Lenovo Yoga Book review: Almost amazing

The Lenovo Yoga Book is the closest thing to the greatest Android convertible ever made, for whatever that’s worth.

Lenovo’s clever hardware is a great deal more functional than you’d think it could be, but have Android apps grown up enough to handle tablets and convertibles?

Pros

• Unique design
• Highly functional pen interface
• Quality stereo speakers

Cons

• Mediocre battery life
• Lenovo’s additional software is of inconsistent quality

The best Android tablet there is

Lenovo Yoga Book Full Review

Android tablets suck. Sorry, that’s not quite right. Using an Android tablet in 2016 sucks. The vast majority of apps in the Google Play Store never grew to support larger screens, and Google hasn’t done nearly enough to encourage that development over the years. Instead of dealing with the problem three years ago when Apple was revving up the iPad, we got a pair of Nexus 7 tablets that were cheap enough people would buy them and small enough that you weren’t constantly frustrated by the way apps were stretched to fill the screen.

See at Lenovo

Android tablets became permanent content consumption machines that year, and now here we are in 2016 with several examples of great hardware ruined by an app ecosystem entirely disinterested in supporting the experience. And again, instead of dealing with this by approaching developers, Google added features in Android 7.0 Nougat so apps can be run side by side and avoid being quite as visually offensive on large displays. The demo device for this experience, Google’s Pixel C, continues to float in this weird in-between space that isn’t quite comfortable enough to use as a laptop and just a hair too heavy to enjoy using as a tablet. Outside of this, you have Dell’s repeated attempts to Make Android Tablets Great Again from last year, and now a truly unique take on the tablet convertible world from Lenovo.

If there’s one thing the most profitable laptop manufacturer on the planet knows, it’s how to make something thin and light and beautifully mechanical. Following the long and successful like of Yoga laptops running Windows, we now have the Android-powered Yoga Book. Put simply, it’s what happens when you take an ultra-thin laptop design and say “you think we can put Android on this thing?” in a room full of engineers. Yoga Book stretches the definition of Android tablet in the most delightful of ways, and it couldn’t be more clear that nearly everything wrong with this machine comes from using immature Android apps.

About This Review

I (Russell Holly) have been using the Lenovo Yoga Book (YB1-X90F) for six days all around Maryland. This review, as well as several thousand other words across Mobile Nations, was written with this Android convertible. It’s running Android 6.0.1 with July 1, 2016 security patches.

Thin, sturdy, and damn pretty.

Lenovo Yoga Book Hardware

Nothing about this machine is ordinary. From the moment you slide Yoga Book out of its long white box it’s clear you’re using something special. The metal casing is cool to the touch, and it’s not immediately clear which side is up. Digging your thumbs into the seam and pulling doesn’t make this any clearer at first, since both halves of the inside are flat black glass. Sunlight pouring in from my office window hits the faint outline of the Holo Keyboard, and it finally clicks that this side lays on the table.

Curiously, the side of the keyboard is also where the power and volume keys are. The Micro-USB and Mini-HDMI ports on the other side of the keyboard edge make a little more sense, and as this laptop powers up everything comes to life. The faint lines on the glass nearest my fingertips lights up and reveals a full keyboard and trackpad just under the glass. The spacing on the keys looks to be just a bit wider than your average 3/4 keyboard, but it’s still a flat piece of glass. For someone who types all day every day on a CODE mechanical keyboard, who has also used every virtual keyboard on just about every tablet ever, it’s difficult to imagine typing on this will be enjoyable.

The star of this tablet, on the outside anyway, is the hinge. Lenovo’s watchband hinge is without equal, allowing the display to not only flex around from one side to the other without any issue but almost lock in place when you stop applying force. This hinge should be an industry standard. It’s beautiful, functional, and allows this tablet to fully transform from laptop to tablet and function in spaces few other devices can function. Because the weight on this tablet is balanced between the two halves of the hinge, Yoga Book comfortably sits in your lap at any angle.

At 1920×1200 resolution with 400 nits of brightness, the display is just shy of great. If you’re using this machine like a laptop, the resolution is more than enough to get things done and look nice. If you’re using this like a tablet, maybe flipped over in “A” position in your hands on an airplane, the resolution is noticeably lower than some other out there. Lenovo also doesn’t do much with auto-brightness on the Yoga Book, so that 400 nits will catch you in the eye real quick in a dark room.

