Tablets

Android tablets have nearly died out with only a few big names supporting them. These slates now usually come only in two variants, the expensive high-end tablets like Samsung's Galaxy Tab S series and ultra-cheap options, including Amazon's Fire tablets. A few months ago, Lenovo announced two new tablets to join the ranks though on the lower end of that range. Now one of those, the Lenovo Tab M7, is finally available in the US and is even cheaper than what the company announced back in August.

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Historically speaking, the Surface Pro line has not been kind to the DIYers of the world. It seems that every time a new Surface Pro device comes out, iFixit tears it down only to discover that it isn't user-repairable in any real sense. Encouragingly, the Surface Pro X appears to buck that particular trend, and though it's far from perfect, it's still much more repairable than the other devices in its family.

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The Surface Neo and the Surface Duo may have stolen Microsoft's event last month but those two won't be coming until late 2020 at the earliest. For more practical Surface users, the Surface Pro X is the one that brings the future here and now. That "now" is finally happening as Microsoft announces the availability of the latest ARM-powered Windows PC. Unfortunately, it seems that Microsoft still hasn't addressed the most important shortcoming of its Windows on ARM version.

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The LG G Pad 5 10.1 tablet was revealed today with a design that might confirm your suspicion about the tablet-makers plans for future devices. Yes, LG does seem to be making a new tablet, and yes, it looks nothing like what we'd expect from a serious competitor for the very few high-end tablet makers on the market today. The LG G Pad 5 10.1 runs Android and has the potential to connect to 4G LTE mobile data - but the rest is a bit confusingly low-end.

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It seems that Apple still isn't free of the curse of iOS 13 which, in retrospect, should have probably skipped the number. iOS 13.2 was released just a few days ago and, aside from bricking HomePod speakers, it seemed almost uneventful for iPhone and iPad owners. It was, perhaps a premature evaluation as a growing number of users are now complaining of the platform's aggressive memory management that is causing apps to be killed when left in the background even for just a short while.

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There are only a few mainstream manufacturers making Android tablets these days outside of Samsung's slightly popular Galaxy Tab line. In contrast, Apple's iPads and especially the iPad Pros seem to be thriving both in popularity and sales. So what is a company like Huawei to do? Why not combine both of these brands into one? But rather simply "be inspired" by one or the other design, Huawei's next MediaPad tablet will have one thing neither has: a punch-hole camera cutout.

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Official Apple earnings sheets released today show iPhone sales numbers down, while all other categories in Apple's earnings breakdown went up. Apple's Financial Year 2019 Forth Quarter Results showed both the three months period ending in September of 2019 and the full 12-month period ending in September 2019. Of course, even falling iPhone sales numbers are sales numbers that dwarf every other category, per usual.

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Samsung has a new Android P tablet, and if you're clumsy - or working on a job site - this may be the MIL-SPEC touchscreen slab for you. Announced at SDC 2019 this morning, the Samsung Galaxy Tab Active Pro follows on from 2018's Tab Active2, with MIL-STD-810G and IP68 standard resilience to things like excess pressure, extremes of temperature, drops, and submersion in water.

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Microsoft has always positioned its Surface products, especially the Surface Pros and Surface Laptops, as a great mobile computer for students. Now, however, it seems to be aiming its smallest Surface to the smallest computer users. Microsoft is offering a Surface Go Kids Bundle that may, on the surface, looks like a pretty ordinary marketing strategy. If you think about it, however, it might not be that effective one either.

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Over the weekend, Samsung sent a relatively small number of its customers an email that they probably didn't want to read on a weekend or on a weekday. The company was put its Linux on DeX beta program to rest and not because it was graduating to a stable release. On the contrary, Samsung was ending the program completely. It may have had a small number of users but LoD, as it was known, was well-loved by those because of what it enabled. Fortunately, there are other ways to carry on that promise in a hopefully more sustainable and more future-proof way.

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GPS, short for Global Positioning System, is almost universally known as the technology that helps tell our location in the world. What few probably know is the system is actually designed to also tell the time. GPS receivers have actually relied on this piece of data coming from satellites not only to tell time but to actually make location-based services work properly. Unfortunately, that system might be thrown into chaos for the second time this year when a second GPS Week Number Rollover hits old devices in early November.

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It was off to a rough start but, almost mirroring the phenomenon surrounding any Apple product, iOS 13 has still managed to garner mass appeal. At least that's according to Apple's chart, showing how many of its devices is already running its latest mobile platforms. Yes plural, because Apple is putting iPadOS on its own chart which presents a smaller but still impressive slice. Especially considering how tumultuous the past few weeks have been for iOS users.

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