Tablets with N

[techbeck]

Any decent Android tablets that are supported with N?    Samsung has a million models and not sure which one of those have the newest OS.  Something that cost around 300 or under.  32gb storage or expandable.

[PGHammer]

If a tablet is supported by LineageOS 14.1, it is therefore supported by N (Galaxy Tab 2, Tab S and Tab S2, for example).

[techbeck]

Prefer something currently supported.  It is for my mom and really do not want to mess with it to much. 

[Circaflex]

You can pickup a Nexus 9 tablet that supports Nougat currently for under $300. Pardon me, but my search was just a few minutes and I found one samsung but it was close to 500 that supports N currently. If i come across more I will reply back.

 

Here seems to be a decent website detailing the availability of Android N devices

https://www.androidpit.com/android-nougat-update-overview-smartphones-tablets

 

 

[PGHammer]

Just now, Circaflex said:

You can pickup a Nexus 9 tablet that supports Nougat currently for under $300. Pardon me, but my search was just a few minutes and I found one samsung but it was close to 500 that supports N currently. If i come across more I will reply back.

That is why I mentioned the three tablets I mentioned - all are CURRENTLY supported by LineageOS 14.1, and none are pricey.  (The Tab S2 is current.)  The reason that the Tab 4 is NOT supported is due to the Marvell chipset it uses.

[Circaflex]

1 minute ago, PGHammer said:

That is why I mentioned the three tablets I mentioned - all are CURRENTLY supported by LineageOS 14.1, and none are pricey.  (The Tab S2 is current.)  The reason that the Tab 4 is NOT supported is due to the Marvell chipset it uses.

Just because a device has support from a 3rd party rom, doesnt mean it is officially supported by N. The OP stated this is for his mother, so I wouldnt even bother loading lineageos on it. for instance, the hammerhead, aka nexus 5, has lineage 14.1 but does not actually have an official N image. 3rd party roms generally expand support where the OEM stops, so it isn't really correct in saying "If a tablet is supported by LineageOS 14.1, it is therefore supported by N." It is best to check with the OEMs firmware downloads to see if an N image has been pushed yet.

[PGHammer]

8 minutes ago, Circaflex said:

Just because a device has support from a 3rd party rom, doesnt mean it is officially supported by N. The OP stated this is for his mother, so I wouldnt even bother loading lineageos on it. for instance, the hammerhead, aka nexus 5, has lineage 14.1 but does not actually have an official N image. 3rd party roms generally expand support where the OEM stops, so it isn't really correct in saying "If a tablet is supported by LineageOS 14.1, it is therefore supported by N." It is best to check with the OEMs firmware downloads to see if an N image has been pushed yet.

Okay.  Then that means you are at the mercy of both the OEM AND therefore are looking toward the pricey end of the scale.  That does not apply to any of the tablets stated so far (or to the Nexus 6 - which is also directly supported by N).  Besides, the third-party ROMs seriously extend the usability window for devices that don't cost a mint; in fact, my Galaxy Nexus is an extreme example of that - remember, it never even saw KitKat - let alone N - in official service; yet I have several N ROMs to choose from; I'm on my fifth ROM just of 7.1.2 alone (currently LineageOS 14.1, in fact).  The reason for the rotation is because of support for AndroidPay becoming a major feature; right now, just two of the five 7.1.2 ROMs currently in the rota support AndroidPay (LineageOS 14.1 and Slim 7.1.2); however, I kicked Slim 7.1.2 out of the rota due to it losing the SIM.

Edited May 1, 2017 by PGHammer
additional data and observations

[techbeck]

She ordered the N9 32gb version.   Did not notice that was supported by N.  Which rather have a nexus since it is easier to root/apply a diff ROM when it stops being supported by Google.

 

My mom is still using an original ASUS transformer (my first tab I gave her).  Worked great up until she tried to install some new apps that no longer worked on 4.4 of the Android OS.

