Please excuse any grammatical errors. I used a tool to generate the transcript and haven’t had a chance to read through it yet.
So after a year, I figured it was finally time to put out an update on my Pixel Tablet experience running GrapheneOS. Spoiler alert: my original video had some high ambitions of replacing my laptop and taking this with me when I travel, along with a keyboard and things like that. None of that happened—it didn’t work out. But if you’re curious as to why, keep watching. If all you wanted was that quick answer, there you go, and I’ll see you next time.
Before I get into the apps that I’m using and things like that, I first want to talk about the physical aspects of the tablet that I really like. To begin, let’s start with the case. This is the official case from Google, and if you end up buying the tablet after watching this video, or have bought the tablet, I highly suggest you buy this case. It’s probably one of the best-designed cases I’ve ever used—not that I’ve used many cases, but to start off, it’s a nice rubbery, grippy texture that helps with holding onto it. Besides that, you have this circle thing on the back—or oval, I should say—and that’s great for a kickstand, holding it up in the landscape position. It also works in the portrait position, so it can lean back like that. When you’re just kind of walking around or laying on your couch, it works great for holding it just like this.
You might be wondering why it’s that shape. You see those four pins on the bottom? Those correspond to the dock. When this goes on the dock, the handhold—or whatever that metal thing is—helps align the dock so that it locks into those pins, giving you a good connection. It’s all magnetic, so the dock just snaps on. This is the only way I charge it—I’ve never actually plugged a USB cable into this, except for during installation. So, the case—I highly recommend it.
Now, back to the dock. The dock is included in the box. I’m not going to say that the dock is free because, of course, I’m sure that’s baked into the price somewhere, but the dock has exceeded my expectations, mostly from an audio standpoint. When you set the tablet on the dock, this then turns into the main speaker; the internal speakers on the tablet are disabled, and the audio comes out of this. For listening to music or podcasts, things like that, you’re not getting room-filling booming audio, but it is pretty impressive for the form factor. I like using this when I’m listening to podcasts or audiobooks on the tablet. It just works really great for that.
Speaking of podcasts, I wanted to let you know that I just published the first episode of my podcast, which is called In the Shell. You can check that out at intheshellpodcast.com to find out where you can listen to it, and I will also leave a link down below in the description if you want to check it out.
So now, let’s get back to the reason why you clicked on this video. One more thing to mention about the physical appearance: I don’t use a screen protector on the tablet. They do make them for it; I just never found a need for one. It’s not like a cell phone where I’m carrying it around, constantly taking it out of my pocket—this wouldn’t fit in my pocket. So, I didn’t really see a need to have a screen protector. So far, after a year, it looks good—no chips, cracks, or scrapes. Hope I didn’t jinx myself, but so far, so good.
On the actual tablet, I have two user profiles set up. I have my main owner/admin user profile that you can see here, and I have my daily “Josh” user profile. On my main owner profile, I have the Google Play Store installed along with Obum. On that profile, I do all the installation of apps, and then I use the “install available apps” feature from the main owner profile to push the apps to my daily profile. It was suggested to me a while ago to test out that method, and I’ve been using it ever since on my phone and tablet. I’m not going to cover it in this video, but I will make a dedicated video specifically for that topic because I think it’s a really useful way to configure your GrapheneOS device.
As I mentioned, I have two user profiles set up. We’re currently in my daily profile that I use, named “Josh.” You can see that in the top right-hand corner up there. On the main home screen, I have two Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) installed: one is for Miniflux, a self-hosted RSS reader that I use, and the other is Wallabag, which is kind of a bookmarking tool—another self-hosted app that I use.
So let’s now swipe up and get to the app drawer. I’m not going to explain the default apps installed, like the camera, gallery, etc. If you have GrapheneOS, you’re already familiar with those.
To start off, I have AntennaPod, which I use for listening to podcasts. Like I said, that goes really well with the dock—you get really good audio quality, and it works well for listening to those. The next app is Audiobookshelf, a self-hosted app I use to listen to my audiobooks. Then there’s Bitwarden, a password manager. I also have a calendar app and EteSync, which is a contacts, calendar, and task sync app—another self-hosted app that I use. They also offer a cloud service, so if you’re looking for an encrypted way to store your calendar, contacts, and tasks, I would suggest checking out EteSync. You don’t have to self-host it; you can just sign up and use their service.
