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It Sure Looks Like Google's $599 Celeron Pixel Slate is Dead (androidpolice.com)
Two variants of the Pixel Slate, a tablet-laptop hybrid that Google unveiled last year, have been "out of stock" for months now, leading many to believe that Google may have quietly gotten rid of them. From a report: [The Pixel Slate that are powered by the Celeron processor] are nowhere to be seen. They've been out of stock on the Google Store -- the only place these models were very briefly available -- since shortly after launch, four months ago. The $599 and $699 versions of the Pixel Slate brought sub-iPad Pro pricing to Google's prosumer tablet, even if it turned out that the tablet itself beat the iPad in pretty much no sense that mattered. Marques Brownlee, typically known for his easy-going takes and willingness to embrace misunderstood tech products, basically called the cheaper Celeron Slate a turd. This was not a good look for Google. Shortly after that, the Celeron Pixel Slate showed up as sold out on the Google Store, and that status hasn't changed since.
They never do that!!!!
Google kills off pretty much anything they put out.
AC comments get piped to
on woot, meh and maybe untilgone
Lesson learned, never buy any consumer hardware from google. (except maybe the pixel phones)
It will only end in more unsupported devices, maybe even deliberately bricked by updates taking up space in landfills.
Open the charnel house door, there's always room for two more.
Google partnered with Rockchip to rebadge the RK3399 as the 'OP1' SoC blessed for ChromeOS. That design is now 2 years old; if a newer ARM tablet chip is around the corner then I can understand them dumping Celeron.
(Or maybe it's just the Celery models weren't selling due to dud performance.)
Intel Celeron = doomed now what did they pay to keep amd out??
First AMD post on a 'celeron' topic.
Drink!
The only product that Google continues to develop is their core product: targeted advertising and data mining.
I wonder why they're so intent on trying to create unrelated products. Why not be happy with the enormous profits from the data mining and advertising, and enjoy the profits? Pay huge dividends if they've got nothing else to invest in.
I don't respond to AC's.
At the time, the Celeron was probably the best CPU for the job. Unfortunately, they're rather weak.
AMD announced the Athlon 300U at CES. It's got specs similar to a 2200U and should beat mobile Celeron/Pentium chips at most tasks. (Sure, the 300U probably consumes more power, but the buyers of these low-end devices would prefer a better user experience than power savings.)
Has anyone noticed how ANY article that's unflattering to Big Brother Google immediately attracts trolls/shills who crapflood the comments with anti-semitic copypasta? It's almost like the Goog employs a dirty PR firm to spread the entirely misleading idea that opposition to Big Brother Google's policies is based on ugly racism.
I sure hope the whole of Google goes the same way. And oh, please take with you Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and a couple of others.
GoogleDeadProjects++;
Not surprising. Even Google knew from the beginning that it was an experimental project and had doubts about that model success.
This could be related to the Intel manufacturing yield problems of unable to obtain the necessary quantities needed to do a meaningful production run?
I have had a lot of crap hardware from Google. But, the Pixel C tablet I have now is by far the best tablet I have ever owned.
Thank's slashdot
I'd not bother with Google devices so much, love this start-up firm though and it's still in development..
www.wisedevice.co.uk
I would like a fanless laptop or tablet-with-keyboard with a low end CPU very much but a "U" class CPU is just too much. "U" CPUs (such as i5-6200U, i5-7200U) are used in 15" laptops with a fan.
"U" CPUs are used on high end PC tablets like the Microsoft Surface Pro. If you possibly triple CPU power use then you need higher end cooling, motherboard, battery.
AMD simply lacks a suitable CPU and doesn't have one before 2020 or perhaps even 2021 (low end low power Zen 3 APU)
They'll ride 2019 on 12nm Zen+ APU (or this 14nm Zen1 300U) and launch 7nm Zen 2 APU in 2020.
Personally I'm just not interested into buying a "low end" $599 tablet with only 4GB or 8GB RAM, that's good RAM specs for a 2009 PC. 16GB or bust. Ideally, the computer might have one SO-DIMM slot or 4GB soldered plus SO-DIMM. (could even have an M.2 slot). That might make it "thick", use the thickness for USB-A then or even full size HDMI. Have round barrel power connector (THAT's low end)
It looks like this is the "Core M" Celeron, if so it shares identical silicon with the Core i7 in this space. ("Y" low wattage CPU)
It's literally a binned Core i7 and so if Intel can't make enough CPUs for its customers they probably don't want to sell it at low margin branded as a Celeron. Almost all their "Celeron" are probably good enough to run as a Core M3 or Core i5 at least.
For a long time I used to think that Android tablet sales and development went down a few years ago because of poor sales. But more recently, it was becoming clear that Android tablet sales went down because Google did a lot to bury Android as a tablet OS.
Around years 2013-2014, Android tablet development was so exciting that even companies that were never PC or tablet manufacturers jumped into the game (e.g. Nvidia Shield). However, for the last three years or so, Google created and promoted the narrative that "Android is soon to be dead as a tablet OS, but Chrome OS will be our next tablet OS". As result, you can expect the users, developers and OEMs to lose much interest in the family of products that are not supported much by their own OS developer. And they did, although Samsung and Huawei still seem to be doubling up on Android tablet development, each introducing at least new two Android models every year. I can't remember the last time when google introduced a solid new tablet-specific feature in an Android release, even though companies like Samsung always go into extra trouble to add tablet specific mods to their Android version (TouchWiz, Dex, etc). Finally, Google has done pretty much nothing to police or encourage the app developers to produce tablet friendly user interfaces. The least Google could do is for example increase the search rank of the apps that have tablet-specific UI features in the App Store, and downrank the rest.
So the right thing to do is to go back to Android, and start building it into a viable tablet OS. Reintroduce Android tablets as a part of Nexus or Pixel product line again. But these product needs to fit within a specific market niche. Most people view and Android tablet as a media consumption device, and I think it's stupid to expect that people will pay 600-1000 dollars for one. That's crazy. That's where entry-level business and gaming laptops are priced these days. A nicely spec'd android tablet with a great AMOLED screen and solid internals should be retailing between 350 for base model and 500USD with LTE and all bells included, and the low end models should be priced between 150-300.