[Circaflex]

5 hours ago, PGHammer said:

Okay.  Then that means you are at the mercy of both the OEM AND therefore are looking toward the pricey end of the scale.  That does not apply to any of the tablets stated so far (or to the Nexus 6 - which is also directly supported by N).  Besides, the third-party ROMs seriously extend the usability window for devices that don't cost a mint; in fact, my Galaxy Nexus is an extreme example of that - remember, it never even saw KitKat - let alone N - in official service; yet I have several N ROMs to choose from; I'm on my fifth ROM just of 7.1.2 alone (currently LineageOS 14.1, in fact).  The reason for the rotation is because of support for AndroidPay becoming a major feature; right now, just two of the five 7.1.2 ROMs currently in the rota support AndroidPay (LineageOS 14.1 and Slim 7.1.2); however, I kicked Slim 7.1.2 out of the rota due to it losing the SIM.

I am not disagreeing with you, however, you need to remember the user base. This isn't for OP, but rather his mom. I am well aware of what a custom rom can and will do, especially for older hardware, I use to contribute to slim and cm-mod during the lollipop days, however I would never recommend them to anyone who doesnt have the knowledge or time to troubleshoot and reflash. As much as I enjoyed running 3rd party roms, not a single one was perfect or working as good as stock. You either had signal issues, CDMA was flaky, wonky camera, etc and these were on devices that google supplied the entire source code for, other OEM's it was even worse. not to mention the fragmentation at one point between AOSP and CAF. Safe to say, OP didnt want any of that for his mom and the n9 was a great choice.

[techbeck]

Cannot find an n9 in stock. So went with Samsung. 

[PGHammer]

On 5/1/2017 at 7:26 PM, Circaflex said:

I am not disagreeing with you, however, you need to remember the user base. This isn't for OP, but rather his mom. I am well aware of what a custom rom can and will do, especially for older hardware, I use to contribute to slim and cm-mod during the lollipop days, however I would never recommend them to anyone who doesnt have the knowledge or time to troubleshoot and reflash. As much as I enjoyed running 3rd party roms, not a single one was perfect or working as good as stock. You either had signal issues, CDMA was flaky, wonky camera, etc and these were on devices that google supplied the entire source code for, other OEM's it was even worse. not to mention the fragmentation at one point between AOSP and CAF. Safe to say, OP didnt want any of that for his mom and the n9 was a great choice.

Among the tablets I would recommend is, in fact, the N9; in fact, I am considering the N9 as a replacement for my Lenovo A7-30F - I have also recommended it to my Mom (replacing her current Samsung Galaxy Tab 4).  The various community/AOSP L ROMs still have the issues you have mentioned - even on my Galaxy Nexus; MM is more stable, and N (rather amusingly) has been the most stable and reliable on my GNex (with the sole exception of support for SafetyNet (which you won't find on L).  How I GOT my GNex is a story in and of itself - the stock ROM had major issues taking pictures, which put it behind the eight-ball (remember, VZW has a stock-only ROM policy - no community ROMs at all, and certainly no Lineage or AOSP).  So, mom bought a VZW prepaid phone running MM - the Galaxy J3V.  It's cheap (for existing VZW customers, you can generally get one for nothing or next to nothing via various deals) and you start with MM out of the box.  It's a great phone for the more conservative phone customers that prefer stock - and it certainly doesn't anything CLOSE to a mint.  However, the N9 - like the Galaxy Nexus itself - is a (now former) developer device - AOSP is the closest thing to fresh-from-Google coding by design - so if that's your preference, you want a current or former developer device. The bigger issue there is that there are only three of those in terms of recent devices that are tablets - the N9 (HTC), the N6 (Motorola) and the Pixel C (Google itself); in erms of price, they range from the N6 (cheapest) to the Pixel C (the priciest).  They aren't exactly going to be retail-stocked (not any of them) - which means that e-tail/online is definitely your friend.

[PGHammer]

On 5/2/2017 at 5:34 PM, techbeck said:

Cannot find an n9 in stock. So went with Samsung. 

You can still get them; however, you should NOT be looking retail.  You should have looked either on Amazon (best bet) or (for the 32GB N9) htc.com itself.

