New Delhi, May 6 -- For more than a decade, Android tablets have lived in a strange limbo. They were declared dead when phones grew larger, dismissed as pandemic‑era stopgaps, and overshadowed by Apple's iPad. Yet the category refuses to fade away. In India, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Lenovo, and Samsung continue to launch new models every year, and many of them are selling far better than their reputation suggests.

This contradiction is at the heart of the tablet story today.

The post-pandemic momentum did not just "bring back" tablets; it transformed them into a standalone category that sits comfortably between the smartphone and the laptop.

Xiaomi's latest launch, the Pad 8, arrives in this context of market category that isn't booming,...