It’s certainly no secret that Android tablets haven’t taken off the way Google wanted them to. If the lackluster raft of fairly boring and bland tablets from last year wasn’t indication enough, it’s clear that Google has a problem on their hands. The solution to such a problem appears to be Android N, announced earlier today in its First Developer Preview. Seemingly out of nowhere, Google has announced the next major release of Android, months earlier than we’d previously expect them to do. Android smartphones will no doubt continue to dominate the market all over the world, but the tablet is where Google need to refocus and make Android feel useful on larger displays again. Developers are the key to this, and to get the ball rolling, Google is offering them a 25% reduction on a Pixel C.
Announced in their outline of what’s new for Android N, Google detailed a discount for the Pixel C. As of writing, this is listed as being 25% off of the price of one Pixel C tablet, not including the keyboard attachment, and only one can be redeemed per person. Those looking to get the discount can take a look at the source link below, and all Google asks for initially is your email address. Further checks from there might include a Play Store Developer’s account, but right now no further details are available online. It also appears to be just the 64GB version of the Pixel C, which – after the 25% discount – would cost devs just $450, which isn’t too bad a deal. When we reviewed the Pixel C last year we noted that the hardware was fantastic, but that the software needed a lot of work.
Android N will launch later this year, but where tablets are concerned it appears as though the major new feature will be the multi-window support that developers can easily add using the “android:resizableActivity” attribute to their apps to make them useable side-by-side with other apps. Elsewhere however, there doesn’t seem to be anything major that will change the overall interface of Android as it is on phones for tablets, or anything beyond this multi-window feature. Regardless, developers are what’s needed to make Android tablets fresh again, and offering them some money off of – an admittedly fairly pricey machine – is perhaps as good a start as any.