Google’s Pixel Tablet is still long overdue, but one of its features seems to be becoming clearer: compatibility with an active stylus.
Google hit hard during its last I/O conference organized in early May 2022. Alongside its software announcements, the Mountain View company presented its hardware roadmap for the year, formalizing the Pixel 6a and the Pixel Buds, then showing without further details its Pixel 7 and Pixel Tablet.
The tablet still has a long way to go before reaching the shelves of resellers, since Google does not plan to market it until 2023. And while waiting for it to decide to reveal the technical data sheet, the investigators are on the bridge.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the site NuGiz has thus identified in the lists of the Universal Stylus Initiative (alliance of manufacturers aiming in particular to promote interoperable styluses for tablets) a product with the Google logo and responding to the code name Tangor. This therefore evokes an active stylus and which only seems adapted in the American catalog to its touch pad, classifying it at least among mid-range tablets. Remember that while the most affordable slates work without a stylus, the most advanced models — Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S, certain Lenovo tablets or Xiaomi’s Pad 5, not to mention the iPads — intend to enrich their use with the help of this type of accessories.
Available since last February in version 2.0, the USI certification allows you to get an idea of Google’s stylus. It obeys various criteria, of which we retain above all the possibility of using a wireless charge based on NFC, with a power of up to 1 W. Enough to authorize the recharging of such a stylus from all types devices (such as smartphones) compatible with the NFC standard, i.e. almost all of them to date.
For the rest, the Pixel Tablet keeps its secrets. Only its design, reminiscent of the Nest Hub connected screens, has been unveiled, indicating in passing that the tablet will be equipped with a single dorsal photo module, as well as the chip that will animate it. This will be the Tensor already at work in the Pixel 6.