Following that, I have Jellyfin. I run a Jellyfin server at my house for my movies and TV shows that I want to watch. The Jellyfin app lets me access and watch those on the tablet, which, with the 11-inch screen, works perfectly—much nicer than trying to watch on my phone. Material Files is a third-party file explorer I use to connect to some network shares I have in my house. I don’t have it installed on my phone because I don’t access my network shares on my phone, but on the tablet with a larger screen, it works great for that.
Mullvad is my VPN of choice—it’s running on here all the time. NewPipe is the next app, which is a third-party client for YouTube that helps you avoid the ads, which is nice. Notify is an app that provides push notifications to my device when it receives a webhook notification from the uptime services that monitor my site and different services. It works without Google Play Services, which is why I have it installed on here, since I don’t have Google Play installed on this user profile.
ProtonMail is my email provider. I have their paid plan, so I use it for my sideofburritos.com domain. If you’re looking for a decent email provider that’s privacy- and security-focused, I would recommend them. The next app is Standard Notes, which I use for all my note-taking. I have a couple of files stored in there, but primarily just text files. I self-host the Standard Notes server at my house, so it syncs locally to a Raspberry Pi where I have that running. They do have a cloud offering, so if you’re looking for an encrypted notes service, I would suggest checking them out.
Next is Tasks, which syncs with EteSync, as I mentioned earlier, for contacts, calendar, and tasks. Tutanota is another privacy-focused email provider that supports end-to-end encryption, just like Proton does, which means they have no access to your emails or the content of them. I’ve always wanted to test them out, so when I set up the email for (https://yellowball.fm), the podcast hosting provider that I recently launched, I decided to go with them. So far, so good—I like their product and interface. As a company, I kind of prefer them over Proton. Proton’s kind of turning into a commodity; it seems like they’re just launching more products and everyone’s using them. While I appreciate that because it means they’re more accessible to the masses, at the same time, it’s kind of nice to support companies that are more niche in privacy and security, and Tutanota seems to be that.
The last app is VLC, which I use to play any files that the default gallery app can’t play. VLC basically plays any file you throw at it—sometimes I think it’ll even play a text file. It’s just one of those solid apps to have.
As I mentioned in the intro, I had high ambitions for this—plugging it into an external monitor, plugging it into a keyboard, possibly using it as my full-time device. But it’s just not going to replace a laptop, especially for someone like me doing programming, editing, recording videos, and things like that. The interface just isn’t meant—at least at this point—for a mouse and keyboard to be as productive, or even close to it, as a laptop, at least from my perspective. Again, your results may vary.
But that being said, would I recommend this to someone? If you want to use it like me, where 99% of the time I use it as an entertainment device—watching YouTube videos, watching Jellyfin, checking my email, or browsing the web—then absolutely, I think this is a great device to purchase. But other than that, I don’t really use it for much else.
So I hope I didn’t disappoint you too much, and if you have any questions about the tablet, feel free to leave those down below, and I will see you next time.
]]>Please excuse any grammatical errors. I used a tool to generate the transcript and haven’t had a chance to read through it yet.
In today’s video, I’m going to cover step by step how to install Graphene OS on the newly released Google Pixel tablet. I’m going to be using the web installer, which makes it nearly impossible to break your device. There are some hiccups you might run into during the installation, and I’ll cover those at the relevant points in the video.
So, to begin the installation, we’re going to head on over to grapheneos.org. Once you get there, select “Install Graphene OS.” Like I said, I’ll be using the web installer, so go ahead and click the “Web USB-based installer.”
Once we get here, go ahead and read through the prerequisites. You must be using a supported OS, which they do list here. I’ll be using macOS for the installation today. It’s also worth noting that if you have an existing Graphene OS device, you can use that for the installation, along with another Android device running stock Pixel OS or another certified Android variant. Make sure your operating system is up to date before proceeding, and then lastly, you must make sure you’re using a supported browser. In this video, I’ll be using Brave, but make sure that you are using one of the browsers listed above.
