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The tablet isn’t the only example of a device doing double duty as something with inherent customer functionality and as a core of a richer experience. Last year, I wrote about various efforts to create a desktop experience from smartphones. Of those, only Samsung’s DeX remains a market force today, although Huawei also has a docked desktop option for its smartphones. And in what may be a record shipping delay even for crowdfunded devices, the developers of the Neptune Suite — a matryoshka doll-like device system that builds up to a laptop but uses the brains of a smartwatch — promise to deliver their product in the second quarter of 2019 after having been crowdfunded in May of 2015.
But these combinations aren’t quite as compelling today, because there is a large size gap between the ultraportable core and the merely mobile accessory system. The Neptune Suite, for example, had to include a way for the accessories to provide power back to the watch so that the could keep providing a user interface to the larger display. In contrast, the 2 (or more)-in-1 scenario banks on the idea that the tablet, while thinner, is close enough to the size of a laptop that there’s not much incremental burden in making it act as one.
Also: Best Microsoft Surface Pro 6 alternatives you can buy right now
Apple may have an experience advantage when its tablet is used without any accessories, but its capitulation on a keyboard accessory essentially shows that the iPad is heading back into being part of a larger laptop identity. Indeed, at the introduction of the iPad Pro, the company showed off sales figures that compared iPad sales favorably to all Windows laptops. That’s good news for the future of 2-in-1s, but an unexpected turn for those who saw the minimalist tablet as a computing evolution to take us past the clamshell.
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