TL;DR
- Last year, Google canceled its plans for the Pixel Tablet 2, leaving the fate of the company’s Pixel stylus unclear.
- This summer, that stylus has started popping up at online retailers, now branded as the Pixel Tablet Pen.
- The pen works fine with the existing Pixel Tablet, but not all its features appear fully implemented.
Google’s approach right now towards Android on screens larger than our phones is confusing, to put it mildly. On one hand, we’ve got Android’s increasingly impressive Desktop Mode, and word that Android will essentially be taking over for Chrome OS. But then we’re also looking at this in the context of Google’s own hardware, and the canceled Pixel Tablet 2 doesn’t exactly scream commitment to this form factor. As we wait to see how Google’s efforts here evolve, we’re thinking once again about the Pixel Tablet 2, upon the discovery of an accessory that seems like it shouldn’t exist.
Alongside the Pixel Tablet 2 itself, last year we reported that Google was also working on its own stylus, the descriptively named Pen for Google Pixel Tablet.
While the hardware didn’t sound particularly impressive, looking like any generic USI 2.0 pen, it was still interesting to see Google itself developing this accessory. But with the cancellation of the Pixel Tablet 2, we had no idea what fate would hold in store for this project.
Well, speak of the devil, because the Pixel Tablet Pen is apparently out. A little earlier this summer, Computerworld got its hands on one, featuring a “Designed by Google” message down the side and sporting model number GM0KF — exactly the same number we heard from our Google source last year.
The stylus the site ordered through Amazon sure appears to match our expectations, including the button on top — which turned out to be adorned with a little Google logo.
Sadly, that button doesn’t actually do anything right now, and the sort of app-quick-launch functionality we reported on earlier has not been implemented.
But that hiccup aside, the pen works just as a USI 2.0 stylus should, and even attaches to the Pixel Tablet via magnets for convenient storage.
It’s incredibly unclear how this Pixel Tablet Pen made it from Google’s design labs to these online retailers, and equally opaque for what the product’s future looks like. Are these just the leftovers from a now-canceled production run? Has a manufacturing partner been taking a little too much initiative? We really can’t say without just wildly speculating, but we will make one safe bet: Anyone who has one of these right now is a member of a pretty exclusive club.
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