[techbeck]

1 hour ago, PGHammer said:

You can still get them; however, you should NOT be looking retail.  You should have looked either on Amazon (best bet) or (for the 32GB N9) htc.com itself.

Amazon, new sold out. HTC site is asking for lot more. Got the Galaxy tab s2 and my mom is happy with that. 

[PGHammer]

Lenovo's Tab3 Essential lineup has hit Amazon with a vengeance - these Qualcomm (not Mediatek) driven tablets  in three sizes (7", 8", and 10") all ship with Nougat standard, and even the 10" model isn't $100USD.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

The Huawei MediaPad m3 ships with Android 6.x and gets an OTA update to 7.x when first started.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

[PGHammer]

And it's three times the price of the Tab3 Essential of the same size and is driven by a Huawei variant of the MT SoC (the Kirin 950).  I would not mind seeing the two SoCs face off - just to see if the Kirin SoC is worth that price delta compared to the fewer-cored Snapdragon in the Tab3 Essential.

[PGHammer]

Followup - I wound up getting the Amazon Fire 7 with Alexa for myself entirely DUE to the shrinking supply of N-able tablets.  The Fire 7 comes with Fire OS 6 and runs the same quad-core CPU as the FireTV stick (the FireTV stick of the current generation runs the same version of FireOS) - in neither use is it any sort of slow.  FireOS is a fork of Android - I get that.  Hence I don't expect any more out of it than I get FROM Android  Where FireOS differs FROM Android (and this indeed CAN be critical depending on what you want from a device) is what the prime developer (Amazon in the case of FireOS) wants - it's not the same as what Google wants.

 

Amazon's Swiss Army Tablet?

 

The Fire 7 is the smallest of the Fire tablets, and the only one other than the Kindle Paperwhite that LACKS the HD appelation.  However, it can replace a Kindle of the same size (including the Paperwhite) and supports every feature OF other Kindles.  It also supports video - which the same-size Paperwhite does not.  New in the entire Fire tablet line (my sniffery points to FireOS 6 as being the culprit - since this new feature shows up in the FireTV line) is Amazon's Alexa.  I'm not going to get into various virtual assistants; still, since this IS an Amazon product, I'm unsurprised to see Alexa here.

 

Silk-y Smooth Browsing - No Kidding, Bucky

 

A carryover from FireOS 5 is the Silk browser; however, with the quad-core CPU and FireOS 6 (N 7.1.2 equivalent) core, it lays a smackdown performance-wise on most AOSP N-driven tablets - along with tablets with an OS older than N.  If Android (and its forks - including FireOS) newer than Lollipop call out for anything, its CPU horsepower, and Amazon's quad-core CPUs in all current-gen Fire devices DEFINITELY bring the flames.

 

Where The Blade Needs Sharpening

 

Where FireOS is whacked is, in fact, understandable - no Google Play Store support.  If you absolutely positively MUST have support for the Google Play Store, know this up front - no Amazon device powered by FireOS has any such thing.  While some APKs will still work, others will not.  Worse, technically it voids your warranty.  If in doubt, don't do it.

[PGHammer]

Followup to the above post (the editor applet is not being my friend today) - I found a way to add the Play Store to FireOS devices (any of them), and it works for the Fire 7; in fact, I did so AFTER an update for FireOS arrived for the tablet itself.  Result - I have both Amazon's appstore and the Play Store on my Fire 7.  The problem is that certain Microsoft applications (OneDrive is the biggest culprit) don't work on Fire tablets (connection-detection issue).  There are workarounds (the easiest being either using SD cards (which Fire tablets support directly) OR Amazon Drive; I have forwarded the complaint via Feedback to Microsoft - including logs.

 

Why OneDrive?  Easy to explain - I have some Kindle (MOBI format) e-books that predate my Fire tablet, and I want to import them - and they are stored in OneDrive.  With OneDrive also in the Amazon Appstore, it would normally be the easiest way to transfer.  However, Because of the OneDrive app issue on the Fire tablet, I must do the transfer elsewhere - and using a different target.  I will likely use Amazon Drive on my PC (another app that is also in the Appstore to clone the files) and one in the Appstore for Fire tablets.