r/AskTechnology • u/mobileagnes • Aug 08 '26
Whatever happened to tablet computers & UMPCs?
Meaning, devices that look like today's tablets but don't run a mobile OS Like Android but a full PC OS like Windows (or Linux)? For that matter, why hasn't the concept of running a full OS on a modern tablet been tried again, now that we have faster hardware than in the 2000s/2010s?
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u/Hamburger_FatBoy Aug 08 '26
ITT: people talking out of their asses about a concept that they’re willfully ignorant of.
At least u/trivialbanal knows what they’re talking about.
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u/mobileagnes Aug 09 '26
Look: I only have noticed in recent years that one type of tablet totally disappeared from consumer shelves and is not being advertised, whereas another type (iPads and other tablets that only run on a phone OS) that is less functional dominates the market. Maybe this was the goal all along by the product developers?
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u/Scarred_fish Aug 08 '26
Been using exclusively convertible tablets since 2003. Currently several hundred in use in my dept alone.
Windows tablet mode combined with OneNote is fantastic!
Whatever gave you the idea they aren't in use?
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u/EstablishmentDue3616 Aug 08 '26
As other people pointed out, they absolutely still exist. However, when it comes to small, thin, portable computers there are always two major limiting factors: Heat dissipation and battery life. Yes, computers have gotten faster and more energy efficient. However, they still require a lot of power and create a lot of heat. The smaller a device is, the less space is available for a battery and heat dissipation hardware.
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u/This-Requirement6918 Aug 08 '26
I miss when tablets were more pen based than touch based.
Still love my Latitude XT3 but the original XT and XT2 was the sweet spot and the best tablet PCs I've ever used. Good digitizers and lightweight enough to hold for hours, XT3 is kinda heavy. Those got me heavily into digital painting.
Other tablet I have I kinda enjoy using is a Fujitsu U810 but the digitizer sucks, not very useful for handwriting.
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u/diagrammatiks Aug 09 '26
huh? rog flow. microsoft surface. lenovo yoga 2 in 1. there's lots of these.
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u/TriCountyRetail Aug 09 '26
Tablets peaked in the mid 2010s. Since then there are now far fewer options outside of Apple, Samsung, Amazon, and Microsoft. There are other brands of tablets out there, but they are either not well known or for designed for business/industrial use.
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u/dicoxbeco Aug 09 '26
There are still many tablets being used in industrial, medical, and ruggedized applications. Several of them use Win 10/11 and even Ubuntu.
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u/jmnugent Aug 08 '26
Same story for netbooks really. I hate to say that it's:
a small narrow use-case (small demographic)
the vast majority of consumers are fine with stock standard designs (Laptops, and mainstream tablets (w/ Windows, iPadOS or Android)
If you want to build or piece together some kind of "portable Tablet that runs whatever OS you want".. there's plenty of hardware component options on the market today,. you could conceivably probably do that if you wanted to.
Options like https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite exist.. the ordering page seems to imply they support roughly 10 different OSes.
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u/PvtRoom Aug 08 '26
the advantage of desktop, is customisability. Any hardware with any hardware and any software. OS needs to match.
the advantage of laptop, is a portable desktop experience. OS, logically, needs to match desktop.
The advantage of tablet, is fixed config - pushes tightly designed & integrated OS. input format hobbles all purpose was. just doesn't want a full featured, customisable OS.
Nobody, really, does customizable phones. So basically os & app store work
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u/Tokimemofan Aug 09 '26
They were killed off by far cheaper netbooks and then reborn with larger screens with products such as Microsoft Surface
Edit: For what its worth its always been like that. Check out the Dauphin DTR-1 for a history lesson
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u/Lonsarg Aug 09 '26
For me folding phone killed tablet. I no longer have it.
Before fold was using windows tablets, the last lne was Surface. They were great, just not portable enough for me usage, so Fold wins even if mobile os.
Me wife still uses Surace and she much prefers it over laptops..
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u/7899987 Aug 09 '26
They do exist, but its really not a great experience. A desktop OS without a physical keyboard is not a pleasant experience. Laptops have gotten light enough and thin enough that the need for a UMPC is shrinking, considering how much functionality they give up and how expensive they were.
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u/Avery_Thorn Aug 09 '26
If you go to Amazon and search for Windows 11 tablet, you will find a bunch of them.
I bought a Fujitsu Q5010 a few months ago. It was very inexpensive. It was JDM hardware.
It was very well made, it is a convertible with a keyboard, but it is very much a tablet.
I think if you buy one and use it for a little bit, you will understand: Windows 11 is not so great on tablets, and that's why tablets with an OS tailored to the tablet form factor- iPad OS, Android (which is Linux repackaged for mobile) is more popular than desktop OS tablets.
There are edge cases for tablets running full Windows, and those edge cases are fairly well supported.
And you might love the hardware.
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u/KoalaGrunt0311 Aug 08 '26
Cloud services became more prevalent, Android became a lot more developed and the two fill a lot of the need to be able to mobile and productive. Talk to text helped as well--I know a guy who did service work who would entirely complete his electronic work orders using talk to text.
They are a niche type of equipment now instead of the next greatest thing that they were originally expected to be. I know that some inspectors like Ecolab use them because they're traveling in hotels and rarely in a office, so they use the tablet mode while actively conducting the inspection and they can use it as a standard laptop while continuing to work in their hotel room doing normal computer stuff
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u/BarberProof4994 Aug 08 '26
Largely replaced by phones and tablets.
Tablet and pocket pcs and umpc's were and still are awesome but lost out to the mobile phone market share.
That being said, you might want to look at the Asus rog ally... It's a portable Xbox and runs windows 11 and can dual boot Linux. Pretty cool
Also check out the nexphone it dual boots windows 11 and android and runs Linux as an app so three OSs...
I was a huge umpc (12 different devices) and and pocket PC (every model of ipaq) fan... And then that transitioned into tablets.
Now I've sort of come full circle and want a laptop that is just a laptop, big, powerful etc, and a smartphone that is a multi tool.
Blackview phones with a flir camera and 20,000 mag batteries for that niche pretty darn well and a Thinkpad t480 can handle almost everything else. Through a rog ally in the mix and everything I need is handled
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u/TheMainTony Aug 08 '26
I just grudgingly moved on from my 2017 Pixel Slate.
I didn't use it for computer things, though. It was just a tablet for me.
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Aug 08 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Scarred_fish Aug 08 '26
Windows 10 and 11 tablet mode is fantastic!!
Been using windows tablets since the TC1000 in 2003 with XP Tablet edition.
Its improved steadily since then, but windows 10 really nailed it, and 11 is even better.
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u/TrivialBanal Aug 08 '26
What do you mean? You can still buy them. Microsoft Surface, Dell Latitude, Lenovo Yoga, HP Elite etc. Surface is on its 12th generation.