Google Unveils The New Nexus 7 Android Tablet | Hacker News Reader

Google Unveils The New Nexus 7 Android Tablet

techcrunch.com

244 pointstalhof8167 comments

Like many of you here I have a Nexus 7. I got it as a present cuz I didn't see why I'd need a tablet what with having a smartphone and nice laptop. I could never justify the price of an iPad cuz I'm not really that well off.

The Nexus 7 is a joy to use. It's light, the screen is great - it's quick (I got my daughter a Kindle Fire and sometimes you can see that device straining a bit: eg. load times on Despicable Me (I know! I know!) The Nexus 7 battery is great and I love getting the very latest Android s/w pushed to the device. It's a great device for consuming media: books, audio, video. Stock Android is a nice reference platform. Can't wait for Jelly Bean 4.3 real soon now. I would recommend a Nexus 7 to anyone considering a tablet on a budget. I just have to figure out how I can justify splashing out on the 2013 Nexus 7 :) I know I must sound like a total shill but I really was surprised at how far Android has come and how polished and optimized it is on the Nexus 7.

That is all :)

Fuck the haters, Despicable Me is awesome.

And yes, when I picked up and handled my Nex 7 for the first time I thought to myself "this is an iPad mini". I was absolutely flabbergasted that they could push a device of this quality out at the quasi-magical $250 price point.

Then Apple came out with a real iPad mini, and I'm still glad I got the Nex instead. Top-notch in terms of performance, ease of use, portability and clean design.

There are Despicable Me haters? They probably just need banana.

Or they could just go to New York New York Las Vegas and see that stealing the small Statue of Liberty is no small feat...

What with all the security in Vegas casinos, stealing the real one is probably easier.

I should add that Jelly Bean was the first version of Android that I noticed to lose all traces of lagginess and be comparable response-wise to any iPhone or iPad I've used. Apple nailed this UX from the get-go, it took a while for Google to nail this I feel; also perhaps unoptimized Android devices were not helping matters. My HTC and Nexus, both with Jelly Bean are as smooth as, um, butter.

I started with a Nexus One and have purchased 5 android devices altogether. I'd consider myself a Google fanboy, and rely heavily on their service platform.

But the next tablet I get will have to be an iPad or Surface Pro, because I make music and all the tablet-based music software worth talking about is on iOS. Google largely ignored the creative market in developing Android and made no effort to address concerns about latency or similar issues. The only software of note to appear on Android in the last 2 years is Image Line's well-respected Fruity Loops audio/MIDI sequencer, but I'm so jaded that I can't be bothered to install it.

Result? A huge, thriving ecosystem of interoperable audio & MIDI apps on the iPad, with zero incentive to switch back to Android any time in the foreseeable future. Android becomes identified as a consumer-only platform, iOS as a producer platform. The number of musical artists that use an iPad is tiny compared to the overall consumer market, but artists tend to be vocal about the tools they use and are delighted to be seen using them, which I think has about 100x the PR value of any given commercial depicting actors having a good time with their consumer device.

It's a bit surprising that sound latency on Android is as bad as it is. It's not just apps for audio production that suffers, most any kind of audio toy is useless.

For people who want to tinker with audio on Android, it's possible to swap AudioFlinger with PulseAudio[1] for lower latency (20ms vs 176ms)[2], but so far you have to build and flash your own AOSP image, so it's not exactly plug and play.

[1]: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Ports/An...

[2]: http://arunraghavan.net/2012/01/pulseaudio-vs-audioflinger-f...

> but so far you have to build and flash your own AOSP image

I think you're going to see more people doing this, with the Nexus devices and the Transformer tablet. Maybe I've overestimated the popularity of the ASUS-branded hardware, but I have always had the best of luck with my TF-101 getting current ROMs and updates from the third-party vendors like TeamEOS.

Now that TeamEOS is gone, there's a void, so more people are probably going to learn to build the ROMs. There are even people picking up the torch[1] with the TeamEOS source code, taking their branches and picking up where they left off.