There are a couple of other notes below that I want to mention. If you are using Linux, avoid flat pack and snap versions of the browser as they’re known to cause issues during the installation process. Do not use incognito mode or other private browsing modes. The reasons why are listed here. There’s also an important note here; I don’t really think this applies to the tablet, but to make sure that the device can be unlocked to install Graphene OS, avoid carrier variants of the devices. So with the phones, they’ll have a Sprint or Verizon version, and those will usually have issues and you can’t unlock them. So if you do buy a device, make sure it’s OEM unlockable. I also suggest reading the rest of the information here, but I’m not going to read that to you.
The first step in the process is to enable OEM unlocking. One thing I want to mention is always go to the source for documentation and guides. Be hesitant to follow some random YouTuber or blog post that claims they have their own method or knows the process better. That’s why I’m following the official guide in this video. You’ll always get the most up-to-date instructions and information.
So, I just took this tablet out of the box and turned it on, which means we’re going to have to walk through the initial setup before we can actually enable OEM unlocking. If you’ve already gone through the setup on your device, feel free to skip this part in the video.
So, I’m going to select “Get started.” I’m going to set up offline, continue. I’m going to leave that set to the default. I’m going to uncheck these options, accept the limited warranty. Next, you should always set a secure PIN on your device, but since I’m going to be erasing the OS in five minutes, I’m just going to set “12345” for mine. I’m going to skip fingerprint unlock because we’re erasing the OS, so select “No thanks.” Swipe navigation, skip. That’s just a guide on how to use it, so if you need to follow that, otherwise skip it. We’ll swipe up to go home.
So, we are now at the home screen. Let’s go back to the instructions. Enable the developer options menu by going to Settings > About phone and pressing the “Build number” menu entry until developer mode is enabled. So, to do that, we’re going to swipe up, we’re going to scroll down and go to Settings, scroll down again, go to About tablet. Scroll down to the bottom, and you’ll see this labeled “Build number.” That’s what you want to tap until you see “Developer options” show up. You’re going to have to enter your PIN code to enable this. And then you’ll see the pop-up that says, “You are now a developer” on the bottom.
So, the next step is to go to Settings > System > Developer options and toggle the OEM unlock settings. So, we’ll go to System, we can see Developer options, select that, scroll down to OEM unlocking, which we can see is grayed out here. So, I did purchase this device brand new from Google, and it is unlocked. But, in order to enable OEM unlocking, you need to connect the device to the internet for the first time. If you bought your device used and someone has previously enabled OEM unlocking, you don’t need to worry about this step. But if you did buy this brand new, like me, you’re going to have to connect to the internet for this to be available. So, go ahead and connect to Wi-Fi. So, you can scroll up, tap “Network and internet,” select “Internet,” to your Wi-Fi network.
So, once your device is successfully connected to the internet, let’s go back to the Developer options, System > Developer options, and we can now see OEM unlocking is no longer grayed out, and we can now enable it. So, we’ll go ahead and tap the toggle. You’ll have to enter your PIN code again. You’ll see a pop-up for “Allow OEM unlocking,” select “Enable,” and OEM unlocking is now enabled.
So now, back to the instructions. The next step is flashing is non-root (this is for Linux, so if you’re on Linux, follow these instructions; if you’re not, skip ahead). The next step is booting into the bootloader interface. You need to boot your phone into the bootloader interface. To do this, you need to hold the volume down button while the phone boots (or, in this case, a tablet). It’s also worth mentioning that I’m making this video about 12 hours after the initial release of Graphene OS for the Pixel tablet, so some things on some wording may change in the future, but the overall general process will be the same.
So, to boot into the bootloader interface, if you’ve never done this before, it can take you a few tries. But what you need to do is swipe down, swipe down again, tap the power icon in the bottom right-hand corner, and then select “Restart.” And now, immediately hold the volume down, which is on the left side of the device on the bottom, then keep holding that. And if you are successful in booting into the bootloader interface, you’ll reach a screen that looks like this. This is going to be a little bit difficult for the camera since this is so tiny (that’s what she said). So here, you’ll see this output, it’ll have some information about your device, and also say “Device state is locked,” we’ll be changing that shortly. And for now, I’m going to set this down, and we’ll proceed onto the next step.