All told, there’s very little about the design of this Yoga Book that doesn’t scream premium.

Almost as important as the existence of a keyboard is the existence of a trackpad. Not needing to reach up and touch the screen for anything is a big deal. This pad is a little unusual, making you press and hold to scroll instead of two finger swipe like you’d see in a traditional desktop environment. That’s cool though, because this isn’t a traditional desktop environment. The rules are different, which is why there are special buttons on the keyboard for Home and Menu and Launcher. This is a keyboard between worlds, and a trackpad that has to follow along. The only real issue with this design is how close the edge of the trackpad is to the space bar, which causes frequent misfires.

This keyboard has the ability to completely disappear, turning the entire surface into a digitizer for the included pressure-sensitive stylus. Lenovo’s stylus tech easily matches your average $200 zero-point stylus from Wacom, and it’s baked right into the tablet. You can hold the Yoga Book however you feel comfortable and draw. The stylus is fine as far as comfort goes, and the metal clip on the cap magnetizes to the back of the display should you decide to bring it with you everywhere. If you lose the stylus or would prefer to write with your favorite pen, you can enable that feature and write or draw on a piece of paper against the glass. This mode is slightly less accurate and not at all pressure sensitive, but amazing for combining real pen and paper feel with digital interaction.

All told, there’s very little about the design of this Yoga Book that doesn’t scream premium. The 1.52-pound body is incredibly light when you consider what you’re getting, and it’s noticeably thinner than the Pixel C or Dell’s 10-inch Android tablet when their keyboards are attached. Speakers that fire from the left and right sides of the body are loud, crisp, and clearer than you get from most tablets in this class. Lenovo has delivered something that is a genuine pleasure to hold and use for creators and consumers alike.

Skinned Marshmallow

Lenovo Yoga Book Software

Since Yoga Book clearly isn’t getting any help from Google when it comes to reasonable software for 10-inch tablets, Lenovo had to jump in and create some tricks of their own. What you get is Android Marshmallow with some clever add-ons. There’s a dock system that feels like it cam straight out of a desktop OS design class, a floating window system designed so you can use apps side by side, and some included apps that play nice with Lenovo’s stylus system. There’s also a special software keyboard system for auto-correcting words coming from the Holo Keyboard. These aren’t huge changes to the Android UI, which in some cases turn out to be a bad thing for Lenovo’s overall goal.

Android apps in floating windows sounds like exactly what everyone wants, right? You can get the smaller UI experience, multitask, and come dangerously close to feeling like you’re being productive if everything worked the way Lenovo intended. You get a window you can pin wherever you want, click or tap anywhere in that window to interact, and enjoy the multi-app experience. Unfortunately, none of Google’s included apps play by these rules and many other apps break shortly after you try to actually use them in this windowed mode. Netflix, for example, freaks out as soon as you start playing a video in this windowed mode. Few apps work from beginning to end, which is a shame. The forced perspective in Android 7.0 Nougat really is the only way to consistently enjoy multi-window in Android.

What are you even doing, Netflix?

Typing on Lenovo’s Holo Keyboard is greatly enhanced by its virtual component. You can tap on numbers corresponding to auto-correct options that float on the screen, and in many cases the text will correct for you as you type. It’s a great system, as long as the app behaves. Several messaging clients for Android, including Slack and Hangouts, don’t respect the existence of a return key. Tapping return doesn’t send the message like you’d expect, it drops down a line instead (yes I know this is the actual purpose of a return key). This means you have to tap or use the touchpad to click the send button each time, and when you start typing the next line the auto-correct software applies the last word to the new line, which is frustrating. The easiest answer is to disable this keyboard mode, which removes a feature that works well nearly every other time you use it.

We still have apps that force portrait orientation to log in, apps that only send messages when you hit the send key, and no shortage of apps that just plain look bad when not on a phone.

Lenovo’s best idea is the dock. When you open an app, it gets a spot on the bottom bar, between the navigation keys and the clock. You can quickly switch between open apps by tapping these icons, and can dismiss apps when you’re done using them. It’s a fairly simple UI change that makes a huge difference in how quickly you jump between tasks, something that becomes an even bigger deal when you’re trying to use this computer like a full laptop.