I know as consumers, we all want vendors to support their products... but as members of Open Source community, I see it's irresponsible to depend on them exclusively for forward motion, progress, and updates, and for freedom's sake it shouldn't be an impossible proposition to compile and flash your own ROM. (Just think if you bought an x86 computer with Ubuntu or Fedora and you couldn't re-OS it.)

[1]: https://github.com/timduru/

That's great to hear. Apple have always targeted content producers (music/video/graphics/...?) and I'm glad that this has carried over to their tablets.

I hope in time that Android gets the same amount of attention because those apps will eventually bolster the Linux ecosystem in general. It's great to hear that Fruity Loops is available for Android, I remember a Mac-head showing me an early version of it like 15 years ago! Ouch, I feel old.

I constantly hear people make this claim, but in my experience, it is not true. I have owned tons of Android devices and they have really gotten a lot smoother and responsive, especially with 4.1/4.2 releases, but they still don't come close to iOS.

I have tried tons of different roms on the Galaxy Nexus and the factory roms on the One X, One, and S4, but they just don't have the iOS level of smooth.

Agreed. I have never once experienced iOS level smoothness from my Note II, and I've run both stock TouchWiz 4.1 and a CM 10.1 4.2 variant called Liquidsmooth.

Android is great, I wouldn't trade back to iOS for the world, but I've just learned to accept the hiccups, lag and odd behavior that hurts my "suspension of belief" (or whatever term describes the ability to believe that we're actually 'moving' things by touching a screen).

I just flashed 4.3 onto my Nexus 4, and I'm happy to say those annoying hiccups are virtually non-existent now! They really bothered me before. Chrome and Facebook were the apps I most noticed the stuttering in.

Are you sure this is not only due to the fact that you've flashed a new rom (you say flash so it's not OTA, I suppose) so the system is freshly installed?

I should try it on my Nexus S that has become sluggish as hell (and I've tried different custom roms)

The thing about the Galaxy Nexus is that it's essentially a Samsung Galaxy sII but with 2.4x more pixels to push with the same GPU.

There are some optimizations that iOS can make that Android can't, but the gnex in particular I think is slightly crippled.

I don't want to over-generalize based on one data point, but on my Galaxy Nexus I noticed that 4.2 pretty handily undid all of the improvements that 4.1 managed in this arena. It was indeed a paradise of smoothness for that one point release, though.

I'll be building 4.3 for the gnexus after it syncs, so we'll see how it is.

Anyone wondering, it's performing faster than 4.2 on the gnexus imho. Battery life is the same though. Superuser is problematic unless you undo a change in one of the /davlik files[1]. That makes the system partition mount without nosuid as it did before Android 4.3. The other solution is uglier, using SuperSU (which is closed source) and runs as a hacky service that most apps are not compatible with yet.

[1] https://android.googlesource.com/platform/dalvik/+/9907ca3cb...

IMHO 4.2 should never have been shipped for the Galaxy Nexus. Just too slow. I upgraded to a Nexus 4 and 4.2 is fine there, but will 4.4 be fine? Nobody knows.

I did not notice that. You could very well be right. It'd be nice if Google could release some cold hard performance figures. Maybe I could, er, Google it.

Since I got my ipad mini, I have not really used my nexus, only for debugging my apps. The battery, screen, speed and so were all worse, and I never got used to the os as much as I have for iOS.

If I didn't need an android tablet, I probably would not have one.

Uh, the iPad Mini's screen is 1024-by-768/163 PPI. The first-gen N7's is 1280x800/216 ppi. The N7's screen is noticeably nicer.

I can't speak to battery or speed as I haven't had a lot of hands-on time with the Mini, but I will note that the N7's slimmer aspect ratio means it fits nicely in a pocket, while the iPad Mini just plain doesn't.

Resolution is not the only criteria to judge a display. Color accuracy, calibration, contrast, gamma, viewing angles are also important.

