The Verge Testing Finds Googlebooks’ Hardware Shines While Googlebook OS Struggles

According to the report, the promise of Googlebooks as a fresh and smartly designed alternative to Windows or Mac for Android phone owners sounds great, but there are more than a few kinks and quirks to work out. Some of the issues and challenges ahead are systemic to Android, The Verge said, and the publication is testing Googlebooks from all of Google’s partner OEMs.

One tester wrote that Googlebook OS should be better than ChromeOS but right now feels worse. The tester recalled a Google representative saying at the Googlebook launch preview that replacing ChromeOS with Android would allow for much faster development, but questioned why Googlebook OS feels like a setback from ChromeOS at launch. It shares some ChromeOS flaws, such as not allowing Chrome to run with separate Google accounts, and many Android apps feel as clunky on a Googlebook as they did on ChromeOS. Google even put Android’s navigation buttons on the Googlebook keyboard, seemingly in part as a fallback for misbehaving apps.

The same tester, who was using the HP Googlebook 14, Lenovo Googlebook 15, and Acer Googlebook 14, said new oddities appeared daily. The Signal Android app linked to a phone with ease, but sending messages required Ctrl+Enter and text could not be highlighted because clicking and dragging scrolled up and down instead. Photoshop and Lightroom were passable for the simplest image editing, but the tester would take a cheap Windows laptop with proper desktop apps over those mobile-first versions. Windows could not be dragged to other virtual desktops, and scrolling to the left of the desktops revealed a Clear All button that killed all apps at once. Installing the progressive web app version of Slack also did not work properly. The tester said buying one of these Googlebooks would make them feel like a paying beta tester for Google, while adding that there is something cool in the devices and that development needs to go into warp speed.

Another major problem, according to The Verge, is developer support. Android has become a mature and useful platform across phones, tablets, TVs, and cars, but the report said many apps seem to have no idea what to do with a Googlebook. Netflix, one of the first apps downloaded because the tester had travel coming up and wanted to download movies for plane rides, worked well enough and did download movies, but it launched as a full-screen, tablet-style version of the app. Basically every streaming app does so, the report said. Hovering over the top bar reveals a windowing option, but none of that is obvious, and launching and windowing app after app gets tiresome.

Some apps are properly optimized for Googlebooks and make the device feel more like a proper laptop, but even they have problems. Many do not show app content when a window is being resized, which feels broken on a laptop, and some of Google’s own apps do this while others, like YouTube and Messages, scale more naturally. Some apps respond naturally to the keyboard and mouse, while others do not, and virtually everything is better optimized for a touchscreen. The report added a note to developers: if a movie cannot be paused by pressing the space bar, the app does not work with keyboards.

For the most part, one tester wrote, the Android-ification of Google’s laptop strategy is appealing.

Editor's Summary

The Verge’s week-long testing found that Google’s first Googlebook laptops have strong hardware but an Android-based Googlebook OS that feels less polished than ChromeOS at launch, with app, keyboard, and window-management problems. Testers also pointed to broader developer support gaps, including streaming apps that launch in tablet mode and inconsistent mouse, keyboard, and touch behavior. The report said the Android laptop strategy has appeal, but the software needs faster improvement before the devices can fulfill their promise.