This is usually the point in which I hold Lenovo accountable for not having the latest version of Android on this tablet. Honestly, though, I don’t think it matters in this situation. While split screen would be more functional than what Lenovo currently has, the current custom dock is more useful for switching between multiple apps. Most of the problems here have little to do with functional multi-window, and everything to do with Android apps being entirely inconsistent in how they function on large screens. We still have apps that force portrait orientation to log in, apps that only send messages when you hit the send key, and no shortage of apps that just plain look bad when not on a phone. Sure, Lenovo should get Nougat on Yoga Book as quickly as they can, but only once all of their own ideas work well and continue to create this great unique experience.

I’m not mad at you

Lenovo Yoga Book Experience

Historically, deciding to leave the house with only an Android tablet to work in a library or coffee shop has not gone well. Google’s Pixel C got close, especially after Nougat, but the mobile-first UI of Android is a challenge in many situations and those carry onto the Yoga Book. Chrome, for example, fills the top inch of the screen with quick-swap tabs and the top bar of the app instead of using the whole screen to give me as much space to browse as possible. Chrome for Android is absolutely powerful enough to act as my only browser throughout the day, but it’s still not particularly well optimized for this screen size.

The real question, the thing all of the Android Central editors have discussed and doubted and marveled at, is whether you can actually type at length on this Holo Keyboard. The answer is yes, mostly. On the fancy mechanical keyboard at my desk, I average 57 words per minute. Not bad for a guy who can only use eight of his fingers, but not super amazing either. On the 3/4 keyboard you get for the Pixel C, I average 42 words per minute. That’s reasonable for a smaller keyboard, even one that nice. Lenovo’s Holo Keyboard has me typing an average of 45 words per minute, with a mistype rate about 10% higher than either other keyboard. That means I type just slightly slower on this keyboard than I do either of the other keyboards since I have to stop to make corrections more frequently, but it’s still damned impressive for glass.

It’s hard to not feel like Google has given up on tablets.

Typing on this keyboard isn’t uncomfortable, either. It’s certainly not as comfortable as using a mechanical keyboard, but it works. My most frequent mistake is hitting the M just above the space bar when trying to space, which used to happen to me a lot on netbooks when those were all the rage. After about an hour of typing on this keyboard my fingers are a little more tired than they would be on a mechanical keyboard, but it feels like I’m getting plenty done in the mean time.

It didn’t take me long to wish I was using the Windows version of this computer, or one made with Chrome OS like Jerry suggested back when Yoga Book was announced. It’s hard to not feel like Google has given up on tablets, and it’s also not hard to see why that is. Android tablets have never sold well, and apps just plain don’t support the tablet experience. There will never be a situation in which every app I install plays nice with Lenovo’s ideas here, and that’s a shame.

I’m not an artist, and type faster than I write, but I love watching people who can actually draw use the stylus on Yoga Book. Everyone I handed this tablet to loved the drawing experience, and were shocked by the $500 price point for this experience. Knowing the hardware works well with more than what Lenovo has included is just as awesome, and being able to use Yoga Book in portrait with the display right next to the drawing surface is incredible.

Yoga Book averages eight hours of consistent use for me, split between watching movies and typing and playing games. That’s great for a laptop, but mediocre for a tablet. Granted, there’s a lot more going on with this machine when using it like a real computer, but overall it’d be nice if that battery could be stretched to 10 hours on a single charge. Fortunately, the quick charging power adapter in the box makes it easy for you to get that extra couple of hours with a few minutes connected to power.

Did you hear this comes in Windows?

Lenovo Yoga Book the bottom line

It’s not hard to say this is the best Android tablet you can buy today, but recognizing what a low bar that is and how many things are still not ideal with this experience is frustrating. Our friends at Windows Central recently reviewed the Windows 10 variant of the Yoga Book, and I found myself regularly wondering how much better this already great piece of hardware would be if it weren’t running Android.

Lenovo might be able to force a few more apps to behave with software updates, and Android Nougat may be able to extend battery life a little, but at the end of the day most Android apps are just plain not great for tablets and frankly I’m tired of creating excuses for why that is. Android is awesome for phones, and Yoga Book makes it painfully clear the same can’t be said for tablets.

Should you buy it? Probably not.

