I remember once saying, angrily, that Android tablet productivity is all shit. And then I went to a Xiaomi store and tried one out, which only confirmed it. Even on the “Xiaomi Pad 5 Pro,” productivity is still a pile of shit. My biggest complaint is that the IME on Android still can’t do proper cursor-following; in a lot of cases you still get the idiotic “type up here, pick characters down there” setup. Not to mention the browser being unusable… In the end I decided to try the Chromebook Duet. I picked one up on eBay, plus a USI stylus. Bought before the price went up — the seller listed it at 50, realized the next day he’d undersold, and jacked the price up in a hurry. But I’d already bought mine.

A while back my main eroge machine, the Chuwi Minibook, broke — the power light wouldn’t come on anymore. Since the warranty on that thing was almost up, I contacted the support lady to see if I could get it repaired. But nobody bothered to answer me for about two months, right up until I’d given up. Then the email came! She said it could be repaired, and explained the part I’d been worried about. I’d heard Chuwi’s after-sales was garbage — basically they just reinstall the OS and ship it back — but it seems crowdfunded products aren’t treated that way. Of course, I also found out why there’d been no reply for two months: the lady who’d been answering had quit, and they hadn’t hired anyone in those two months… Fine. In the end the machine got sent off, and I had no Windows machine on hand. That’s when I spotted what looked like a Lenovo Windows tablet in my wife’s inventory. The model was Lenovo MIIX 2 10, and it even came with a keyboard. So I asked if I could borrow it. “Sure, whatever. That’s your mother-in-law’s computer, seems like it’s been abandoned for ages.” So I picked up this Lenovo MIIX 2 10 and kept playing Gal.

A while back I bought a discounted Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 tablet on eBay to replace my Mi Pad 4 and 360 N7. Its job is watching videos and gaming, plus whatever else comes up. The reasons were simple, just three: The Mi Pad 4 has a “screen gets hot and touch stops responding” problem, so it can’t game The 360 phone games fine but the screen is harsh on the eyes, and the system is basically abandoned after launch Neither of them supports stereo sound for videos — both are single-speaker Don’t ask why I didn’t get an iPad. I don’t use Apple, so Samsung was the only option — it’s the highest-performance Android tablet out there right now. Eventually I searched Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 on eBay and found a US V version with a 4G module, model T837V. Got it for just over 3000 yuan. I’ve used it for almost a month now, so I can share my impressions.

Win10 tablets are everywhere now, and honestly the specs aren’t bad. But Sony was already making this kind of device back around 2005. I remember devices like this — at the very least I saw them in Popular Software. Though it was only ads and reviews, because this thing was expensive as hell, and back then even a desktop couldn’t meet the demands of DOOM3, let alone some overpriced, underpowered “crippled laptop.” But as the old saying goes: “The swallows that once nested in the halls of the nobility now fly into the homes of common folk.” Even something that 14 years ago only the rich and flashy could afford has ended up in my hands. Here I need to thank Duan Ye, a proud Hammer phone fan and man of means, for his support. Duan Ye’s passion for gadgets is full of craftsman spirit — born proud!

A while back I picked up a piece of junk off Taobao, from the seller I always buy from. It’s an ASUS Z10 tablet. Junk, probably, but in surprisingly good condition.

The reason I bought this is still the Pixel C breaking…… Lenovo P8 screen was too stupid, sold it, so I chose a dedicated tablet for gaming, and after looking around, I picked the Nvidia Shield K1. First off, this thing is cheap enough — on Xianyu you can get a 99-new-in-box one for 900 yuan. However, what I got was 99 new with a controller.

My Pixel C’s screen shattered. I figured I’d find someone to repair it—maybe Google US could do a mail-in fix. So I contacted Google US support directly, went back and forth for ages, and they said it’s out of warranty, told me to find a technician in China Mainland myself. I said I don’t have the screen component, and they said “neither do we.” Fuck. What now? Guess I’ll buy a new one… Except there are basically no Android flagship tablets anymore! So in the end I bought this… Lenovo P8

Black Domain on Android is an app that kills rogue apps, aiming for “an Android experience just like iOS.” That’s a bit different from Greenify — Greenify feels more academic, while Black Domain is more practical. I paid for both. In the end I went with Black Domain. Black Domain works without root too. You just have to turn on USB debugging and type a command to start one of its processes. Calling it a hassle is fair, and calling it convenient is fair — basically, every time your phone reboots, you have to find a computer to activate it… So the author of Black Domain had an idea: make a “Black Domain Activator.” It’s a collaboration with some gamepad adapter, but using it is fine anyway, and it’s cheap.

Honestly, for the Surface Pro 4, being thin and light is the whole selling point. Slapping a case on it is kind of dumb. But in my case, there are still reasons it made sense.

I’ve been using the Google Pixel C for a good while now, but there are a few problems I need to mention… The touchscreen is really unresponsive. Foreign users have reported this badly, and a lot of them ended up asking for a replacement, which didn’t help. The keyboard keeps double-clicking or registering multiple presses. Some foreign users have this; I haven’t hit it. Weak Wi-Fi signal. Didn’t hit that one either. But an unresponsive touchscreen is bad enough on its own. It doesn’t just mess with normal operation — I couldn’t even use the Jot Dash stylus I bought for it..