I have both devices and I can comfortably say Nexus 7's display is much worse. Images appear washed out, it's not as bright as the iPad mini, it has worse viewing angles etc.

Screen "niceness" constitutes far more factors than just DPI.

It could be contrast ratio, colour gamut, brightness, subpixel quality, viewing angles, reflectivity of coating, susceptibility to oils/fingerprints...

(I haven't used either, I'm just saying)

I've used both. I prefer the Mini's screen to the old N7: larger viewing angles, better color saturation/accuracy, less backlight bleed, smaller bezel.

The iPad Mini Retina will likely be the perfect small tablet for most users.

I just can't look past the poor resolution of the iPad mini - and on that basis alone, I would not recommend it to anyone, except people with very poor eyesight. I agree that DPI isn't everything. I think of it as like "stock" to a soup. Without stock (or with awful stock), you have no soup. The rest of the ingredients are important, but stock is king. iPad mini has foul tasting "stock" ;) Brightness is important, but not fundamental, viewing angles are less important when you're looking straight on or from a slight angle (ie. 99% of the time). I didn't notice a huge difference on contrast ratio (eg. differentiating dark colours readily). I would not recommend the current iPad mini to anyone with reasonable eyesight.

> viewing angles are less important when you're looking straight on or from a slight angle (ie. 99% of the time).

I find that with the ipad mini viewing angles actually do seem kind of important, because—unlike a phone—I very often use the ipad mini without holding it, whether sitting on a table, on my lap, or propped up against something while I watch a video. The result is that one doesn't have nearly the same easy control over viewing angle one has when hand-holding a device...

And what's the price difference? :P

Yeah, this is the thing I could never get my head around. I know that the iPad mini is superior in many ways, but I just can't see how people can justify spending the extra money! The iPad mini is £110 - £190 more expensive, depending on which size you get. That's just too much IMHO.

iOS is user-friendlier in the start, that's true.

Android indeed has a "bigger" learning curve which make people more efficient in a short time for doing things with their phone/tablet.

Easy example, Tasker, Gravity screen, NFC and Autovoice...

The original Nexus 7 is known to have extremely poor color calibration.[1][2] Both the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 look terrible to me, everything is very blue-looking. I took a look at a Kindle Fire HD and a Nexus 7 at a store and the difference is immediately obvious.

I can't stand seeing pixels, so the iPad Mini is not an option, but I'm also not willing to spend money on a tablet with lousy color. Hopefully Google gets it right this time.

[1] http://www.displaymate.com/news.html#8 [2] http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57479059-94/expert-claims-g...

That's like saying that all 8MP sensors are better than all 5MP sensors just because they stuff more pixels on the sensor. Of course, that's not true.

Compare any two items in the same category that are 65% apart in price and it probably wouldn't make a lot of sense to choose the cheaper one.

16GB Nexus 7 is $269, 16GB iPad mini is $329, the difference is 20%.

The updated 16GB Nexus 7 is $229. That's a 30% difference.

You're also missing the fact that until this update, the Nexus 7 16GBs were only $199, which is a whopping 40% difference.

My mistake, I looked at the price in the Play Store and looked at the wrong one.

No worries! I completely understand.

Actually, the story says that the 16GB nexus 7 is $229, so the iPad mini is 44% more expensive.

The version of the Nexus 7 I was speaking of is $199 or less (Amazon even has the 32GB for $199 right now). The new version is a little more expensive at $229, but blows the specs of the iPad Mini out of the water.

I'm very happy with mine too - I only got it after I bought a dirt cheap 7" Android device for testing purposes (a client was reporting issues on one of their applications with users who were using Android devices) and realised that "if this wasn't dog slow and had higher resolution it would be the perfect thing for some of my work/play needs".

I have noticed it seems to be feeling slower over time, though not so much so that I've made an effort to look into it, particularly when starting larger apps or updating apps in the background while doing something else.