Make no mistake, this is an amazing piece of hardware. Lenovo has clearly outdone themselves in design. If you really want Android to run on your laptop and don’t care that apps are going to misbehave left and right, this is without a doubt the machine for you. If you’re in love with this hardware and want an OS that actually makes sense in this form, the Windows Yoga Book is available right now and is a lot easier to recommend.

See at Lenovo

Digital Offer: Get lifetime access to 1TB of cloud storage for only $39!

Our current, tech-obsessed world demands a storage solution for your multimedia data, the most convenient being cloud-based storage which you can access from anywhere. Most cloud-based storage services charge a monthly fee, which, over time, adds up to quite a fee.

Those of you sick of subscription fees need a storage solution that requires a single payment for a lifetime of access. More importantly, you need cloud storage that is encrypted and can be accessed from all your devices.

Right now, Android Central Digital Offers has a deal on 1TB of cloud storage from Zoolz — a single payment of $39 gives you lifetime access. Does this seem cheap? It is! This is 98% off the regular price of $3600.

You will never be charged any extra fees, and you can access your cloud storage from multiple devices. Your data is protected with 256-AES encryption to better safeguard your stuff, and you can schedule backups and throttle bandwidth during uploads. Place files you know you won’t soon need in cold storage — takes three to five hours to access — or place files you frequently need in standard storage that can be accessed instantly.

Considering 1TB of storage from other popular services costs about $10 per month, this deal will pay for itself in four months, and you can keep using it forever. Even if you don’t think you need it now, you probably will need it in the future. Don’t miss this great opportunity to snag 1TB of cloud storage for only $39!

See at Android Central Digital Offers

SanDisk’s 200GB microSD card is down to just $59 again!

Right now you can pick up a 200GB SanDisk microSD card for just $59 at Amazon, a savings of $20 from its regular price. Whether you need some extra storage for your phone, tablet, camera or other devices, you won’t want to miss out on this deal. Having 200GB of storage may seem a bit excessive to some and just right for others, but at the price you really can’t go wrong with having the extra storage available to you. It will allow you to save music, videos, movies and more locally so you don’t have to rely on your mobile data in order to access it all.

If you want something smaller, or need a full sized SD card, you can save up to 40% on a variety of SanDisk storage accessories at Amazon right now. This deal is only good for today, October 17, so don’t wait too long to place your order.

See at Amazon

3 exercises to get your fitness app in shape!

This guest post was written by Mary Liz McCurdy, Health & Fitness Lead at Google Play.

It’s an exciting time to be a health and fitness app developer. With people shelling out on fitness more than ever before, we’re seeing record high levels of gym memberships and attendance, the rise of boutique fitness, and an emphasis connected devices.

Paramount to this growth is the integration of smart technology. Whether it be through streaming video, wearables, or mobile apps, technology empowers us with instant access to high quality workouts, sensor biofeedback and endless on-demand inspiration. At Google Play, we’ve seen this growth reflected by the incredible popularity of health & fitness apps. In fact, this is one of Google Play’s fastest revenue growth app categories, boasting the most engaged 30-day active users.

As the resident health & fitness expert on Google Play, I had the opportunity to speak about what’s driving the category’s growth at the recent Wearables Technology Show. Here are the top three recommendations I shared with the audience to help coach developers towards building more valuable app experiences.

Be invisible

We all know how painful manually logging activity and biometrics is — be it calorie tracking, workouts, moods, or hormone cycles. Manual logging is actually the number one reason users drop off.

What you should do: Minimize distraction with automation wherever possible while maximizing value at the appropriate moments. Remember that you are in all likelihood a companion experience to the main event.

Lose It! makes food tracking easier by using your phone’s camera and image recognition technology to identify foods and their nutritional information. Goodbye manual calorie counting!

Strava uses auto pause detection, recognizing when you are resting during exercise so you don’t need to fiddle with your device and can stay safe and in the zone.

Be personal

Investing in robust personalization has been the driving factor in improving app engagement and buyer conversion among many of our top developers.

What you should do: Personalize the experience for each user or distinct user cohorts by leveraging technology like the Awareness API, Fit API, Google Sign In, and Facebook Login to intelligently pull in relevant user data. Think about your first-time users, power users, high value users, etc. and treat them uniquely.

