Hands-on with the Remix Ultra Tablet, a Microsoft Surface-like Android tablet created by three ex-Google engineers
First look at the Remix Ultra Tablet — An Android tablet to get work done on — Jide, a company founded by three ex-Googlers, showed off its first device at CES 2015 — the Remix Ultra Tablet.
Context & Ripple Effects
At CES 2015, Jide — a startup founded by three ex-Google engineers — showed its first device: the Remix Ultra Tablet, an Android tablet that borrows the Microsoft Surface's premise that a tablet should be a machine you get real work done on, not just a consumption slab. The hands-on frames it as a challenge from inside the family: ex-Googlers building the productivity Android Google itself hadn't shipped.
The coverage arc around this device is what makes it worth tracking. A year later Jide pushed further with Remix OS 2.0, a Lollipop fork rebuilt for x86 PCs, before discontinuing Remix OS entirely and refunding Kickstarter backers of the Remix IO/IO+. Google's own tablet story stayed rocky in parallel — the Pixel Slate arrived in 2018, and by 2021 Android co-founder Rich Miner was reportedly back as Google's tablets CTO.
First-order effects
- Buyers at CES 2015 get a concrete answer to a question Android had left open: a Surface-style detachable running Android with a desktop-oriented interface, sold by a three-person ex-Google team rather than a platform giant.
- Jide's bet is that Android's phone-first UI is the gap, not the hardware — the Ultra Tablet's differentiation lives in the software layer Jide controls, which sets up everything the company does next.
Second-order effects
- Owning the software layer pushes Jide beyond one device into licensing: Remix OS 2.0 brings the same desktop-mode Android to commodity x86 PCs, turning a hardware launch into an OS distribution play aimed at any manufacturer.
- Google is the implicit competitor here — a third party proving Android can be a work OS pressures the platform owner to either absorb the idea or cede the productivity form factor, which is the backdrop to Google's later Pixel Slate and Miner-led tablet efforts.
Third-order effects
- Jide's eventual shutdown of Remix OS, with refunds to crowdfunding backers, is the cautionary data point: independent forks of Android struggle to survive once the platform owner moves decisively, suggesting productivity Android consolidates back to whoever controls the base OS.
- If the pattern holds, third-party 'fix Android for work' efforts become either acquisition targets or footnotes, and the durable question shifts to whether Google itself will commit to tablets — exactly what the Rich Miner reporting probes.
The trend: Attempts to reshape Android into a productivity operating system keep originating outside Google and collapsing back toward the platform owner, who alone can sustain them.