When you step once more and provides it some thought, the reality that Android tablets are such an underemphasized afterthought is sort of stunning. Android is the world’s hottest working system, in any case — by a fairly hefty margin. It’s easy to neglect sometimes, nonetheless additional individuals carry Android-powered smartphones than one other sort of machine throughout the universe.
And however, for all of those advantages, Google has 12 months after 12 months failed to point out Android tablets proper right into a compelling, sought-after sort of know-how that’s higher than a mere blip on the mobile-tech radar. It’s reached the aim the place I flat-out inform individuals to steer clear of Android tablets and have in mind convertible Chromebooks in its place — ‘set off not just like the on a regular basis Android capsule, any Chromebook you buy will actually get updates. It is going to be supported with the latest privateness, security, and effectivity necessities for years after its purchase. And it’ll current a very nice all-around experience.
Plain and straightforward, it will carry all the qualities you want from an Android capsule proper right into a additional productivity-minded, work-friendly setup — one with a great deal of perks and with out all the same old Android capsule disadvantages.
Here’s what’s fascinating, though: Android tablets didn’t have to be this fashion. Nearly 12 years up to now, Google bought a buzzworthy software program program startup that was doing extraordinarily fascinating points with interface design. The company had every kind of untamed ideas about the best way ahead for large-screen contact interaction, and Google appeared destined to hold these concepts into the land of Android.
That’s the story of an alternate future for Android tablets — a future that may have seen Android-powered tablets charting new territory and shaking up the best way through which we thought-about large-screen computing experiences.
That’s the story of the Android capsule interface that may have been.
The Android capsule origin story
Sooner than we get into the meat of this zesty tech sandwich, we’ve got to step once more for a sec and set the scene of what was taking place with Google throughout the early part of the 2010 decade.
The Android capsule saga technically started throughout the fall of 2010, merely months after Apple launched its first Magical and Revolutionary™ iPad. At the moment, for context, Google didn’t have an efficient approach for Android to exist in a “big-screen” sort. (I put “big-screen” in quotes because of the earliest Android tablets weren’t quite a bit bigger than our current Android telephones. Hey, it’s all relative.) So with all people and their mother all the sudden gushing over Apple’s inaugural slate-shaped creation, Android device-makers who’ve been decided to compete scrambled to slap collectively their very personal half-baked setup.
Most prominently, Samsung spewed out its first-ever Galaxy Tab — a 7″ slate that ran Android 2.2, labored exactly like a cellphone, and even mean you can make and procure calls along with your particular person SIM card in positive conditions. So in several phrases, yeah: It was sort of solely an enormous cellphone
Early the next 12 months, in 2011, Google obtained right here out with its Android 3.0 Honeycomb software program program — a tablet-only launch that launched a really new foundation and prepared Android to exist in a large-screen sort. The first true Android tablets, along with the fundamental Motorola Xoom, adopted.
Android 3.0 was actually an admirable framework for a complete new type of mobile-tech experience — one by which the core Android interface was totally reimagined to reap the advantages of the newfound show display screen home and create a additional efficiency-optimized, productivity-minded ambiance.
Nonetheless that mindset wouldn’t closing for prolonged. Apple had already made a extreme splash with its iPad, and Google did its common Google issue — first, failing to get builders on board quickly ample to make first impression with how apps operated in its newly scaled-up ambiance, then lastly shedding its focus, pivoting away from its distinctive imaginative and prescient, and at last merely letting the considered the Android capsule languish with none important movement forward.
By 2016, Google had by all counts given up on the considered the Android capsule. Android tablets nonetheless existed, in truth, nonetheless Google wasn’t doing quite a bit to advance or promote ’em.
And that’s to say nothing of the Android capsule probability that in no way made its technique to the ground or had any probability to shine.
An Android capsule acquisition
Time to fly once more now to Might of 2010 — just a few fast months after Apple’s first iPad splashed its method into the world. Google, presumably arduous at work on the early efforts spherical Honeycomb, quietly bought a company known as BumpTop. Rumor has it the deal value a cool $25 to $35 million — no small chunk of change, to say the least.
There was no formal announcement or fanfare from Google regarding the acquisition, nonetheless BumpTop alerted its present prospects that its current software program program wouldn’t be provided or supported and that it is likely to be taking the app “in an thrilling new course” inside Google’s famed partitions.
So what exactly was BumpTop? Briefly, it was a dramatically fully totally different deal with the usual computing interface. The software program program made your desktop look and act like a bodily desk, with every kind of multitouch gestures and clever strategies for interacting collectively along with your stuff.
In a 2007 TED Converse, BumpTop’s founder, Anand Agarawala — take into account that title from a minute up to now? — said he believed we’ve got been nonetheless in “the cave-painting interval of laptop computer interfaces” and that it was extreme time for any individual to try one factor new.
“One type of information home I … take inspiration from is my precise desk. It’s a lot additional refined, quite a bit additional visceral — you already know, what’s seen, what’s not. And I’d want to carry that need to the desktop,” he said.
BumpTop superior right into a far more touch-centric interface throughout the months that adopted. And it’s really one factor you must see to know. This 2009 demo video reveals the basics of the BumpTop desktop and the best way the software program program reinvented the act of getting spherical a laptop:
The Android capsule path
Apart from the large BumpTop purchase, one factor else essential occurred inside Google throughout the month of Might 2010. In the direction of the highest of that very same month, just a few weeks after the BumpTop deal went by way of, a well-respected designer joined Google as its first client experience director for Android.
That designer was none other than Matias Duarte — the person who’d led development of Palm’s webOS interface and earned accolades for his efforts on the Hazard-made Sidekick (a.okay.a. the Hiptop) sooner than that.
And who had Duarte labored alongside at Hazard? Essential nerd elements for those who already know the reply: It was a positive Andy Rubin, who co-founded the company after which went on to co-found Android and oversee its evolution inside Google throughout 2013.
Rubin’s legacy is now far tougher, to position it mildly, nonetheless on the time, he was the grand commander of all points Android — and Duarte was his new deputy entrusted with bringing a bigger focus to design for the platform. So far, extremely efficient as Android had been, the software program program had sometimes veered additional in the direction of utility, with design taking a once more seat to sheer power and efficiency.
Under Duarte’s course, we observed a noticeable shift. First obtained right here the software program program known as Honeycomb — though with its efforts already underway on the time of Duarte’s arrival, the seven-months-later Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich launch is usually thought-about to be additional advisor of Duarte’s full have an effect on.
Each method, the concepts from BumpTop barely made a blip throughout the working system. You’ll see what seems to be a slight contact of BumpTop inspiration throughout the Honeycomb-era accordion widgets, which adopted the identical sort of stacking and flipping model to what we observed all all by means of BumpTop…
.nonetheless apart from that, there’s not quite a bit obvious inspiration from BumpTop wherever in Android — a minimum of, outwardly — and it appears to be like like most of its concepts obtained misplaced over time.
As for BumpTop’s founder, Anand Agarawala, he labored at Google for about 4 and a half years, in accordance along with his LinkedIn profile — starting with the second of BumpTop’s acquisition and going throughout October of 2014. His profile signifies he carried out some methodology of perform in Android interface development for the Android 2.3 Gingerbread launch that obtained right here out in December of 2010 along with the next Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich updates. After that, he apparently frolicked engaged on “next-generation AR assistant functions” at Google X along with on the Google+ mobile apps and on the Google Photos “computerized story creations” attribute.