Freeletics personalizes onboarding and the overall app experience based on gender and fitness level leading to a 58% increase in weekly active sessions.

Workout Trainer by Skimble increased user engagement by 30% through personalizing training programs based on user fitness assessments, goals, and workout patterns.

Be assistive

The rise of smartphones, wearables and IoT have left us swimming in data and dashboards and left many consumers wondering, so what?

What you should do: Offer insights and suggestions, not just raw data. Users are not engineers and generally do not want to process complex data or dashboards. In most cases, they want you to tell them what to do in the moment or provide digestible summaries after the fact. Keep it simple.

Glow provides personalized insights that leverage user-inputted data and third party data from Google Fit to help couples achieve their fertility goals.

Beddit gives personalized daily tips to improve your sleep and wellness by analyzing sleep cycles, resting heart rate, respiration, room temperature, and more.

At the end of the day, changing health and fitness habits is hard. Make it easier for your users by seamlessly guiding them on what they personally need to do to achieve their goal. It’s that simple! We encourage you to experiment with these exercises to get your app fit for the millions of Android users looking to live a healthier, happier life.

Find out more information about this and other topics at Android Developer Blog.

Best Car Mounts for Google Pixel

What’s the best car mount for Google Pixel?

The Google Pixel and Pixel XL are gorgeous and you’re going to want to hold onto them all the time, but that’s just plain unsafe when you’re driving, and in most cases, it’s illegal. You need to pick up a great car mount and we have some favorites to share with you!

• Spigen Air Vent Magnetic Car Mount
• Nite Ize Steelie
• Anker CD Slot Magnetic Universal Phone Holder
• Kenu Airframe Plus Portable Car Mount
• Ram mount

Spigen Air Vent Magnetic Car Mount

Spigen makes a lot of really ingeniously designed smartphone accessories, and their Air Vent Magnetic Car Mount is as convenient as it gets. The mount itself quickly and securely clips onto an air vent on the dash.

As the name suggests, this mount secures using magnets. That will require you to attach a metal plate to the back of your phone, or better yet to your Pixel’s case. Once installed, all you have to do is hold your phone close to the mount and it pops right on. With no clips or holsters to deal with, you can easily grab your phone with one hand as you leave the car. You can also take the Spigen clip with you and use it as a portable kickstand which holds your phone at the perfect hands free viewing angle.

But for all the positives, there are some drawbacks to this design. Adhering the metal plate on to back of the phone may potentially interfere with the way you hold the phone, or leave scratches on the metal. If these are important features to you, you may want to look elsewhere, or slap the metal plate on the inside of a thin case so you can quickly pop your phone out.

See at Amazon

Nite Ize Steelie

This is definitely the coolest mount on this list. The Steelie is a two-piece mounting system wherein a circular magnet adheres to the back of your Pixel and a spherical magnetic base adheres to your car’s dashboard or console.

Hop in the car, and your phone mounts in a snap. This is about as minimalist as it gets in terms of car mounts. Making sharp turns and hitting potholes? No worries: The magnet is super strong and the magnetic ball moves with your phone to prevent it from falling off.

If you want a mounting system that nigh unnoticeable, the Nite Ize Steelie is your slick solution.

See at Amazon

Anker CD Slot Magnetic Universal Phone Holder

If your car has a CD changer, but you’ve moved beyond physical media thanks to, say, cramming all your favorite music onto your new Pixel, you can still get use out of that CD slot — with the Anker CD Slot Magnetic Universal Phone Holder.

The CD changer is typically the centerpiece of a car’s console, so using it as a place to mount your phone just makes sense. Anker’s mount uses a rubber-coated clamp provides a firm grip while keeping the CD slot scratch-free. Installing is as easy as inserting the mount into the cd play and flipping the lever on the bottom.

Like the Spigen above, this car mount also uses magnets to securely hold your phone, meaning you’ll need to mount a metal plate to the back of your phone or to a thin case. Similar issues may arise as a result, so keep that in mind.

See at Amazon

Kenu Airframe Plus Portable Car Mount+

Minimalism and simplicity are important features for a lot of people. The Kenu Airframe Plus+ is a simple car mount that’s slim enough to comfortably fit in your pocket, but securely holds your phone by clipping to an air vent.

