Looking for an Android tablet with some probably unreachable requirements
Hello. I'm currently in the market for an Android tablet, not strictly for my personal usage, but for my family so there's one easily reachable touch screen computer around the house. The problems start with my requirements, which are... not exactly tablet market friendly:
- Available in France (and without overly high shipping costs)
- Long term manufacturer support so it isn't subject to suddenly become e-waste because they decided to stop providing updates after like 1 major Android release
- Ability to install an Android distribution that doesn't rely on Google apps such as LineageOS + microG
- Sufficient specs to use a web browser and play videos without issues.
- I'd like the model to be easy to repair in the same vein as the Fairphone but that's lower priority
The budget is best defined as "probably not enough" (I don't think I can afford to spend much more than ~400€). Given that I suspect from my initial search not yielding much that fitting all the requirements is impossible especially within that budget, do you have pointers on models that provide an acceptable compromise for what I'm looking for, or that somehow do match all the criteria?
Hilariously, the closest candidate so far within budget seems to be... The Google Pixel tablet, which despite being a Google product has a fairly straightforward way to get an unGoogled ROM on it.
Pixel Tablet! Made by Google so should be supported by the generic image (which means AOSP support), decently powerful, supports USI styluses and has global distribution. I love mine, but don't run Lineage OS. If Google drops it sooner than I like I'll make the swap.
You came to the conclusion yourself, of course. I'd be curious if the speaker dock works with it with LineageOS, as well.
Given the budget constraint I don't think the speaker dock is in the cards anyway, as it is I'd have to wait for the smaller storage capacity model to come back in stock. And, for bonus irony given my intent to not depend on Google, the place where I found it for the lowest price is... Google's own store.
I thought the dock was included? Either it was the only option when I bought it at launch or I brain farted.
Google's gonna get your money anyway, so I would bite the bullet and buy it from them direct if the tablet + shipping pans out to less than wherever else you looked.
The dock can be bought alongside the tablet, but that adds 100€ to the price. Putting aside the alarm bells ringing in my mind at the idea of buying a bespoke device with a speaker from Google, I don't think I actually need it anyway, at least certainly not for that price.
Honestly the stand is super convenient in my experience. I really wasn't sure I'd use it, but it's actually nice to have my tablet double as a stationary clock and weather station for the family. It's very convenient that it stays charged to 80 or 90% because it's always ready I pop it off the stand to watch YouTube while putting away laundry etc.
Well, the best "not-depend-on-google" OS is also GrapheneOS, and It's only available on Google Pixel phones. So yeah, Google just makes some good hardware.
The Android tablet landscape is shockingly barren, even including options that aren’t supported for all that long and aren’t particularly repairable. It’s a sea of bottom of the barrel YouTube machines that can barely run Android with a tiny handful at the top end (most of which are Samsung) and an even tinier handful in the middle. With long-term support and repairability factored in it’s almost nothing.
I have no idea what the state of hardware support on x86 Android is, but if battery life is a reasonable sacrifice the best option might actually be an x86 tablet of some sort with some AOSP-based Android distro installed. Power is much less of an issue on those (the slowest x86 CPUs are still head and shoulders over the manufactured e-waste shipped in a lot of Android devices) and even if Android distros stop supporting them, you’ll be able to run some flavor of Linux on them for the next decade and beyond. Some x86 tablets also have replacable storage/RAM which is nice.
I considered x86 tablets, but unless my search engine-fu is failing me there doesn't seem to be any viable option that is available and affordable to me. The StarLite 5 might have been the ideal option, even ticking the "is repairable" box (though I don't know if Android x86 runs well on that one)... if I had twice the budget.
If you want to use custom ROMs, do you really need manufacturer long term software support? Lineage would get its own updates irregardless.
That said, android manufacturers are getting increasingly more hostile against custom ROMs and rooting (which irritates me and strengthens my resolve and effort to install them on each new device)
There's only so much Lineage or other custom ROM builders can do once the updates to the binary blobs stop flowing. Only so much shimming you can do against new kernels and system software. Plus, even if you shim your way past a half dozen Android versions, the things you're shimming are decrepit by this point and eventually stop working.
Several months back I went on my own adventure looking for a higher-end but still affordable android tablet, mostly for emulation. What I found is what's mostly been echoed here: there just isn't much out there.
However, one place you maybe haven't looked is AliExpress at Chinese market items, specifically Xiaomi tablets like the Redmi and Mi Pads. On the surface these appear to be a fantastic value, but I didn't order one so I can't say for sure.
Lenovo also sells a tablet for their Legion gaming line that runs about 500 USD and has good specs, but they also have international models that I can't get a hold of here in the US.
In the end I decided I didn't need a tablet, mostly because I wanted to try one of the Xiaomi models but AliExpress is, to me, an absolute hellscape of fake-looking junk and I was too scared of getting ripped off. I see a lot of comments online, even here on Tildes, of people buying high end stuff from there and getting legit good deals and I don't understand how they navigate it.
Probably a bit overkill and outside your budget, but I've been pretty happy with my OnePlus Pad. I mainly picked this one because I wanted an Android tablet with a good stylus (which was a separate purchase). It was released a couple years ago and still gets regular security updates, although I'd be surprised if it ever gets an update to Android 15. I know it can be unlocked and rooted, but I'm not sure if anyone's got a Lineage build that works on it yet. It looks like maybe they have a cheaper version in some non-US markets called the OnePlus Pad Go that could be worth looking into.