The Pixel Tablet in a Perfect Portfolio — Opinion

Digital Wonders and Smiles
5 min readJul 7, 2022

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Hello all! Today I wanted to make a post on what I would LOVE to see from Google for the recently confirmed Google Tablet, Pixel Tablet, Pixel Slate (another one), Pixel ___, or whatever name they decide for its 2023 release. Note, 90% of this post is stuff that likely will not happen but I just wanted to write the ideas I would have for this tablet in an entirely perfect world! Most of this software Google does lack but as I’ve written this post Google has made some changes that intrigue me. Let’s get into it!

Current Knowledge:
We already know that Google plans to use Android for the tablet despite prior tablets being run on ChromeOS… Other than that, likely Tensor powered, one camera on back & one on front, and this is the design:

Software:
So, since we basically know the design… I want to see a lot of software stuff come with this device! The iPad has some exclusive apps that are cool and improve the experience like the following:

  • A video editor (iMovie)
  • Music app (GarageBand)
  • Drawing/art (Procreate)

Those the basics, so I have some concepts that I would love to see on the Pixel Tablet!

Video Editor:

To start, I made a video editor concept… I am by no means a concept artist, so this is pretty rough. Basically, what we have is a tablet editor with an overall professional design kinda similar to Google’s abandoned MovieStudio from 2010–11ish. The bottom is taken from Google Earth Studio (an applicant only software from Google that I LOVE) and I moved the elements around to make an editing environment. Obviously the text is just representative, no clue how to get it to look “Googly” lol.

I focused on an overall simple design with decent sized icons to make it very easy with touchscreen. Yes, the bar on the bottom is on Android (despite it looking identical to ChromeOS). Google probably wouldn’t add a feature packed multi-layer video editor, but if they did… it would be super cool. Here are some features that would be cool:

  • Quick switch to Chromebook — easily continue edits on ChromeOS (or any other OS) with cloud saves.
  • Basic masking and key-framing would be awesome. Maybe it wouldn’t even have to be masking, like a screen, darken, or multiply similar to tools found in Blender.
  • Library of AI powered edits.

An iMovie competitor is something Google has never tried. I really would love to see a Google-made editor, maybe even baked into Google Photos! Google wouldn’t really have to make a photo editor, but if Google added some newer features to Snapseed, it would INSTANTLY give Google an advantage over Apple. Snapseed has a pro editing suite, but really hasn’t had any big features in years, rather Google has added more AI-ified versions come to Google Photos. Heard of Magic Eraser, it is actually based on the Snapseed healing brush. With that, I think it would be cool if the video editor was called FrameSeed.

Music App:
For Google’s Tablet, I don’t see this being as big a deal as a video editor, BUT, iPads do have GarageBand and so I want to make a concept anyways.

Yeahhh… I don’t really know enough about music apps. Moving swiftly on from this monstrosity 😅. My “concept name” would be StudioSeed… I wish there was a better name but Google Studio is already in use (Google Data Studio)

Okay, as I was finishing up this post, Google released a music app with TeenageEngineering called PocketOperator which would act as a perfect app to have fun with music wise. This is very different from competing app GarageBand but honestly having it on the tablet would be better than not having it at all. Maybe the app wouldn’t be preinstalled since I’m not sure the Pixel community is in agreement over having this app be in the Pixel Portfolio/ecosystem… Okay, I’ve been putting it off but here is my partial concept for this app:

Again, very rough

Art App:
So, this one is a lot easier since Google Keep has some drawing tools that I can borrow… also, ChromeOS has the new Google Cursive added pretty recently. I didn’t end up using it but Google also has Google Drawings and Google Canvas too. A weird plethora of basic drawing apps.

Yes, that drawing definitely could be made with those tools… trust me😅

This is a simple design but I thought it was fitting with Google (also, sorry for the bad screen cutout). It would be cool to have something more advanced but 3rd party options like Krita (available on F-Droid) would easily be able to surpass with any Google drawing app.

Conclusion:
Although there are other apps that I would love to see in the Google ecosystem these are just a few rough drafts. I really would love to see a revival of Snapseed and expansion with more Snap___ apps but it seems very unlikely and I highly doubt Google still has devs for Snapseed based on the lack of development in recent years. I hope you enjoyed these concepts of a potential set of apps on the Pixel Tablet. I think PocketOperator definitely should be available on tablets because it is a cool app. The other apps probably will continue to be just concepts though. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this post! As always, click that clap button and drop a follow! 😄❤

-Digital Wonders & Smiles

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Digital Wonders and Smiles

I operate a small photography blog on WordPress and use Medium as a sort of second blog! You’ll find extra content about tech, photography, and more here!