I'm wondering if the Phone and Messaging apps (from AOSP) are really required for the Pixel Tablet (tangorpro to work.

It's because both system apps only function as intended on smartphones, which have the capability of cellular service. However, the Pixel Tablet has no cellular modem, so as far as I can observe the Pixel Tablet will never have a call that will come in through the Phone app or an SMS message that will come in through the Messaging app.

I'd like to know if there's a reason why these 2 apps are on the Pixel Tablet. (I wanted to ask here, since this didn't seem suitable as a GrapheneOS issue on GitHub.)

I was curious, since LineageOS on the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (gta4xlwifi, the Wi-Fi only model), as an example of a Wi-Fi only Android device, has these apps removed from the OS.

@DeletedUser40 Now that you mention it, I don't think so? (I want to say no, but I'll still check. I can't remember very well because I basically turned the Pixel Tablet on to install GrapheneOS on it very quickly, compared to every previous Pixel device I've owned so far.)

@DeletedUser40 Here's the first YouTube video (with a timestamp) I found that shows what a default Pixel Tablet app drawer looks like.

(Some of the other videos used the "back up from an old device" feature; though more importantly didn't show all the apps available through the complete app drawer.)

I don't think they would be in stock, but I'm not sure either way. Though I don't think having them in GrapheneOS would cause any problems aside from being ugly

Yeah just disable them. Interesting that they left out the modem, a drawback in my opinion.

I would be very interested in your experience using the tablet.

  • Smart Dock in tablet mode? Or default launcher?
  • windowed applications
  • support for apps like Molly
  • what apps are dynamically resizing and adapting, which are not?
  • how is the onscreen keyboard? Does it float? Did you try others like Openboard or Florisboard?

I was able to ultimately disable both the Phone and Messaging apps. (Neither can be completely removed, since both are system apps.)

  • Phone was pretty easy, no trouble there.
  • Messaging required a bit of finagling. This requires installing another SMS-capable app, so that the default SMS app in the Setting app can be changed from the default Messaging app to another third-party SMS app. (After disabling the system Messaging app, the third-party SMS app may then be uninstalled.)

Side note

Ironically, the Phone app cannot be disabled, even with third-party dialer apps installed. On the other hand, the system Messaging app on the Pixel 5a (or likely any other Pixel smartphone device) can be disabled, as described above.

@missing-root I am planning on making a thread on my overall experience with the Pixel Tablet, though I can answer some of the point rather quickly.

  • Haven't really used the included Charging Speaker Dock that much.
    • Find it a bit inconvenient that the speaker base can only be used for power (and no audio) whenever I try to use USB OTG adapters for a wired Ethernet connection.
  • I'm using the default GrapheneOS launcher.
  • I haven't tried the UI for split screen of 2 apps. Honestly, this hasn't really crossed my mind that much.
    • However, I do remember this being rather pleasant for out-of-the-box Android from Google on Pixel Tablet. Somehow, I naturally gravitated to trying this, from the short time I was using the Pixel Tablet (to make sure it was working properly), before I installed GrapheneOS.
  • By "dynamically resizing", do you mean how well are Android apps in general optimized for tablet use?
    • Honestly, not that many, though the only places I've noticed where this makes a difference (intentional or not) are in these apps: system Gallery, system Camera, system Settings, the Cromite browser, and any app meant for stylus/handwritten notes (such as Linwood Butterfly, Saber,, or Xournal++ Mobile).
  • Molly works, if you wanted to use Pixel Tablet as a secondary Android device.
    • However, it simply looks like Molly/Signal vertically/horizontally filling up all of the screen space, though it looks rather sparse. The text and other UI components could be larger to fill up the screen area afforded by the Pixel Tablet, though I suspect that this is primarily due to the lack of upstream Android tablet support (unlike how the Signal client UI for iPadOS seems optimized for tablet usage).
  • Keyboard experience is ok.
    • I've only used FlorisBoard, and I haven't really used the default system AOSP keyboard that much yet. (Does FlorisBoard have a floating keyboard option?)

Very interesting. Give Krita a try, it is unusable on phones as it has basically the desktop UI.

so all the named apps like Xournal++ have a phone UI and not a Tablet UI? Not even the damn settings? They are tablet optimized on Pixel Tablet stock OS.

How is Cromite not optimized? I thought Chromium has pretty good tablet UI. Btw Firefox is working on one too!

Yeah Florisboard is great, all the rest is probably unusable. Gboard is said to have a floating option.

I am excited for your review!

a month later

@missing-root I'm assuming Xournal++ is simply using its phone UI, though the apps are likely designed to be adapting to fill the whole screen. Probably from a UX perspective not as optimized as apps optimized for iPad, but then again I haven't seen anything as egregious (where the viewport was shrunk to phone-size) as what was shown in MKBHD's video on Pixel Tablet. (Then again, I don't use the proprietary apps he showed in the video.)

Krita opens normally and doesn't take too long to open (though the Android splash screen time is still a tad bit longer than most other apps on GrapheneOS). I haven't used Krita, but I do have the Lenovo USI Pen 2, which works just fine with the Pixel Tablet.

Oh, I realize what you mean now - Cromite is optimized, i.e. the UI basically looks like desktop Chromium-based browsers with the tabs and all of that.

I'm aware that FlorisBoard has a one-handed mode, which can be toggled between left and right hand sides.

I'll have to think/plan out my review of the Pixel Tablet here in forum thread form first. Eventually I'd like to do a video review, but I'll need a desktop machine that can video edit in 2024 first before that happens.