The original Nexus 7 filesystem drivers weren't issuing TRIM commands when deleting files, so write performance became much slower (in some cases, <1MB/s). LagFix is a rooted app to fix it, and there are alternatives for non-rooted devices as well.

http://www.howtogeek.com/164106/why-is-my-nexus-7-so-slow-8-...

My solution (which includes some steps described ITA) after struggling for while: 1) get rid of multiple users 2) free up a lot of space 3) run ForeverGone.

#1 was a step backwards, but so was horrible performance. Now things are running smoothly.

I noticed my Nexus 7 getting very slow, found this same information, and ran ForeverGone. There was no noticeable improvement. I then did a factory reset. It may have been a bit snappier at first, but within a couple days it was slow again.

Mostly, I noticed jerkiness and lag scrolling web pages. I'm not sure what I'll do now. Between that and a huge stuck pixel that won't go away, I regret buying this Nexus 7, which was my second one after the screen broke on my first.

I got a dirt cheap clone (I don't remember how much exactly ) from a Chinese reseller from Amazon UK and the screen was crap ^shudder^ and the touchscreen had a glitch ^double shudder^ but it was Android and it was reasonably quick.

These things you really need to try before you buy.

There's another thread here about the potential slowdown issue. Same'll happen to a Mac or PC I reckon after a while. I've not noticed it. When you think about it Android tablets are pretty new so they haven't been used to their full extent, nor to the end of their lifespan.

Aye, the cheap one is fine for the specific purpose (testing those issues in the stock android browser an a cheap device) but would be infuriatingly slow for my day-to-day use of the Nexus 7. The slowdown I've noticed is only really when I'm asking it to do more than one thing at once (usually updating apps while browsing heavy pages or stating other apps) which is fairly rare anyway so I'm not particularly concerned ATM.

Not so psyched to see that it's still got a 16:10 screen. One of the things I love about my iPad mini is that it's actually usable in portrait mode for reading PDFs and Word documents on the go. That said, I'm hoping the increased screen resolution will make it practical to just zoom out a bit more and just hold the device closer to my face...

Also really happy to see the LTE. I think having LTE on the go is crucial, and a 7-8" tablet is the right place to put it. Much of the time I use my iPad as an LTE hotspot (it get way better battery life in that use-case than any stand-alone LTE hotspot or tethered phone).

I recently (just a few days ago) picked up the 9 inch tablet from B&N (Nook HD+) just for reading PDFs. After zooming in to trim off the margins, I find them very readable on this device (similar resolution to the new Nexus 7).

Question, however, about the need for LTE on a tablet. Assuming you have your phone with you normally, why not just use your phone's hotspot feature to get the tablet online? Or, turn on bluetooth tethering if you want to have your tablet online all the time, with minimal power drain.

It's a question of optimizing "time to online." I find my iPad Mini to be my "go-to" device, the thing that I pull out of my bag most often. So for me the extra time it would take to connect and power up via Bluetooth wouldn't be a win.

Also, I'm not good at recharging my devices and I really like it that I can use tethering heavily on my Mini for several days to a week between recharges. I already kill my phone battery every day as it is--depending on it even more for tethering or surfing in line at the Starbucks would mean mid-day recharging.

Bluetooth tethering seems to be something phones don't bother to support (Windows phones don't as far as I can tell, and some but not all Android devices do).

I tether via WiFi rather than paying extra for a tablet with its own cell radio (and paying extra for a separate data account for it) - I carry an "emergency" battery that is enough to cover those occasions when I need to use it long enough for it to kill the phone's battery (though others may find that inconvenient).

I do the tethering thing with the Galaxy Nexus. There really is no need for a dedicated modem in the tablet, at least not in my case.

I think one reason consumers prefer devices with their own modems is (intentional?) UI friction which makes "tethering" less convenient. In stock Android you cannot configure a device such that it will "use wireless if available, tether if not," which is what you really want to happen. It is possible to achieve something like this with third party apps, however.

Do you use such app? Could you point me to it?