So, the next step is connecting the phone, or in this case, our tablet. Again, the Pixel tablet was just released, so they haven’t updated the wording yet, but this is referring to your tablet. So in the note here, if you are on Windows, you need to install a driver for Fastboot if you don’t already have it. No driver is needed on other operating systems. There’s a couple of ways you can install the Fastboot driver on Windows. The first and easiest way, you can obtain the driver from Windows update, which will detect it as an optional update when the device is booted into the bootloader interface, which is what we see on the screen now and connected to the computer. So that’s the easiest way. So if you are on Windows, just follow the instructions here. The second way is you can manually install it with Device Manager. So if you feel up to that, you can also go ahead and do that, but I would recommend the first method as that’s easier and more straightforward.
At this point, we can now connect our tablet to our computer. The typical recommendation is to use the USB cable that came with the device. The tablet does not come with one, so you’re going to need to use one that you have lying around or purchase one. Your best option will be to use the stock cable that came with a Pixel phone if you purchased one in the past, or you can just use whatever cable you have lying around that you know is in good working condition. That’s what I’m using. I just have a third-party cable here. As I mentioned in the beginning, there are a few things that could go wrong with the installation, and the USB cable is a big one that a lot of people have issues with. If you have any strange behavior during the installation, it’s likely due to a faulty USB cable. It might work for powering a device, but data and power use different pins on a USB cable, so it’s possible that the data pins are damaged, and it’s not working so good. First troubleshooting step is to try a different cable, purchase a new one, and again, use that if you have any strange issues during the installation process.
So I’m going to go ahead and connect this to my tablet on the bottom. There’s a USB-C port, plug in the cable there. So once you plug it in, we’re going to move on to the next step, which is “Unlock Bootloader.” So, one warning before unlocking the bootloader. This step will completely erase the device, so if you have any photos you took or maybe you have some contacts you saved, make sure you save those somewhere else first before moving on to this step. Again, this will completely erase the device and anything on there. So, we’re going to select “Unlock Bootloader.” We can see up here, “Pixel tablet” shows up on the screen, select that, press “Connect.” We’re going to see our screen change. We have a warning here, “If you unlock the bootloader, you will be able to install custom operating system software on this phone.” That’s why we’re here. So in order to do this, we can see up at the top right, it says the current option is “Do not unlock the bootloader.” We’re going to press either volume up or down to change the selection. So when I press that, it now says “Unlock the bootloader,” and then to select that, we need to press the power button. So I’m going to press the power button. Now that it says “Unlock the bootloader,” the screen goes blank for a minute, and as I mentioned earlier, down here, we had “Device state,” and it was green, and it said “Locked.” At this point, since we unlocked the bootloader, our device is now unlocked, and it’s red. You will also see the output on the screen that says “Bootloader unlocked.”
So the next step is obtaining factory images. In order to do that, press “Download release.” So depending on your internet speed, this can take a few minutes, but at this point, it’s just downloading the factory image. It’s not actually flashing it to our device yet. And while that’s downloading, I want to mention that if you get any value from Graphene OS or after you install it, you really like it and use it on a regular basis, consider donating to the project. And like I said earlier, they had this tablet release initial release out within 12 hours of me actually receiving the device in the mail, so they do incredible work. They’re a great resource for the privacy and security community. So any monetary contribution you can offer, I’m sure the project would appreciate.
So once the download has finished, you’ll see this has changed to “Downloaded,” doesn’t say “Download” anymore. So the next step is flashing factory images. The initial install will be performed by flashing the factory images. This will replace the existing OS installation and wipe all the existing data. I do suggest you give this paragraph a read before clicking the button above. The most important part down here is avoid interacting with the device until the flashing script is finished and the device is back at the bootloader interface. So once you’re ready, select “Flash release.” You’re going to see your screen flash and change. So just give it a few minutes for this process to complete.
So once the flashing has completed, the text on the screen will change to “Flashed,” and we can now proceed onto the next step, which is “Locking the bootloader.” Locking the bootloader is important as it enables full verified boot. It also prevents using fastboot to flash, format, or erase partitions. There’s also some other interesting information here, so I suggest you give that a read, but similar to how we unlocked the bootloader, in order to lock it, we’re going to select “Lock bootloader” in the corner. We now see “Do not unlock the bootloader.” We’re going to press the volume rocker either up or down, and it now has changed to “Lock the bootloader,” and then to select that option, we’re going to press the power button.
