Lidl advertises the sale of the Lenovo Tab P11 tablet in its own branches. Actually, that would be a good offer for 159 euros: It uses a bright, 11-inch IPS display (2000 × 1200 pixels, crooked aspect ratio), combined with a passable Qualcomm processor of the Snapdragon 662 type (four Cortex-A73 and four Cortex-A53 cores) and 4 GB of LPDDR4X RAM. The 64 GB UFS memory can be expanded using a micro SD card.
However, the Tab P11 has a huge catch, as blogger Hadmut Danisch noted: Lenovo has already placed the tablet in End of Life (EOL) status. Regular security updates are no longer available. At best, emergency patches will be released until the end of 2023 if particularly serious security gaps become known.
Lenovo introduced the device in summer 2021 – originally with Android 10, an update to Android 11 followed. There are no updates to version 12 or 13. The Tab P11 is almost impossible to find in regular stores (from €229.80).
Pseudo security with Google Play Protect
When asked how a tablet can get to one of the largest retail chains without software support, Lenovo wrote:
“The Tab P11 is advertised by Lidl at a low price of 159 euros. The tablet is protected by Google Play Protect and can therefore be used safely. The offer includes a Lenovo Premium Care Service, which includes a special hotline with support for the first steps and start-up but also offers on-site support in order to provide end customers with all-round support.Lenovo tablet models receive security updates and 1 OS update for at least 2 years (also applies to the discussed P11 model).Premium models that were launched in 2022 will receive 3 years of security updates and 2 OS updates.”
However, Google Play Protect only means that apps from the Google Store should not contain any malicious code. It is not safe to use the tablet if you also use it to browse the Internet, for example.
With each monthly patch day, Google usually closes high-risk and sometimes critical security gaps in Android. These also affect the drivers, for example for WLAN or Bluetooth modules. The absence of such updates therefore means that the device quickly becomes a security risk. The only logical consequence is: hands off if you don’t want to flash a custom ROM on the device.
Update
27.01.2023
11:50
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As noted in the comments, the tablet can be made safe with custom ROMs, i.e. installing customized operating systems. Hobbyists can have fun with the device, but this is out of the question for the general public.
(mma)