Sure. There are multiple components, and I think it requires root (can't recall for sure):

* Force the phone to enable bluetooth tethering on every boot with Bluetooth Auto Tether: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.refluxa.and...

* Install Bluetooth Auto Connect on the tablet, which allows for the tablet to connect to the phone automatically: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.refluxa.and...

* Use an automation app (I prefer Llama https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.refluxa.and... ) to configure Bluetooth Auto Connect to happen when (e.g.) "screen on" and "wireless not connected", and configure it to disable Bluetooth Auto connect when "screen off" or "wireless connected." Add small delays here to avoid race conditions.

It all seems needlessly complicated, but the end result is that the device will tether if it is awake and cannot find wireless, and it will disconnect from the phone when it goes to sleep or when it does find wireless, which is exactly what I want.

I don't think the ratio would impact that too much. If anything it's the 7" vs 10" size that would hurt your ability to read PDF's and such.

Sorry, I meant to say I had an iPad mini. I find it easier to read PDFs in portraid mode on that than on the surface RT (though cleartype is partly to blame there).

Note that the previous Nexus 7 with mobile doesn't allow tethering, and/or obeys carrier requests to not tether, something they didn't advertise at all last time. The Nexus devices are advertised as open but they simply are not a general purpose computer. I can't wait until Ubuntu and Firefox are common on mobile platforms.

I understand that you're giving a personal opinion, however worth noting that the average usage of tablets dramatically favors watching movies and videos over reading Word documents and PDFs.

Having both Nexus 7s and an iPad, I would say that I hugely favour the former for watching movies, and they are essentially equal when browsing the web (speaking purely of the aspect ratios. Safari on the iPad is a dramatically better web browser, so for that reason I usually favor the iPad). Personal opinion, of course.

Agreed. I have a Surface and enjoy not having the videos I watch on it be letterboxed

>however worth noting that the average usage of tablets dramatically favors watching movies and videos over reading Word documents and PDFs.

The average use also favors using the web over watching movies and videos, which works better in the 4:3 format.

which works better in the 4:3 format

The entire computer and laptop market has overwhelmingly endorsed 16:10 and 16:9, and most content correspondingly adapted. This notion that the web was built for 4:3, or is somehow superior on it, seemed to rise out of nowhere the moment Apple happened to announce the iPad as 4:3.

The web is still mainly vertical with limited horizontal space used. This is for readability, since it's hard to keep track of very long lines. Shorter screens were chosen because they are a lot cheaper to make than squarer ones. But when Google made their aspirational $1,300 web browsing computer, the Chrome Pixel, it had a 3:2 aspect ratio because that's a much better experience.

That "cheaper to make" thing is based upon absolutely nothing whatsoever, likely as a repurposing of the somewhat factually based reason why 16:9 panels overtook 16:10 (though that's completely irrelevant in this context, given that the Nexus is 16:10).

Regarding the Pixel -- a device with shockingly little deployment (and whose form was driven by a lot more than the idea screen size) -- 3:2 is 1.5:1. The iPad is 1.33:1. 16:10 is 1.6:1. Meaning the Pixel is significantly closer to the ratio of the Nexus 7 than the iPad. So what now? What does that prove?

Now as to the web being "mainly vertical", the single and only place where that is true are a few spartan text blogs. Content sites are a rich cacaphony of horizontally distributed content -- Wikipedia is informational sidebars of all sorts, as an example. I find those experiences dramatically better on wider screens.

A15" diagonal screen has much less area at 16:9 than at 4:3. That's why it's cheaper.

Anyway, how can you say websites are more horizontal than vertical? On any kind if site, you are much more likely to have to scroll vertically to get what you want. That means increasing visible vertical space improves your experience more than adding horizontal space will.

Edit: I run my web browser in the left half of my 1920x1200 screens because when I maximize them I feel like the window is much too empty. So there's room for preferences, of course. But I think most content on the web is taller than it is wide.

The punchline here is, of course, that the iPad is the one with the wider screen.