So I’m going to press the power button. Give it a second. And we can confirm the bootloader is locked as “Device state” is now green and “Locked.” So at this point, we are ready to boot up the OS. There’s a couple more steps we need to complete underneath the “Post-installation.” You’ve now successfully installed Graphene OS and can boot it. Nice job! Pressing the power button with the default start option selected in the bootloader interface will boot the OS. We can see the default option right now is “Start,” so select the power button, and our device will now start up.
So, this is the first screen you’re going to see. I’m going to press the power button quick to pause the display or to pause the boot process. So, this is normal to see if you have a different operating system other than stock Android OS installed on your device. We can see here, “Your device is loading a different operating system.” And on these post-installation instructions, there’s one step you can do here, which is “Verified Boot Key Hash.” So, we pause the screen by pressing the power button, and we can now see the hash listed out down there below. And what you want to do is look at that hash that’s listed next to “ID” and make sure that matches the, in this case, Pixel tablet. I’m going to read that quick, and it does match. So it’s just one other way to verify the integrity of the installation we just performed. If that matches, we can proceed. You don’t need to do this every time; this is just after the initial installation. I think it’s good practice. So once you’ve verified that, we can now press the power button to resume. So I’m going to select that. The next screen you’re going to see is the Google splash screen. That’s normal. Don’t be worried. And then we will see the Graphene OS screen. I’m going to let this complete the first boot, but we are now successfully booting Graphene OS. Once that finishes, we’re going to walk through the initial setup. I’m going to press “Start” next.
Change to your time zone.
Enable Wi-Fi if you want. I’m going to skip that for now.
I’m going to uncheck location services.
I’m going to skip the fingerprint setup.
I’m going to set up a PIN code, though. Don’t make your PIN code “12345.” I’m going to be wiping this device shortly.
Once you confirm that, I’m going to skip restore apps and data, and then we can press “Start.”
So I’m pretty excited. This is the first time I’ve ever booted Graphene OS on a tablet. I’ve been waiting for the larger display for a long time, so this is pretty awesome.
So if we go back to the post-installation instructions, we can see “Disabling OEM unlocking.” So we want to complete that step, so we’re going to go into Settings, scroll down to “About phone,” we’re going to tap “Build number.” Once we see this screen, enter your PIN code.
We are now developers. We can see on the bottom. Go to System, and then back to Developer options, and then disable OEM unlocking. Please restart the device to enable the device protection feature. So I’m going to hold down the power button and then select “Restart.”
So my camera is saying it’s going to overheat. Let’s hope it doesn’t overheat.
There’s more information under “Verifying installation” and some other details down below regarding hardware-based attestation. I would suggest you give that a read-through. I’m not going to cover that in this tutorial.
And so once your device boots up, we can swipe up, enter our PIN code.
And you are now ready to start using Graphene OS on your Pixel tablet. So if you’re looking for an easy way to get started and to start downloading apps, Graphene OS offers sandbox Google Play services. They are very easy to install. I’m going to run through that quick. First step is we need to connect to Wi-Fi, so I’m going to go into Settings > Network and internet, select my Wi-Fi network.
So once you’re connected to Wi-Fi, we can swipe up again, go back into the app drawer. We’re going to go into the Apps app. You can then go to Google Play services, tap “Install.” This will take a few minutes depending on your internet connection. You’ll see a few pop-ups. Tap “Install.”
So once that finishes, you can swipe up to go to your home screen. Going to swipe up again, we can now see Play Store is installed. If you’ve ever used Android OS before, this is going to be very similar to the Google Play Store. There’s a lot more information on the sandboxed Google Play services on grapheneos.org, which I’ll link down below. But I’m not going to cover that in this video.
So again, this is just a basic setup if you’re just getting started, want to experiment, and mess around. You can make a fake Google account and sign in with that just on your tablet to use. And if you don’t like having Google Play services on your device, you can always erase your device and set it up however you prefer.
So, if you made it this far and are not tired of hearing me talk yet, I do have a monthly newsletter that I send out. You can sign up for that at sideofburritos.com. I send out random text stuff and non-text stuff. You might like it or you might not, but you can always unsubscribe.
So, my camera just shut off that was recording the tablet, but we’ve reached the end of the installation process. If you’re looking for a good resource on Graphene OS-related information, check out the forum that they host. You can go to that at discuss.grapheneos.org. And if you enjoyed this video, I think you might like the top one listed here, and the YouTube algorithm thinks you might like the bottom one.
