Researching Konnected option: Questions about Tablets/keypads and Google Home Integration

Hi:

I’m hoping to replace a very old Ademco Vantage 4110 with Konnected and have a couple of questions that I am hoping the community can give me some advice on. I plan to use Konnected with Samrtthings not Home Assistant.

Tablets for keypads:

  1. A tablet for a keypad sounds great, but I wonder if it’s something that will not be used unless you have other home integrations you want to control. Seems like in the Konnected->Smartthings model, the “Away” mode would be set after you leave the house, and the alarm will go off if not turned off before you enter the house? So what’s the point of even bothering to replace the keypad? Do I have this wrong?

  2. It seems like a lot of people are doing the tablet keypad replacement with an Amazon Fire tablet and some version of Fully Kiosk, but on the Fully Kiosk website, they advise using Fire tablets at your own risk and include “You have been warned” statements due to some of the customizations Amazon has done to the tablets. I notice some people recommend sideloading Google Play and adding Fully Kiosk it from there, but again the developer advises against this and only side loading the special builds on their site and then being very careful about updates from Amazon. How real are these issues?

  3. Most of the videos I have seen on doing this show the tablet in horizontal orientation. Is vertical a thing? Any pros and cons?

  4. For new smart home devices where it is an option, I am using matter and matter+threads with a Google Next Hub 2nd Generation. I realize no direct support to Google Home is available from Konnected, but that it can be added to Google Home via Smartthings. How well does this work. Can automations be set up in Google Home to control the alarm system (alarm/disarm, etc) create in Smartthings Home Monitor? (Why am I not using Home Assistant? Google Home meets my needs of keep it simple and I really don’t need the fine grained control that HA provides.)

Thanks in advance to anyone who tries to help me get a handle on the Konnected environment.