Laptops and desktops are (almost) always in landscape mode, don't have to deal with virtual keyboards occasionally taking up large parts of the screen and have subtly (and not so subtly) different use cases.

I agree with the point that content providers adapt but it's not a case of what's right for one type of content, it's what's good for one type of content on a specific device type, possibly in a specific situation.

(Worth noting that Apple certainly don't believe 4:3 is some universal "right" ratio - the iPhone 5 is 16:9 as are Macs, 4:3 is only the aspect ratio for the iPad)

I won't make baseless claims about "the average user," but I personally very rarely maximize a browser window on a desktop or laptop monitor. The aspect ratio of a PC monitor is, to me, much less relevant than for a tablet, because tablet displays are much smaller and most tablet platforms focus on fullscreen apps.

So 4.3 fixes neither the ad-hoc WiFi issue #82 nor the audio latency issue #3434. I will continue to pass as those are the deal breakers for me.

It’s amazing – these two have been pending for more than 4 years. Google hasn’t cared to even comment on the former while thousands of users beg them to: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82

> So 4.3 fixes neither the ad-hoc WiFi issue #82 nor the audio latency issue #3434.

Low latency audio is "fixed" on the Android side, it needs better device support though. Apps need to actually support the fast path as well, which I don't think many do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3kfEeMZ65c

I don't know if the new Nexus 7 supports the low latency audio path, though. But Android itself does have low latency audio, it's a device-specific thing though.

Yes, there has been progress on this (separately on input latency and output latency). I don't think all the improvements have been pushed out yet (even on supported devices).

Is Ad-Hoc networking useful for anything other than creating an access point called "Free Public Wifi" and then installing viruses on the Windows machines that connect?

(OK, most wireless chipsets can simulate Infrastructure-mode networks these days, so not supporting Ad-Hoc mode doesn't help much in that department.)

You misunderstand. You can already create access point on Android. The bug is about Android not being able to connect to ad-hoc WiFi networks (say, one created on your laptop whose chipset doesn't support infra-mode). (edit: Also want to mention that iOS devices have supported this ad-hoc networking from Day 1).

There are a number of use-cases reported on that bug: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82

I don't misunderstand, but I did forget the obligatory smiley at the end of the comment ;)

7 million Nexus 7 units have been sold so far; I doubt those bugs are major issues for those purchasers.

Sorry, I meant to post this in the thread on Android 4.3, not this one on Nexus 7.

In that case, your gripes are valid.

2012/2013 Comparison Chart http://i.imgur.com/Q6XORYy.png

GPU review (Adreno 320, in the Snapdragon S4 Pro) http://www.anandtech.com/show/6112/qualcomms-quadcore-snapdr...

Less powerful than GPU in iPad 3 (or iPad 2 in some benchmarks); but of course, it's got a smaller display too.

My laptop from several years ago has a 1920x1200 screen. WTF can I get a 7" tablet with one, but not a laptop, in this day and age?!

My work laptop has a 14" 1366x768 display.. The pixels :(

Since the new LCDs are very expensive, putting them on a laptop with 14-16" screen might make the laptop price go above a certain threshold for buyers. Tablets and smartphones with smaller screen might give the buyers a sense of "not too expensive".

Samsung will soon have a 3200x1800 display in their ATIV Book 9 Plus.

Mac + Retina.

Yes, you're right. There's also Google's Pixel Chromebook thing.

But it just boggles my mind that that's about it in terms of laptops with decent screens.

I use Linux, and don't want to pay the extra cash for the Apple logo, so that's not really a good option. The Google thing looks interesting, but the local disk is really limited.

Great specs. The bezel feels a bit big and clunky though. I suspect there's no easy way to hide the battery needed for the hi-res screen...

That was my first impression, the top of bezel looks huge in comparison with the rest of the device.

It's supposedly designed to hold comfortably in landscape. It coincides with the chromecast release, where your primary layout is going to be landscape to match the t.v. display.