]]>Please excuse any grammatical errors. I used a tool to generate the transcript and haven’t had a chance to read through it yet.
I have been waiting a while for this product to be released. This is the Google Pixel tablet. I was initially going to make this an unboxing video, along with a few first impressions. But 12 hours after receiving this tablet in the mail, I saw this tweet from the Graphene OS team that they had an initial build ready. So, I thought I would test it out. This is not going to be an installation guide video; that will be coming out shortly after this one, and I will link it down below once it’s ready.
So, as we can see in the box, this is the Pixel tablet with charging speaker dock. So, that’s kind of cool to include that for free. I went with the 128-gigabyte version; that’s what I normally get whenever I buy a Pixel device.
So, we have two strips on the bottom. First, we have the tablet. Let’s get that out of the way. I’m going to set that aside for now. And then underneath the tablet, we have some instruction pamphlets. It tells you how to use the dock, tells you how to get started—press the power button, follow the instructions. Thank you, Google.
Here we have the dock that comes with it, and then we have a charging cable just for the dock. This wall adapter is just meant to be plugged into the dock directly; it doesn’t have a USB-C connection, so you can’t use it with a tablet. But the dock does charge the tablet, so you can always charge it that way. So, let’s get this box out of the way.
So, this is the dock for the tablet. I believe it’s also a speaker, has a nice fabric finish to it.
So, this is everything in the box: you have the tablet, the dock, and the power adapter. Pretty simple, nothing much. So, let’s take a look at the tablet.
On the back, it’s plain, kind of has a soft finish to it. I believe it’s metal, but there’s some kind of coding on here which feels kind of nice. We have the reflective Google logo in the center, along with the four pins that correspond to the four magnetic pins on the dock as well.
So, the actual tablet is a 10.95-inch screen. The resolution is 1600 by 2560. It has an 8-megapixel camera, and it also has the Google Tensor G2, which is the same as the Google Pixel 7. So, just for a quick size comparison, my camera can focus on the front screen. Here is a Google Pixel 6A laying on top of the tablet. So, as you can see, it is much larger, as is to be expected from a tablet.
On the bottom, we have a couple speaker holes along with the USB-C port. On this side, there are some rubber bumpers here, and on the other side, we have what looks pretty similar to a Pixel phone. We have a power button, which is recessed into the actual body of the device, and then we have a rocker, which I’m assuming is for volume.
On the front, it might be tough to see, but we do have a circle there, and that is where the front web camera is. And on the back is the rear camera. So, let’s go ahead and turn this on. Hold down the power button.
So, usually these devices come charged, but it looks like this one is… up there it goes. I’ll give this a minute to start up. This currently just has stock Android OS on it. I’ve never turned this on before, so this is the first boot. We have the standard walkthrough screens.
I’m going to set up offline. I’m just going to walk through this quick.
So, here we are at the home screen. Let’s go find the one part that actually matters, which is OEM unlocking.
So, this looks like it’s similar to mobile devices where you need to connect to the internet to enable OEM unlocking. But for now, I’m going to take a break from this video. I’m going to go ahead and make the installation video, and I will be back here shortly.
So, after I finished filming the installation video, I ran out of time. So, here we are, the next day after I completed the installation. I just powered off the tablet. So, let’s turn this on and take a look.
We have our standard screens you expect to see with Graphene OS and an alternate operating system installed.
One of the most shocking things, I think, so far is just how large this screen is. After using Graphene OS on a handheld device for the past two years, it’s very odd to see it in such a large form factor.
I didn’t realize yesterday, but the buttons are actually on the left side of the device, unlike the mobile devices where the buttons are on the right side.
Don’t make your passcode one, two, three, four, five. So, here we are, Graphene OS on the Google Pixel tablet. If you’ve ever installed and used Graphene OS before, then you might be familiar with the bare screen that you are presented with, which is a reminder of just how minimal this operating system is. We just have the default apps you expect to see.
Like I mentioned in the intro, there’s not going to be much to go into in this video. I just kind of wanted to show that it works, what it looks like, my initial first impressions, which there’s not much going on, so not much really to tell. I will have a much more in-depth video in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for that one.