There’s really not too much to this one — no suction cups, adhesives or adjustable arms — so there’s less places for this mount to break or fail. The clip is able to mount to any vent type, whether they be horizontal, vertical, angled or circular. It’s so portable that you can take it with you and also use it as a kickstand. Simply slip a business card or something of a similar size in the clip on the back and it will stand on its own.

Versatile, simple and portable — what more could you want?

See at Amazon

Ram Mount

The Ram Mount is an adjustable crade-style mount that holds onto your Pixel or Pixel XL with four arms. It adheres to your dashboard or console via a suction cup and adjusts at its ball socket, which allows you to orient your phone any way you want it.

The holder is spring-loaded, so you can just slide your Pixel in and away you go. It’s made of a high-strength composite, aluminum, and stainless steel, so it’s durable and strong, sturdily securing your phone.

See at Amazon

How do you drive with your Pixel?

Did we miss your favorite car mount on our list? Leave us a comment below!

Google Pixel + Pixel XL

• Google Pixel and Pixel XL hands-on preview
• In pictures: Google Pixel and Pixel XL
• Pixel + Pixel XL specs
• Understanding Android 7.1 Nougat
• Verizon is the exclusive U.S. carrier for the Google Pixels
• Join the discussion in the forums!

Google Store
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Denon Heos gets Alexa integration; bark commands at your speakers or soundbar

Denon has just announced it’s struck up an agreement with Amazon that will see its Alexa voice-enabled assistant integrated to all Heos-enabled products by Q1 2017. It means Heos owners will be able to control their music systems using just their voice, with no need to use the companion app for iOS and Android.

• Denon Heos review: Multiroom made easy

And because it’s Alexa, it will be able to do more than just play music from connected services through the Heos speakers, it will also be able to answer questions, get you the latest news and control smart home products.

Denon’s Heos system currently comprises the Heos 1, Heos 3, Heos 5 and Heos 7 multi-room speakers, a Heos HomeCinema soundbar and subwoofer, Heos Drive amplifier, Heos link and Heos amp. A Heos system can already be controlled via apps for iOS, Android and Amazon Fire devices, but the latest update means you can just use your voice to control all aspects of the system.

Heos is a multi-room audio system designed to rival Sonos and Bluesound and supports high-resolution audio, something Sonos can’t do.

• Denon adds Hi-Res to Heos, confirms wider system expansion
• Multi-room audio: What is it and what are your options?
• Amazon Echo: What can Alexa do and what services are compatible?

Brendon Stead, SVP product development at Denon said: “We see the recent shift towards voice as the preferred interface for searching, retrieving and controlling music as a tremendously compelling arena where we can focus that heritage of technical excellent and innovation to deliver completely new experiecens”.

Steve Rabuchin, VP Amazon Alexa added: “We are excited to collaborate with Denon to bring hands-free voice control to premium audio products early next year. Soon Heos and Amazon Alexa customers will be able to enjoy the convenience of the Alexa voice service plug high-quality home audio – getting us one step closer to our goal of enabling Alexa voice control of every device within customers’ homes”.

Smart ping pong paddles remix music to the speed of play

I love playing table tennis, but my backhand topspin is average at best. I’ll play for an hour and grow tired of chasing wayward balls, knowing that I’ll never have a smash quite like Peco from Ping Pong. Never mind — now I can cut loose with a game of “Ping Pong FM” instead. The modified bats, which have contact microphones inside, log when you’ve hit the ball and remix music accordingly. Exchange slices too slowly and the song will drop to a lower tempo; likewise, driving the ball with some vicious top spin will cause it to speed up. You can try to match the beat or purposefully remix the music in weird and wonderful ways — it’s entirely up to you.

The brilliantly strange project was created by designers Mark Wheeler, Christopher Arzt, Alaa Mendili, Camille Durand, Kevin Bleich, Demetre Arges, Paul Williamson, Graham Bullis, Catherine Schultz, Brandon Hilliard, Les Hilliard and Tyler Coray. You can choose different music depending on your skill level (faster tracks are usually harder to beat-match) and to keep the ping pong party pumping. It’s not a mass market product, but the team says it’s looking for “a partner to help us bring Ping Pong FM to fun events or a more permanent venue.” So if you run a startup and want your office to out-cool the competition — here’s your answer.

Via: designboom, The Verge

Source: Ping Pong FM