You told us: OS updates are a must when looking for a tablet

realme launched its first tablet, the realme Pad, less than six months ago. It wasn’t perfect by any measure, but it definitely stood out thanks to its budget price tag. Unfortunately, the company revealed last week that it wouldn’t be bringing any OS updates to the slate.

The saga made us question just how important OS updates are to people when buying a tablet. We posed this question to readers and here’s how you answered it.

How important are OS updates to you when buying a tablet?

Results

We embedded the poll in our realme Pad update story on January 12, attracting over 1,600 votes as of writing. The winner? Well, it turns out that almost 44% of polled readers say OS updates are the top priority when buying a tablet.

Tablets are generally kept for a longer period of time than smartphones, Counterpoint Research telecom analyst Tarun Pathak told us. So it’s important that these slates get OS updates so they won’t run into app compatibility issues down the line.

More tablet coverage: The best cheap Android tablets you should consider

Meanwhile, almost 40% of respondents say OS updates are one of several priorities when buying a tablet. This makes sense too, as other factors like battery life, horsepower, screen quality, and storage might be just as important to you.

Almost 14% of voters say OS updates are nice to have but not a must when buying a tablet. Finally, roughly 3% of polled readers say OS updates aren’t important at all when looking for a tablet.

Comments

• Stanley Kubrick: Wow, that stinks! My Galaxy Tab S7+ just got Android 12 this morning! I guess you get what you pay for.
• Nicolas31: I just buy realme Pad some days ago, it’s a good product, I was sure they will be updated to A12 until today… It’s the first realme product I bought and it was the last as well …
• Kira: It’s good that I steered clear of this tablet, and instead bought the Nokia T20 which promises 2 years of OS updates and 3 years of security updates. Just hope, that Nokia sticks to its promises given its recent decisions regarding its smartphone lineup.
• Zckom: If someone is looking into a tablet now, it is either Samsung or iPad you should go for. At least, Samsung provides 2 Android updates to older tablets (never changed in ages) and the newer tablets get 3 Android version updates.
• SUNGOLD: I think an update won’t be necessary if the stock software is good but I don’t know about that as I haven’t used it. Mainly, the thing that disappoints me is that it won’t get Android 12L which is designed for large screen devices like this one.
• Albin: My old Acer tablet running Android J-4.x never got any updates, bought in 2014 it worked fine with nearly all apps updated in the Play Store until about 2019 when a gradual drop-off by developers began. New versions of apps continued to work for most of what it was used for, and by that time any version updates (e.g. Android L-5.x) to the tablet’s 8GB of internal storage and 1GB of RAM would have destroyed performance.

Thanks for voting in our poll and for leaving a comment. Are you planning to buy a new tablet this year? Let us know below.