Android: The Double-Edged Sword of Google Books
My first week with the new Android-powered laptops has been a bit of a rollercoaster, but I’m starting to appreciate them, even if I’m not quite in love yet. The standout moments have come from Android itself, whether I’m using a native app or quickly glancing at my phone notifications through the laptop interface.
But let’s be real—there are some frustrating aspects. Phone connectivity can be hit or miss, app casting feels clunky, and file-sharing is practically non-functional. That’s just the interaction between the laptop and my phone; I have a whole other list of complaints about the limitations of native Android apps on a $1,000 device.
If these laptops ever take off, Android will get the credit. But if they flop, that’s where the blame will land too. Right now, it feels like success is a long way off.
Getting started
The setup process for these laptops is pure Android. It’s quick, taking just a few minutes to register biometric logins, sign into a Google account, and connect to a phone for app and backup transfers. There are slight differences between the models I’ve tested, but it mostly comes down to whether it installs every app from your phone or just the ones optimized for desktop use.
Once you dive into the OS, things can get a bit janky. Even if you set up the laptop with an Android 17 phone, maintaining a connection for features like file sharing and app casting is a challenge. Pairing my laptops with my phone has often required toggling settings on both devices, multiple restarts, and a bit of luck until they finally connect. Switching to a new Wi-Fi network has caused issues too, necessitating a restart of the laptop to re-establish communication. And yes, both devices need to be on the same Wi-Fi network and have Bluetooth enabled, so offline use is out of the question.
My Asus laptop has formed a decent connection with an Oppo phone I’m reviewing, but it still struggles to recognize other devices. My HP model hops between the Oppo and a Vivo X Fold 6, occasionally connecting to both at once. Just yesterday, it finally recognized my Pixel 11 Pro Fold after days of stubbornly ignoring it, despite being Google’s own hardware.
Going native
I’ve enjoyed parts of the Googlebook experience. It’s fantastic to access quick, compact desktop versions of apps that I usually have to use through a web browser on my MacBook. Some apps even offer unique mobile functionalities, like downloading series from HBO Max or Netflix for offline viewing, which means the Googlebook could potentially replace my Android tablet, primarily used for watching movies on flights.
However, many apps are a hassle to use on an Android laptop. Some lack desktop-optimized versions—like Slack, which is nearly unusable in a desktop setting, and Adobe’s Android apps, which are mere shadows of their desktop counterparts. Others claim to be “Optimized for desktop” in the Play Store, but that often just means they’ve stretched the UI to fit a larger screen and added basic mouse and keyboard support—“basic” being the key word, as many don’t recognize right-clicks or occasionally switch to portrait mode. The “Made for desktop” tag seems to be the only one that really matters, and I’ve only seen it on a handful of apps.
Even Google’s own apps have limitations. Chrome is the biggest offender, as it’s a browser you’ll likely use frequently. Google claims it’s a desktop version, but it lacks features found on other platforms: no profile switching, no split view for tabs, and no custom search engine shortcuts. Those are just a few of the gaps I’ve noticed compared to my daily MacBook workflow, and I’m sure there are many more.
Despite Google’s assertion that Chromebooks provide access to the “entire Play Store library,” that’s not entirely accurate. I’ve already encountered two apps that I can’t install from the Play Store—Bluesky and the login authorization tool Okta. This isn’t an Intel issue, as Google suggested; the Arm-based HP Googlebook also won’t run either app.
My laptop needs are pretty straightforward: I spend 90% of my time on my work MacBook Air in Chrome and Slack, with most of the rest in Photoshop or Lightroom. But all four of those apps are subpar on a Googlebook right now, primarily because they’re fundamentally Android apps that can’t compete with true desktop alternatives.
Casting confusion
If Android apps on your laptop aren’t enough, Googlebooks also allow you to cast the Android apps from your phone to your laptop.
Some form of Android app casting or mirroring has existed on both Windows and Chromebooks before. The difference with Google’s approach is that instead of mirroring the entire phone UI, you cast specific apps through a dedicated app drawer in the taskbar or by tapping a synced notification from your phone. Those apps still run on the phone, which receives a notification that an app is casting, but you control them via the laptop.
This method isn’t ideal for streaming music or video or running multiple apps simultaneously, but that doesn’t seem to be the goal. Casting shines when you want to quickly access an app without reaching for your phone, like updating a payment in Splitwise or sending a quick message in WhatsApp. I’ve enjoyed being able to jump in and out of phone tasks from my laptop while minimizing distractions from social media.
While casting is clever and mostly functional, I think I’ve found it useful mainly because I’m still getting accustomed to the Googlebook and haven’t set up every app yet. Google claims it’s designed for apps you might want to use from your laptop but wouldn’t want to install, but that list is pretty short, especially since installing an Android app is usually quick and easy, with minimal storage impact. Long-term, I’m not sure how often I’d want to cast a mobile app when I could just install a native version, especially since you can’t copy and paste between native and cast versions or access the Googlebook file system while casting.
Even when the cross-device connection works smoothly, some apps—especially secure ones like my authorization or banking app—won’t run. Others try to open but fail: my credit card app crashes on startup, while Bluesky displays text poorly. Casting some apps can even cause rendering issues when I open them back on the phone.
The rest is a mess too
Then there are other issues.
Continue On lets you start a task on your phone and pick it up on the Googlebook. It’s great when it works, but that’s rare. Only a handful of apps are supported, and even those trigger inconsistently. It works when I open a Google Drive document, but only sporadically in Gmail, and so far never for Calendar.
Notifications can be powerful but are messy, with phone and laptop notifications mixed together. Phone notifications open via app casting, but the system gets easily confused. For various reasons, my Slack notifications currently open a casted phone app instead of the native Googlebook app; WhatsApp notifications don’t come through from my phone; and I can either receive notifications for my work Gmail account or my personal one, but not both simultaneously.
File transfer is completely broken. While I can see my phone’s storage as a drive in the file manager, accessing those files is nearly impossible. It can take ages to load the file system, and even longer to open or transfer a single 5MB photo. It’s utterly unusable. This should be fixable, at least. Quick Share—Android’s equivalent to AirDrop—is also supported, and the same files that take forever to transfer can be shared in seconds with Quick Share.
It’s the Googlebook in a nutshell: the concept is fantastic, but the execution is severely lacking. A week in, I’m learning to navigate the quirks and frustrations of this unusual OS, finding ways to make the most of it and maximize those moments when my laptop and phone actually work together. When it clicks, it feels like the culmination of years of using Android daily.
Right now, that feeling doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should, and certainly not enough to compensate for the numerous times Android feels broken in this format. The real question is whether Google—a company known for abandoning projects when they get tough—has the resolve to see this through and make improvements. It will need its own teams to fix the issues, third-party developers to commit to support, and a rethinking of how to integrate native apps with casting from a phone.
When I first encountered these laptops a few weeks ago, I genuinely thought one might be my next device. After spending a week with them, I’m not so sure. I definitely wouldn’t buy a Googlebook in its current state, but I’m not ruling out an Android laptop in the future—the execution just needs to catch up to the concept.
