Seven Days With a Nexus 7
redmonk.com
redmonk.com
One problem with this 7" form factor is that the portrait orientation isn't wide enough to display most regular web pages without having to zoom in and scroll around; it's just like browsing on your smartphone. I'm also struggling to find any software that wouldn't look and work in exactly the same way on a regular sized smartphone. It makes for a better e-book reader than a regular smartphone, but that's just about it.
There are some good things. This device exists almost solely to tie you into Google's on-line services, so if you're a Google user then the integration with their services is slick in a lot of places.
But I'm mostly interested in the quality of the software, and unfortunately it isn't that great, at least when compared to iOS. The browser is particularly poor, which surprised me. It's difficult if not impossible to reliably tap on small links. There's no visual indication of what you've tapped, or the indication is delayed, or that indication is completely hidden under your finger. Often you will tap on a link and a magnifier winder will pop up instead; I still haven't figured out how to trigger that. Taps may not register at all, and there's virtually no visual indication that the browser has begun loading a new page. It makes the browser seem fussy and unreliable, and consequently is not a joy to use. As a result, if I need to look something up then I'll grab my iPhone before I grab the Nexus. The browser is also missing some important iframe performance and usability improvements that appeared in iOS 5.
It's hard to argue with the price, but if you already own an Android phone then I'm not sure why you'd buy this device. And if you want to see the best of what modern tablet software can offer, you won't find it on a 7" 16:9 screen.
Especially Google Now, while certainly interesting, seems to be useless to me so far (or I just don't get it?).
Even after this short time I'm confident that I'll bring this thing with me wherever I go and it already feels _wrong_ to look at the phone display again.
Do yourself a favor though and install Firefox Beta. Give it a shot against Chrome - for me the experience is so much better that I'd wish for a way to uninstall Chrome.
this is interesting, because for my usage, Google Now was one of the most useful additions in Jelly Bean. i use it all the time, and love the notifications about nearby public transit, time and distance notifications for appointments from my calendar and so on.
it's pretty basic at present, but it's already useful for me day to day and if they were to open the API could be dramatically more so.
> Do yourself a favor though and install Firefox Beta. Give it a shot against Chrome - for me the experience is so much better that I'd wish for a way to uninstall Chrome.
several people have said this as well, so i will definitely be giving it a shot.
It's sometimes really frustrating to use technology in a place that is not the San Francisco...
Since I neither leave my home location often nor want to turn on web history, for either of my accounts, it's relatively useless for me.
- Commuting times to several places
Here I don't know where it takes the address from. In the beginning it listed a couple off-by-one addresses for friends and family, by now (how..?) it resolved two of these addresses to contact names, so I have now a travel plan to visit my brother, dad or my company. It also includes a wrong address of my in-laws.
This is impressive, technically, but a little creepy and totally, 100% useless for me. I _was_ at these places, but I really don't plan to go there again anytime soon.
Why is this listed?
- The weather, for the local town I'm in. The Standard Thing (tm)
- A Google Translate widget to translate between German and English. I .. feel insulted. ;-) I used Google Translate a lot, in Israel, for Hebrew <-> English. German <-> English? I can do that myself, thank you very much.
Why is this listed?
- A widget that lists the exchange rate between EUR and ILS. Yes, I used to be interested in that, up until I moved back to Germany more than a month ago.
Why is this listed?
- The time and day of week. Off by one hour.
Again - no clue why. But this at least gives a hint:
Somehow Google decided that I'm still living in Israel. It shows me currency exchange rates, the time at 'home' and a translator widget (why between english and the local language though?).
My problem: I don't want _any_ of that. Mostly not because I don't feel that they add anything of value (they don't, for me), more because ~everything~ listed there is irrelevant/wrong. Since the whole idea of Google Now seems to be a magic sauce trying to find stuff that you want to be informed about, I'm unable to 'fix' my data set here.
Try latitude -> location history -> menu button -> change home location.
I wasn't able to follow your instructions (I tried finding a setting like that on my mobile or the tablet, but failed), but the location history (that clicked!) website's dashboard allowed me to redefine 'home'.
Sorry if they're off, apparently it's different on phone then tablet and I extrapolated from what I've heard. On phones, usually 'location history' is a drop-down menu in maps (the upper left button that says 'maps' is actually a drop-down).
>A: Mostly, I use it more. It’s just small enough that it will fit in my shorts pocket (though admittedly sagging them to dangerously teenage levels), so if I’m walking over to lunch at the sushi bar, I’ll bring it. It’s replaced my Galaxy Nexus as the device I carry around the house or the property for browsing, Twitter and so on. And once I start traveling again, it will be making every trip, not just the long haul ones the Xoom was relegated to by the end. And it will replace my MBA for the short duration visits, an up and back to NYC, let’s say. In short, I think Tim is correct: the 7″ form factor is the correct one for personal use. My personal use, at least. Portablility might be its most compelling feature.
The best computer is the one you have with you.
best summary i've heard of the device's utility. the nexus 7 may well be the cameraphone of tablet devices.
If you aren't then the existing combination of phone/tablet or phone/MBA still seems optimal.
Android 4.1 is a pleasure to use and is snappy. The hardware is nice, but I had to call for a replacement since my screen started to peel off after about 10 days.
unlike when i bought my Xoom, i'm reasonably optimistic that we'll see tablet applications and updates arriving shortly. as chris dibona has said before, the attractiveness of the platform is basically a direct function of how many are sold. with initial sales at least perceived to be promising, i think we'll see more announcements like EA's in the days ahead:
http://phandroid.com/2012/07/30/ea-updates-dead-space-with-n...
and if i'm being honest, it was easier to take a flyer on a $250 device that may seem more applications coming than a > $500 alternative.
