few-spare-parts-in-a-half-empty-body/

0 1

21 comments

Yeah, I really don’t see the issue. If the device works as advertised, so what if it’s full of air?
- Plus, it sounds to me like they need to take more tablets apart. There's always tons of dead space, usually taken up by filled or risen parts of the structural case.
  Sounds to me like you can see a rushed product development here in so far that a custom molded shell was never provided. OTOH, this makes repairs far easier. Which is a good thing for consumers, even though it doesn't remotely go far enough and I really want a FairTablet or so.
  
  *customers
- When you design a new device from the ground up you make them fit in a way that allows the remaining space to be a single large rectangle to be entirely filled with battery. This might require custom PCB to have some L shapes. If you want to target a specific weight and having that much battery is too heavy then you make the device thinner. Instead it looks like they took pre-existing components from other devices such as Pixel phones or the Google Home and put them in a larger case.
  It's not necessarily a problem that this device exists how it is, but that it is a cheap way to go about it and yet still sold at a premium price.
- My eink tablet is built exactly the same way. On one hand it would be nice if the battery was bigger, but that adds more weight so 🤷‍♂️

No memory expansion = no sale. Clearly they had room for a MicroSD slot.

Haha they definitely can't claim there was no space for a headphone jack indeed.
But I mean, electronics is tiny, it can go with the same motherboard as a phone. The only thing it needs to be larger is a battery, and that's a capacity/weight balance.
Speakers maybe, but that's also a function of thinness so I don't know how much of a difference size makes. Thin laptops sound just as crappy as anything else thin unless the vendor shells out for some expensive units.

Kind of annoying, they could have used that space for a bigger battery, bigger heatsink, memory card reader, more ports, etc.
- That would of course raise the cost though
  
  Yes, but at $500 the profit margins are still huge. This is like a $200 tablet being sold for $500. It probably costs $50 to manufacture.
  
  It would, and would also only apply to a very small minority of people that are stuck in the past. But the increased price would effect everybody.

You and me both pixel tablet....

A tablet is basically a smartphone with a bigger screen. Maybe a slightly bigger SSD and battery but that's about it.
- Imo the battery should take up nearly all the free slace inside the device. Especially in a tablet considering the proportionally bigger screen.

Have you seen the surface book? It could have twice the battery capacity if they just put more batteries into all the empty space.

Well, that would explain why my device feels so cool to the touch all the time (aside from the corner where the SoC is

I have never seen a mobile device with this much free space inside.
Inspired by the AlphaSmart.
- For what it did, the AS3000 was absolutely OK. I've seen people looking perplexed when I used this thing for note-taking. Switch on, type, switch off. And absolutely lightweight.

I don't really see this as a bad thing, sooner or later someone's going to come up with a battery mod for these that doubles or triples run time and I'm here for it.
Edit: Re: tablet design- your can't really make the device super skinny or they get hard to hold so the extra space in the housing might just be designed in so the tablet is easier to handle. My eink tablet is super thin and pretty easy to drop, I don't have that issue with my larger/thicker Samsung tablet.

21 comments