Google on Monday announced a Chrome OS tablet push targeted at the education market, having said the initiative starts with Acer’s Chromebook Tab 10 unveiled earlier today. The world’s first Chrome OS-powered tablet is meant to provide all of the advantages of a traditional Chromebook in a touchscreen-centered form factor that children are familiar with and Google claims there’s more to come on that front. The Acer Chromebook Tab 10 and all other Chrome OS tablets meant to be released going forward will be designed to be robust and highly compact, thus serving as versatile machines capable of supporting students and educators. The Alphabet-owned company is still adamant to deliver such devices at affordable prices, thus continuing the pricing strategy employed with conventional, laptop-like Chromebooks targeting the education segment.
Google also said that all education-focused tablets running Chrome OS will come bundled with styluses that are meant to be energy-efficient and not require any kind of pairing or charging, being designed to simply work out of the box and possibly even be used interchangeably between various Chromebook tablets. While the firm has yet to share many details on the matter, it’s understood that the technology meant to be utilized by those styluses will be similar to the one Samsung is using for its Galaxy Note-series devices whose S Pen styluses also don’t have to be specifically connected to their hosts or recharged. The gadgets themselves will be able to leverage Google’s machine learning solutions including predictive text algorithms in order to facilitate writing, according to the company.
The Mountain View, California-based tech giant described the move as a direct response to the feedback it received from educators, many of whom are said to have praised the versatility of traditional Chromebooks but asked for more touchscreen-centric devices their students are already familiar with. Being focused on serving the classroom, the Acer Chromebook Tab 10 and future tablets released as part of the new initiative will also support the Google Expeditions AR platform which will be rolled out “soon.” As is the case with education-focused Chromebooks, the new tablets will come supporting a wide variety of specialized apps such as Explain Everything, Scratch Jr, Adobe Illustrator Draw, Science Journal, and Google’s own software suite, all of which are intended to be suitable for a classroom environment. The tablets can also run Android apps, are straightforward to manage on any scale, and will become widely available through various resellers later this spring, Google said.