Lenovo lost interest in the Yoga Tab 3 Pro
by Volker Weber
The last time that Lenovo patched the Yoga Tab 3 Pro was in late January. And boy, does it need patches. They have resolved many of the crashes I was experiencing from the beginning. But there are still mysterious hangs and crashes. Hint: remove the SD card for making many of those go away. Android security patch level is still at January, 1.
While I am very impressed with BlackBerry's performance on the PRIV, Lenovo seems to have all but abandoned the Yoga Tab 3 Pro. Not quite "Pro" or is it?
Comments
Two possible options:
1. Next generation line up is shortly to be presented
2. Yoga Tab Pro line will be discontinued due to declining tablet sales worldwide
Not sure yet which is the one with higher probability.
Maybe by "Pro" they really mean "Enterprise"?
Honestly, without snark? I think their branding is messed up. They used to go with IdeaPad for consumer and ThinkPad brand for professionals. Then they introduced Yoga for convertibles. And then they messed it up with also using Yoga instead of IdeaPad, intoducing Tablet and Tab both with and without Yoga, and finally mixing that with ThinkPad. Pro just seems to mean "more expensive".
Agree that they are still working to figure out their branding, pricing, and support in the tablet world.
Also, I think that the cut-rate pricing in the Android tablet market makes it very hard for Lenovo to provide support over a reasonable length of time. They are stuck... price them high enough to pay for long-term support and no one will buy them (because people are stupid* and often don't look at the whole picture), or price them low and do 'best effort' support.
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*penny-wise and pound foolish
The Yoga Tab 3 Pro is a 499 € tablet. That is iPad Air 2 territory.
I remember buying the ThinkPad Android tablet because it was advertised as a device targeted at professional users - I believe back in 2011. It actually came with a pen already which could be used to annotate PDFs or take handwritten notes (the handwriting recognition was mediocre though). Unfortunately, it only lasted a few months and then Lenovo discontinued the whole product and of course abandoned any maintenance of the software with that...
I see a pattern...
