Laptops, 2-in-1s, Surfaces’ and iPad Pros, what do they all have in common? They’re more productive than regular mobile devices; the commonality? A keyboard. Yes, the way we type dictate how productive we are, or at least for the time being.
So since we’ve seen that drafting long-winded text has always been a headache-inducing experience; hence, Google has reworked their existing Pixel brand to encase a new screen and bluetooth keyboard combination in the form of the Pixel C(onvertible).
Could this be a direct answer to the dwindling tablet sales? Convergence devices have a chance to occupy some market share and it seems that most manufacturers are coming up with some sort of variation to tackle this problem.
Omitting kickstands and clasps, yet maintaining its rigidity, the device attempts to be a tablet but combining the keyboard through magnets allows you to immediately start your full-on typing jobs. Adjustable to angles from 100 to 135 degrees, when attached, the presentation showed that you can handle it in an array of angles, not coming apart even without being grounded.
As an add-on, the bluetooth linked keyboard decreases pitch of the key size from the regular keyboard’s 19mm (13-inch), to the Pixel C’s 18.8mm pitch; the size of keys center to center from each other. It also features a 1.4mm key travel, so typing won’t be too annoying. Stowing the typing add-on is easy, simply placing it under the tablet. Battery-wise it charges inductively when closed through the tablet itself, and a few minutes a day will keep the small keyboard’s battery fully charged, otherwise the keyboard will last for roughly 2 months.
In terms of the tablet’s internals, it pushes a 2560 x 1800 pixel resolution through its aforementioned 10.2-inch screen that’s capable of 500 nits of brightness. Running the engine is a quad-core Nvidia Tegra X1 processor with a Maxwell GPU, mated with 3GB of RAM. Internal storage options are available in two choices; 32GB and 64GB.
You’ll charge the new Google device through the USB Type-C port, and it has a nifty way of showing the battery percentage, just tap twice on the light bar and it’ll show you a gauge of the current percentage. As for software, it’ll run Android OS leaving out ChromeOS out in the cold.
Beckoning the question – are they going to market this solely as a combo? Or will they let the tablet do most of the talking? As is, Android tablets have already had third-party options that allow users to add-on a keyboard, so this is nothing spectacularly new from Google.
Some details have been left-out for the time being – like the camera optics, type of screen, and battery size but more info will likely be released at a later date to keep anticipation high.
The device today was just teased and Google hopes to release the device by the holiday season. Fortunately, they didn’t withhold pricing and they’ve announced it’ll cost you $499/RM 2,211 (32GB), $599/RM 2,654 (64GB) and $149/RM 660 for the bluetooth keyboard add-on. Google has set up a product page but for now its really bare bones, you can check it out here.
Here’s the Google Keynote below (skip over to 1:11:28 for the Pixel C)
