First, keyboard. It works mostly as I would expect, automatically hiding the on-screen keyboard by default.

But... how do I discover shortcuts? No apps seem to expose them because physical keyboards are an after-thought. The OS itself doesn't seem to have a shortcut sheet except one buried deep within settings.

There's also a bug where I get a dimmed focus scrim of some sort over the app I'm not typing into, which seems to be a holdover from the on-screen keyboard behavior.

Some shortcuts do work as I would expect (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Alt+Tab SORT OF), but others are maddening. The super key? Yeah it launches the Assistant instead of going Home. The Escape key? Does nothing as far as I can tell instead of going Back. Instead, you're expected to crane for Super+Enter and Super+Backspace respectively.

I guess they assume you will only use a specifically-crafted Android keyboard, and not any of the billions that already exist in the world.

Sometimes keyboard shortcuts are ALMOST there, like with Ctrl+T in Chrome: it opens a new tab, as you would expect, but IT DOESN'T FOCUS THE INPUT! So you can hit Ctrl+T and start typing which starts doing who-knows-what around on the new tab view. Instead, you have to manually tap/click the input to start typing a URL or search term. Possibly a bug, but maddening nonetheless.

And then there is Alt+Tab. This is just simply broken with the new mosaic layout on Pixel Tab in Android 13.

See, in earlier versions of Android, Alt+Tab would do the same thing as a double-tap on the Recents button (back when button navigation was the default), which would pop you back into the last-used app. Continuing to hold Alt and tapping Tab would correctly keep the Recents view open and focus apps increasingly farther back in the stack: good!

It seems the behavior is the same now, but there is no visual feedback. And it's also... buggy. Likely just literally untested on this layout.

Next, mouse stuff. This is less bad, I think, because a mouse is a bit less-different from a finger than an always-present physical keyboard is from using an on-screen keyboard on demand.

First, the good: I get a real, familiar mouse cursor, and even correct mouse cursors when hovering things for the most part (like on the web or when resizing things). You can generally just try to treat the cursor like a more-precise finger and it works. Mouse wheel works, even the built-in back button works!

But sometimes using a mouse feels weird, like when click-and-drag works for scrolling in most native apps, but not in web views. I feel like it should just be off all the time for mouse input.

Also, if you use the physical scroll wheel and scroll up too far, it triggers some apps' pull-to-refresh mechanism which feels totally wrong. Idk if it's just that it takes less motion to accidentally reload, but I do it accidentally all the time.

Other random observations:

While I was fine with the default display sizing/scaling when using touch, I immediately wanted to make everything a little bit smaller for mouse/keyboard use. I was able to turn things down size-wise one notch, and it feels a lot better for this display. I guess because I'm farther away and doing more split-screening.

There are some mouse affordances like a click on the clock/system icons opens the notifications and quick settings instead of requiring a swipe down.

Oh, and for the record: I had about 10x more trouble with audio devices in a video call in the browser on this tablet than I've ever had on my Linux desktop. Just saying. :) At one point literally no sound was coming in or out as long as my headphones were connected, and there was just nothing I could about it. :(

(I still blame Big Blue Button for that, though)

What I really want is some pre-packaged way to get Flathub on this. :)

I really do miss the ecosystem of apps for GNOME when using the tablet, and that's something that would absolutely keep me from using it as a "computer" long-term.

We bought it as a bigger Nest Hub that can work as a video tablet for the kids around the house, and for that, it's perfect. But it's always fun to push the boundaries, right?