Lately, my Android tablet that I bought six years ago, back in 2019, has kept reminding me that it's no longer able to update some of the apps that I have on it. Checking up on Android versions, I found that the tablet is stuck on Android 7, while the latest ones now seem to have Android 15. So perhaps really more suprising that there are still quite a few apps on it that I am still able to use...
No real panic, as my laptop and my phone are both younger, and have been able to keep up with the necessary app updates so far. Nevertheless, I decided it was probably time to look into getting a new tablet as well.
I did some online research; but somehow, I still have this old-fashioned wish (when possible) to see what I'm buying - and perhaps be able to ask some human "tech guy" a question or two as well. So this past Thursday, I took a bus to an electronics shop "across town". I had seen online that they had tablets of the same brand as my old one (Lenovo), which on the whole I've been getting along with very well (until its recent hints of not quite being able to keep up with everything any more).
Ironically, it turned out that of the tablets on display in the shop, the one that I fell for (Lenovo Tab M11) was not in stock there - but they could order it for me, and have it delivered to a pick-up place close to where I live the very next day. So I went with that option.
The parcel arrived as promised; and after reading some basic instructions it seemed like it would be easy to set up, as I could simply copy all data from the old one to the new one using an USB cable. So I got that job started already on Friday afternoon. So far, so good...
But then, somewhere along my fiddling about with adjusting various settings etc, the screen keyboard disappeared, and no matter what I did, I found no way to get it back. Super frustrating. The first thing I did was of course to google the problem. And I did find plenty of people in various forums asking the same question (about disappearing screen keyboards). But alas no applicable answers!
So finally I decided to reset the tablet to its original settings (removing all my transferred data) and start over. That did restore the screen keyboard (phew). But since I still don't know how I came to lose it in the first place, I'm now afraid of it happening again. So now I'm taking things really slow. So not repeating the copying of data from the old tablet, but instead installing one app at a time, and trying to keep better track of what I'm doing. It's time consuming, but after all (I keep reminding myself) there's no real hurry. All my important apps are still working somewhere, even if not all on the same device...
It has taken a lot of time that might otherwise have been spent on blogging, though.
One answer found when I googled the definiton of "android":
"The Latin root androides literally means “resembling a man,” and androids really know how to blend in. Androids mostly appear in science fiction novels and films, but who knows, maybe you're friends with an android and you don't even know it. Yet."
