Android Authority Review Finds Googlebooks Still Face Five Major Concerns After Two Weeks

During the first week, the reviewer used Googlebooks as the only computers, carrying them on the go and connecting them to external monitors. Tasks that would have taken half the time on a macOS or Windows laptop took twice as long on a Googlebook and required lengthy troubleshooting, the review said. Basic features were unreliable or did not work at all. In the second week, a slew of early Googlebook OS fixes resolved some initial frustrations, and the reviewer mixed the laptops with other computing devices and looked for workarounds.

The review asked whether Googlebooks are worth their price point of $899 and up. It described the Better Together cross-device features as easily the best part of using a Googlebook.

Those features initially stumbled with setup problems and a lack of support for Samsung phones, according to the review. After the fixes, the reviewer used a Pixel 11 Pro Fold and a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 reliably with a Googlebook for a week.

Quick Access made the phone’s on-device storage appear automatically in the Files app on the Googlebook, allowing access to photos, files and music from the Android phone. The reviewer said it would be useful if the feature worked in both directions and allowed access to Googlebook files from the phone. Better Together also worked with multiple Android phones: the Files app listed the Pixel 11 Pro Fold and Galaxy Z Fold 8 as data sources, and Cast My Apps, which streams apps from an Android phone to a Googlebook without installing them, offered a drop-down menu to choose between connected phones and a button to add more.

Continue On also worked as intended, the review said. The reviewer could start work in Chrome on the Galaxy Z Fold 8’s folding display and finish it on the Googlebook; opening the Android laptop brought the work in progress to the taskbar.

The review found that the more a person uses a Googlebook, the more limitations appear. Some Android apps cannot be downloaded through the Google Play Store on Googlebook OS, pushing the reviewer to Cast My Apps. The Tesla app did not render properly at any size through Cast My Apps, and Best Buy’s app, which is also unavailable for download in the Play Store, had the same problem, according to the review. Apps that streamed without issue were typically those that could be installed natively on Googlebook OS in the first place. Google Authenticator, which the reviewer uses daily for two-factor authentication, was not available through the Play Store or Cast My Apps, forcing the reviewer to use a phone.

The review described reliance on a Wi-Fi network as the most crushing limitation of Better Together. The features worked well on a home wireless network but not in public, the review said. Many public or enterprise Wi-Fi networks block peer-to-peer Wi-Fi sharing outright, and both devices need to be on the same Wi-Fi network. The reviewer said people typically connect phones to mobile data rather than public Wi-Fi, making it hardly seamless to connect an Android phone to public Wi-Fi to use Better Together on a Googlebook. The review compared the situation with Apple’s Apple Wireless Direct Link, which it said creates a direct peer-to-peer sharing link between devices independent of an active wireless network and is used by AirDrop and iPhone Mirroring.