Back in September, Google took the wraps off the Pixel C Android tablet. It was an interesting naming choice considering that the Pixel brand seemed to reserved for Google’s Chrome OS, while the Nexus brand was for Android devices as we have seen in the past with the Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and etc.
However it seems that there might have been a reason why the Pixel C was named that way, and it is because it was never meant to run Android. This is according to a report from ArsTechnica in which they speculated that the Pixel C was a tablet that was supposed to run on Chrome OS, but last minute changes saw Google switch it to Android.
So how did they arrive at this conclusion? For starters it was in their review in which they found that the hardware and software did not seem like they were designed for each other. They point out the fact that the tablet was designed to be a productivity device, but yet there were plenty of productivity features missing from Android.
They also point out how back in 2014, a motherboard codenamed “Ryu” appeared in the Chrome OS open source repository, and source codes revealed that Ryu shared a lot of similar traits as the current Pixel C. Their report also goes on to add that Android was actually the third OS of choice. Apparently Google was attempting some kind of hybrid OS with Chrome OS and Android, but ultimately went with Android instead.
ArsTechnica isn’t alone in their sentiments. If you were to check out other reviews of the tablet, many of them scored the tablet pretty high in terms of hardware quality, but more than one review said that Google’s choice of using Android somehow made the tablet feel a bit lacking.