I was looking around to see if anyone is making a decent small (7″-8″) tablet running Linux, when I realized that no one is even making a good small tablet running Android. (Amazon and Samsung small tablets are not good enough, IMO.)
I have an 8-inch, second-hand iPad Mini, which I use solely for watching movies on airplanes and reading digital magazines I download from my public library. My 6.5-inch-screen phone just isn’t big enough for the latter, though it’s fine for reading books in an app.
This reminded me: Google once sold a great small Android tablet, the Nexus 7. I used it for years, until it finally died. Like so many things Google has produced — hardware and software — the company killed it off in a fit of boredom or stupidity.
The market’s still wide open for an ipad-mini competitor — and it baffles me that no one appears to be even trying to fill the gap.
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You and I had a few electronic interactions (on topics long forgotten) when I was a software engineer in Sunnyvale and you were with the Mercury News. Later on my wife and I each had a Nexus 7 when they were the cat’s meow. Hers eventually became impossible to recharge due to the incredibly fragile USB connector losing contact with the circuit board. Mine is still limping along, oh-so-slow to respond to touches but adequate for bedtime Kindle-ing…
Amazed you kept it going so long…