Google Nexus 7 and Android 4.1 - Mini Review
anandtech.com
anandtech.com
It's the first android tablet that I'm considering, and at this price-point that means I'll probably buy it. I have a hunch I won't be the only one with that train of thought.
Google does not often run aggressive advertising campaigns, and so far they are not selling the device anywhere but in the US.
It's the Nexus Q that's US-only right now.
They are selling the device in almost all English speaking countries.
(There's a link on google.com, but that clearly worked so well for the Nexus phones)
Like Apple, Google can and probably is using their developer conference keynote to announce things to consumers.
I use my Fire at least 2 hours a day (at home and the gym) for reading and surfing. However, it has two major defects.
1) Amazon appstore only (I haven't bothered rooting it).
2) Wonky interface. It's android and you can tell. It's like using a cheap android phone, unpleasant and slow. (I have a droid bionic that is much faster, but obviously more expensive).
At this price point I can easily buy another $200 table and not feel bad about it. Plus I still get the kindle app, my amazon apps will all move over.
I use my Fire way too much not to upgrade to something better. I do this for the 7" form factor, the 10" tablet (android or iOS) simply would not be as useful.
* Amazon appstore means no The Economist app! I already paid for the magazine, dammit, and I don't want to pay again to read it on Amazon.
* No Google apps hurts, especially Gmail and Maps. The web-based alternatives are just not as nice as having the native apps.
* It's nice to have a camera - I'll get one of these to use as a video phone with my parents.
Anyone know if it'll be possible to get some kind of add-on keyboard for Google's tablet? Trying to type anything on the Fire drives me crazy.
I only have it on my phone (a Galaxy Nexus, coincidentally), but it's really great there. I think it would be very good for a tablet as well.
But something closer to the size of a book is less cumbersome and more comfortable for reading and browsing, which is what I'm doing with a tablet 90% of the time anyway.
I'm going to go out on a limb a bit here and predict that Apple will regret ignoring this segment and that they're going to eventually have to shake up their developer tooling to deal with varying form factors.
How would you read PDFs on a 7" 16:9.
I don't see PDFs running away anytime soon, unless someone comes with a better format that can support print and screen simultaneously.
Also, (once again Kindle-specific), epubs are bad for languages that are not English. Particularly, I'm thinking about Russian: I have some Russian books in epub and they look horrible. The problem is that words are never broken between two lines which leads to an absurdly jagged margin. Since Russian often has longer words than English, this is actually a big problem. I think something like TeX's automatic hyphenation would make the experience much better.
However, generating epub files also seems like it has merit. I'll have to try it some day. Is there some special tool that just extracts the content but not the style information, or do you have a special style for epub files? It would also be great if you could provide some relevant links.
I don't have a tablet right now, but I do have a Kindle. I think it's about the same size as the Nexus 7. I find it to be very convenient: I can easily hold it with just one hand when I'm laying on the bed, it fits into my tiny laptop bag and I can even put it in a coat pocket (great for commuting by train). Anything bigger would be less convenient.
I personally prefer the 10inch form factor but I can see arguments for both.
But I'm still not willing to predict whether this will be a success. I think Windows Phone 7 is extremely attractive – yet it continues to fail. This is really hard stuff to predict.
This is certainly a case of 'price as a signal'. The Nexus 7 is being repeatedly compared with the Kindle Fire in spite of its specs. This must be Google's intention. It's likely that is the only (large) market that remains for Android tablets.
By the tech media, most of whom simply want to avoid the whole boring iPad market only argument. In the real world this is direct competition for the iPad, with a very significant draw of price. People aren't generally suckers, and they don't want to pay more if a less expensive product satisfies their needs.
That's a serious question, not a complaint: I have made bad experiences with 7 inches readers for this kind of stuff, but then the Nexus 7 has a lot of pixels.
With that said, maybe it's just the readers and file formats that suck. I can read Dover books just fine and the size of the paper is about the same as a 7" screen... Go figure.
Trust me, Retina iPad's 2048x1536 is what you want. That gives you a crisp-clear and better-than-average laser-printer quality in portrait mode for one whole page on the screen. Especially true if the papers you read contain anything with color or vector graphs.
Plus iOS has the best font/PDF rendering engine in my opinion. YMMV, though.
Tegra 3 has quad CPU; Apple's A5X (iPad 3) has quad GPU. (the GPU cores aren't exactly equivalent, but Apple's is more powerful.) Apple also runs its CPUs slower - giving better battery life. This is because CPU lack of power isn't a problem (isn't even noticeable); but GPU lack is noticeable and a concern when you're using it.
Also: you get more bang per buck from GPUs than CPUs - simply because graphics tasks are generally far easier to parallelize. In result, so you can have many graphics cores running at lower clocks, to get great performance with less battery drain.
In the long-term big picture, the tablets with more CPU power will have more powerful applications written for them. This might be key for which tablets are the ones that end up replacing laptops/desktops. (In the background, a countervailing factor is that computation is moving to the GPU... so it could be that the tablet with the better GPU performance will win...)