But if we just poke around again, it’s great having such a larger display.
Now, since I don’t have much to actually talk about the user experience in this video, I did want to talk about why I bought this tablet and what use case I think it can offer. For me, at least, this is much easier to travel around with, the larger display. It’s not annoying to use. If I need to do something technical with terminal, it’s easy on this display, especially with landscape mode.
You get the full experience. It’s like a full-screen computer, and at a 10-inch screen versus the smaller mobile device. And one of the things I recently purchased to use with this, I was actually looking at upgrading the mechanical keyboard I had to something that’s a little bit easier to travel with. So, thank you to my friend who recommended this, the HHKB. So, this is a Bluetooth keyboard. It does not have a dongle. That’s important to note. So, I wanted to make sure that this would actually work with it. So, I’m going to test that out now and see if I can pair it with the device, because to me, if you can get this on a stand and have a keyboard paired with it, at that point you have a nearly fully functional computer, at least for my use cases. That can work, and it’s compact, easy to travel with. So, let me pair this quick.
There’s the keyboard. Looks like it has paired successfully. So, let’s just test out this text box up here.
That looks abysmal on camera. Let’s try something else.
So, the keyboard does work. That’s pretty awesome. I did order the case for this that comes with a kickstand for it. So, at that point, you kind of have a computer display that you can use.
The other reason I was very excited for this device is that this retails for $499 in the US, and I’m not aware of anything else you can get that is as secure and private as the default installation of Graphene OS for that price point. Yes, you can throw Linux on a laptop and have a high level of privacy, but there’s nothing at this price point, especially in this form factor, that offers this level of security and privacy combined. So, at this point, I think this is one of the most secure and private devices you could purchase. And with a larger screen, it’s extremely usable.
The other thing I really like about this device is it’s Wi-Fi only. I’ve been in the tech industry for over 10 years, and from everything I’ve seen about cellular technologies, I still don’t think there’s a great way to use them in a secure and private manner. You’re always triangulated when you’re connected. And yes, some services exist to help anonymize you or to spoof some of the data that’s used when you are connecting to those services. But at the end of the day, I think it’s a broken technology.
So, now when it comes to Wi-Fi and Ethernet, those technologies I understand, and there are good ways to remain private and secure while using them. So, there’s no need to disable cellular connectivity because it does not exist on the tablet.
So, one last thing I want to cover is I did read there might be some initial issues with the dock if you didn’t first set up the dock using stock Android OS. So, I just want to test that quick. From what I understand, the smart features of the dock don’t work on Graphene OS because those require system-level Play services, and on Graphene OS, sandboxed Play services are installed as normal apps. Therefore, it will not function. But again, it’s still too early to tell, but that’s what the initial feedback was I saw from the developers on Twitter.
So, the audio works on the tablet, as to be expected.
Here’s a YouTube ad, of course.
So, the dock should also function as a speaker when you plug it in. So, I want to test that out quick. Let me plug in the dock.
So, there’s nothing indicating the dock is plugged in once you do plug it in. So, I guess it’s just on. So, there’s a sound that does come out of the dock when you plug it in. So, I guess it’s booting up or turning on. And now we can dock the tablet with the four corresponding magnets.
Those are extremely strong magnets. So, if we look here, we can see the tablet is charging. So, the charging functionality works. Let’s see if the audio works.
And so, I can confirm that just by doing that, the audio on the speaker is working on the dock. So, it seems like that does work. There’s no initial setup needed on the stock Android OS.
As to the other smart features of the dock, like I said, those probably or likely will not work in the future. At least they don’t work at this time.
So, to sum up my five minutes of usage with this tablet, I’m extremely impressed that within 12 hours after its release, the Graphene OS team had the initial build out there. So far, from my basic usage, it works well. It’s also worth noting this is technically a first-generation device. So, if you’re looking for something that’s perfect from a hardware perspective, this is not that. But at the end of the day, I think the software is more important. And with Graphene OS, we know that it’s going to be a secure and private device. And I think, in that regard, it’s going to be a really good device for people who are looking for something at this price point.
So, if you’re interested in more videos about this tablet, let me know down below. I think in the future I will be making a video about that custom stand I got, as well as any other use cases I find for this device. So, let me know if you’re interested in that. I’ll have a lot more coming out shortly, so stay tuned.
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