iPads vs Android Tabs

Why after all these years, android tablets still suck compared to iPads?

Samsung makes really nice tablets. Mostly I don’t use or care any of the tablets but Galaxy Tab S7 still got me. With the performance, design and the beautiful screen, that tab was really good hardware. And all that machinery is justified for the price it was offered at. But the problem is not the hardware, its the apps.

[Related: Samsung Galaxy Tab S7/S7+]

Forget all about the recent presentation of the new iPad Air. About how powerful it is from every other Chromebook and other android tablet. They literately compared one company’s powerful product to another company’s bestselling budget product. To put things into perspective The new Galaxy Tab S7 with Qualcomm’s latest processor is plenty powerful enough to do everything the new iPad can do. The iPad is overbuilt so Apple has fewer components to manage and that saves money in the long run.

No, what’s frustrating about Android tablets isn’t the hardware. It’s not even the platform. It’s the apps.

The only great apps on a brand new Galaxy Tab S are the ones Samsung wrote for it. You can use the S Pen with oodles of pressure sensitivity, you can transfer handwriting to text, you can even draw a crummy circle and an app can make it look geometrically accurate instead of like the blob you drew. But when you open the Play Store it all comes crashing to a halt.

I Google just doesn’t seem to care about tablet apps the same way Apple does. That’s a shame because something like a Galaxy Tab deserves great apps like any of the other “must-have” apps for the iPad. It just doesn’t get them.

The sad truth is Samsung cannot do much about it either. Sure it can pay thousands of developers to write those apps and games. Samsung probably could afford to do it, but it’s not going to when it can spend that money developing its own first-party apps that are pretty awesome on the Galaxy Tab. No, this problem is something only Google can solve.

[Related: Samsung is upping the Updates game.]

That being said, it won’t be an easy task. Google basically has two choices: it could go the Apple route and if an app isn’t tablet-optimized it’s not listed on the device’s Play Store at all. That means close to 90% of the apps — including ones you want to use — would be gone when you hit up the Play Store with a new Android tablet. Or it could pay cold hard cash to get developers to do it. Google is going to do neither, so it just gave up.

It’s all about the money in the end. Most of us know how little developers make from Android apps when compared to apps for iOS.  That goes double (at least) for tablet apps. I don’t know if that’s because Android users have been trained not to pay for things after years of getting most apps and services for free, or whether because of Android’s open nature piracy is just rampant. But I do know it’s true because I’ve seen the same studies and reports you have. Apps written for iOS make a lot more money than ones written for Android even though there are twice as many people using Android.

When there’s no money to be made, nobody cares. I can’t blame a developer who wants to feed their family by sticking with iOS. That’s a smart move and exactly what I would do if I were in their shoes. I’m actually impressed that some third-party apps, like Sketchbook (a must-have app for any Galaxy Tab or Galaxy Note, in my opinion) are so great on a tablet because I know they aren’t making much money.

[Related: Galaxy Note 20 vs iPhone 11 Pro]

Sometimes I want to recommend a new Galaxy Tab to someone looking for a great tablet, but I can’t because iOS has apps that are so much better.

There is no easy answer. Most Android apps work on an Android tablet or a Chromebook but they look like crap or don’t work correctly. Google keeps making it easier to design and lay out apps for bigger screens — because it hasn’t given up on great Chromebooks like it has for tablets — but it’s not making a difference. Google Play is a desert for good tablet apps. You’ll find an oasis once in a while, but there is a lot of empty sand not worth paying attention to in between.

If someone were to ask me which tablet I recommend I’d either steer them to a Fire tablet if they were all-in with Amazon Prime — or an iPad. And I hate that because Android is just better than iOS. You can simplify Android down so it “just works” but you can’t upscale iOS so it does more than just work. I want to be able to recommend Samsung’s great line of premium tablets, but until Google gets the app gap sorted, I can’t.

Thanks for reading.