All that said, the Nexus 7, getting the below is very impressive:
quad-core 1.3GHz CPU
340 grams
8 hour battery life (advertised...)You're comparing apples to oranges. Different OSes and devices have completely different requirements. iOS have no true multi-tasking like Android does. So Android naturally is more CPU intensive since you'll usually have more stuff happening in the background. The new iPad has a larger resolution. So it's understandable it needs a powerful GPU for smooth graphics.
You can't just compare the bang for the buck you get from CPU vs GPU looking at different OSes. The optimal point will be different for each. I'm sure google tried different setups that would fit the $200 budget. At the end of the day. All the matters is whether it can display smooth UX with a long battery life and good price. And it seems they got there.
Compared to an iPhone 4s: http://versusio.com/en/google-nexus-7-vs-apple-iphone-4s-64g...
Compared to an iPad 3: http://versusio.com/en/google-nexus-7-vs-apple-ipad-3-64gb-w...
(You have to click in the top-right corner to calibrate your screen)
The size advantage of the Nexus 7 is great for mobility (honestly dislike carrying an iPad in my bag) but the majority of areas are not going to have wifi, hampering a bit of it's advantage.
Most people who buy tablets are likely to have a smartphone so it would seem more appropriate to have tethering and use that one connection for multiple devices.
I realize that's a personal choice, but I currently own an iPad 2, Kindle Fire, 2 Kindle Touches, and I just bought the Nexus 7. I'd rather pay for one connection and tether all those devices to that connection than each one have their own.
For you.
For people like me, it IS a plus. That's why Apple makes two versions of the iPad. Not to mention tethering drains the battery.
Also, there are more popular 4G data plans now, such as T-Mobile's "No Annual Contract Mobile Broadband Passes" that you can enable on-demand, only requiring once-year usage to keep the account active. I'm not sure if other carriers offer similar plans.
I used to think that has something to do with stupidly expensive and restrictive US data plans, but you have some decent ones. The situation in Europe is still better, though.
I can argue that it doesn't provide enough benefits over the Galaxy Note! It's big enough and it's a phone, so you don't need to carry anything else. The only issue is the battery life, obviously Nexus would be of a significant advantage here.
My personal feeling is that it was released in reaction to the Amazon Fire, which Google must be pretty pissed-off about given that it has sold well and is firmly on it's own Android branch, further deepening fragmentation. It's no coincidence that they are both 7" tablets for $200.
You mean they don't? News to me.
> I think it's samsung competing with asus rather than with google.
But Asus partnered/supported/whatever with Google, not Asus on their own clearly.
A big reason the Android tablet space has sputtered is the ecosystem (not enough tablet apps, etc). By supercharging the Play store and subsidizing a product that I confidently feel will sell in the tens of millions if they can produce them quickly enough, this will be great for the entire Android ecosystem.
Already have a household with two tablets -- an iPad and an Acer A500 -- but I preordered the Nexus 7. It is perfect to give the kids in the car for them to play music/movies/games like Minecraft. That price point is simple brilliance, and it was that or an iPod Touch. I choose that.
I think the most baffling thing about this release is the constant commentary that has this only competing with the Kindle Fire. The Kindle Fire competed with the iPad -- if you wanted something to read books, look at some websites, and maybe use a couple of apps, the Kindle Fire provided a somewhat competitive alternative to the iPad. Now the Nexus 7 provides a pretty serious alternative.
With the huge sales of the GS3, the incremental but overdue improvements in 4.1, and the killer Nexus 7...this is the first time in years I truly feel bearish about Apple's sales over the next year.
With experience around the iPad (both generations) and the Kindle Fire I found outside of games the kids were having way too much fun making videos. Adults tended towards pictures but kids tended toward videos, many about tormenting each other. Which mean the old iPad and Fire sat relatively unused - there were like "if I have too".
I do like the size of seven inch tablets, its easier to one hand use them while reading at the table and eating, like a modern day paper. You would be surprised how ungainly feeling the larger iPad feels being used this way. The Fire became my table reader simply because of its form factor.
Maybe the next version will have two cameras.
I've been to concerts and football games where people are holding up iPads up high to record videos / take photos. It's a distraction and a nuisance. I say good riddance.
I have my phone / DSLR to take photos, but I regularly video chat with friends and family and appreciate the front camera more. A 7" tablet seems more suited for the latter.
How useful will this be as a GPS without internet connectivity (wifi only)?
A 7" tablet would be a fantastic GPS device form factor.
This is actually in the next iteration of maps...or rather the last iteration as it was released yesterday. If you upgrade Maps on an Android device, you get this functionality.
The point being that it isn't an 2.3, 3.0, 4.0, or 4.1 feature. It's a Google Maps feature.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/27/google-maps-offline-andro...
Apart from that, I'm very tempted. And I await Apple's reaction with interest.
iPad is a great buy for lots of reasons but handwritten note taking isn't one of them.
Q: As a developer, WebGL is great. Chrome doesn’t support it on Android yet. When?
A: It’s working internally. Issues are denial of service and GPU availability. There’s some work in Chrome OS to make it safer, and we’re looking at that right now to see if we can release it in a safe way. Some GPUs are more stable than others.