> Android 4.1 is a pleasure to use and is snappy. The hardware is nice, but I had to call for a replacement since my screen started to peel off after about 10 days.
this is the second time i've heard someone mention this, and depending on how widespread the problem is, it could certainly impact sales negatively. mine has had no such issues thus far, but i guess i'll see what happens in three days.
I have to strongly disagree with all of the lauding about Chrome on Android.
Chrome on Android was terrible on my Galaxy S2. Chrome on Android was terrible on my Galaxy S3. In both cases perhaps because Samsung heavily optimized the basic, unbranded browser (full hardware acceleration, etc), but also because Chrome has some bizarre rendering behaviors (for instance it separately sizes text on sites like HN or Reddit).
So I got a Nexus 7. Pretty powerful device, and I was used to browsing full sites like The Verge and The Toronto Star with no issue. Load Chrome -- they removed the unbranded browser -- and it is atrocious. Huge, multisecond pauses on either of those sites (http://www.theverge.com and http://www.thestar.com - be sure to go to the full sites and not the gimped mobile version). Scrolling is a hilariously bad affair.
Note these observations online and am given the standard "oh no must be your unit, etc. etc." Only my second Nexus 7 was just arriving (from Google Play, while the former came from Staples, fwtw) -- exactly the same behavior.
I do not understand the expressions of love for Chrome on Android. Perhaps it's the chrome of the browser -- bookmark management, etc? I don't generally use that but instead simply punch in auto-completed URLs and browse sites, and there it is profoundly, catastrophically deficient.
Those are only a couple of sample sites, but there is an endemic inefficiency of Chrome on Android that makes it unusable as a primary browser. Metacritic -- forget about it. I could go on and on.
I have to think that people who like Chrome on Android must actually stay within the ghetto of mobile sites, where its inefficiency is less pronounced and things like the bookmark manager stand out more. The massive delays and largely non-functional scrolling on richer sites just makes it hard to believe that people are praising that browser.
You're a web browsing snob of discerning and demanding tastes, we get it.
It's plainly evident by your own admission that the browser is widely lauded in the first post that Chrome on Android is not unusable. Your self-aggrandizing generalization about "people who like Chrome" and the "ghetto of mobile" sites is ridiculous.
Honestly, you should be happy. If your favorite places on the web keep rendering poorly in Chrome it will surely keep your requests from mingling with those of undesirables in the cache.
Personally, I'm in line with the parent and find Chrome to be a pleasure to surf with. I've found the theverge.com to be a horrible mobile experience regardless of the browser.
Miscellaneous issues that are shared with chrome on ios also abound. On page open, the focus doesn't manually switch to the address/search bar and requires a separate click. What a disaster. The last closed tabs are buried under the top sites that manage to be insanely hard to customize. The bookmarks cut off text and don't have any way to switch to a list view.The only redeeming feature is the ability to swipe across the screen to switch tabs.
On large pages the browser performs slowly and crawls along while Firefox beta scrolls admirably and doesn't deliver blank white spots. This way fine back in 2007 on the iphone but in 2012 it is a little ridiculous. Firefox Beta is pretty good although I would like a new tab button and some way to swipe across the screen to switch between tabs.
Flash also works fine and hq video isn't painless at all.
Why would you use the official Twitter client on Android when the incomparable Twicca[1][2] is available? I'm not sure how well it works on a tablet but its UI is the best Twitter UI I've seen anywhere. This is especially refreshing given the significant disagreements I have with Twitter's designers on what makes a usable site. It also has quite a large number of official[3] and unofficial[4] plugins, my favorite being the Google+ cross-poster[5].
Note: the author's English is charmingly bizarre (it used to say "retweeted by 1 people" and "retweeted by 2 peoples"), so "twicca is lightweight but it is not cheap" means it's not "cheap" on features. It is a free application.
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.r246.twicca...
[3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Tetsuya+Aoya...
[4] https://play.google.com/store/search?q=twicca+plugin&c=a...
[5] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.zakky.twic...
i'll check out Twicca, but the primary reason i use the official client over nice alternatives like Tweet Lanes [1] is the integration with Android itself, i.e. notifications, and so on. they just keep sucking me back in. but i'm more than willing to give it a shot.
[1] link to the .apk: https://t.co/rkE4sw0j
but if you do, then you're right: the Ifttt recipe is your solution.
You mean like new @replies, DMs, and so on? Do other clients not do this?
Haha, I'd say I'm in a pure Apple household (though I run a personal Ubuntu server... perhaps I'm disqualified). I'm still considering the Nexus 7 even with the iPad "mini" on the horizon. I think there's something to be said from having familiarity with the different devices/eco-systems (especially as a developer). The reviews are also hard to ignore.
if you've heavily invested in Apple media, the benefits to an Apple device would probably outweigh any individual feature wins of the Nexus 7.
if you're more of a casual Apple household, meaning just hardware and no media, the Nexus 7 is likely a fine choice.
I think a lot of it is people replacing older PCs with new Mac laptops, picking up the AppleTV because it is so cheap then finally buying an iPad as more of a curiosity.
A lot of them didn't really pay much attention to the competition because they weren't serious, considered choices.
It doesn't work for me, the hotspot isn't listed on the Nexus among the many local networks, and without other wifi equipment I'm unsure where the fault may lie; so many possibilities.
It fits in one of those easily enough. You don't that I carry it, it's about the same weight as my (too stuffed) purse on the other side and barely noticeable.
the fit is tight, however, meaning that while i'm fine walking to a coffee shop with them in there, i'm not walking around all day or going for a hike with them pocketed.