It definitely seems to be designed for landscape - just look at the orientation of the word Nexus on the back. I'm not sure I agree about the Chromecast thing though, I think it's more that the media they want you to buy is better in landscape (possible exceptions being books, a matter of preference, and some games). Chromecast seems to be about the device specifics not really mattering, it's not a mirror so it doesn't need to be the right way or even awake.

The youtube and netflix streaming aren't orientation specific, but the tab sharing and maybe even other media options like chrome games (http://www.chromeexperiments.com/) are.

Ah, gotcha. I think I missed them demoing tablet chrome tab sharing, seems obvious it'd be included but I didn't think of it. Really neat though.

The biggest advantage of Nexus over iPad is the plastic back that the Nexus have. I hate, absolute hate, loate the meta back of iPad. It sends shivers down my body everytime I touch it.

Same here!

Specifically, although I am not bothered by the exteriors of an early-2011 iPad and a mid-2011 Mac mini, I returned a mid-2013 Macbook Air because it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up to touch its aluminum-alloy exterior.

About when was the iPad that you hate made?

My email is in my profile. If you give me a way to contact you, I would update you on any new information I get about this issue.

The and the other mentions I've seen don't take about wireless capabilities so I assume it hasn't changed, butin case anyone here is better connected than I and knows different: have they updated the WiFi hardware to support 5GHz 802.11n as well as 2.4GHz?

I've loved using my Nexus 7 for the last year. Great device at a brilliant price point. Really looking forward to using 4.3 on this too.

The biggest upgrade for me is "[that] battery life offers 9 hours of HD playbook and 10 hours of web browsing." I can only manage about 4 hours for my 2012 N7 and it's my biggest complaint for an otherwise perfect tablet.

Luckily, Android has a battery usage overview in system settings which tells you exactly what the culprits are at what percentage.

What does "Virtual 5.1 Surround Sound System" even mean in the context of a mini tablet ??

Well, that does it. I was waiting to see if BlackBerry would do something with their tablet line before the next Nexus 7 announcement and nada.

Looks like I'll have to pick one of these up.

(And, I know what the comments are going to be but the Playbook is an underrated device IMO. For the price, it has some decent specs (for it's age) and as a browser/ereader it's great, but the fact that they dropped OS10 after promising it has me peeved.)

If this had [micro]SD card support, I would be pre-ordering one right now.

It's worth noting that you can use an OTA cable to plug a USB jumpdrive into it just fine.

Can you still? It looks like the Gen2 version has implemented SlimPort instead of the OTG port used on Gen1. This is a confusing decision in light of the Chomecast announcement.

I wonder which is a better deal for a new tablet owner. A 2012 N7 or a 2013 N7? Seems like a lot of people are satisfied with their N7 and it is getting the new software update. Should I go for the new or stick with last year's model?

Go for the new. The new N7 may be getting the new software update, but it's not like it has the hardware to match. Better chips, a back-camera, a notification light. Likely faster/fixed NAND issues as well. There are a lot of new things in the 2013 N7 to like.

If you're looking for a good deal, just get one of the Asus MeMo 7" tablets. Basically the same as the N7, but $99.

The older Asus MeMo 7" is $99, but has worse specs than a 2012 Nexus 7 (lower res, single vs quad core).

Asus is about to start shipping their new MeMo HD 7" for ~$150. On paper, it's somewhere between the 2012 and 2013 Nexus 7.

Out of curiosity, how do those krait cores compare to the exynos a15 based cores that samsung is shipping in volume? I've been very impressed with their performance on chromeos as compared to older ip. With xen now building with a15 hvm support it would seem to make it easier to make use of that 2g of ram. It's hard to believe that android is really going to do much with that aside from the browser.

The A15 is quite a bit more powerful, even with lower clock speed. Cortex A15 supports hardware virtualization. I'm not sure if Krait supports it yet.

Generally--somewhat slower but uses less power.

I wonder, can we expect another line-up shuffle towards the end of the year? I'm not itching to upgrade my N7 16GB, but I have someone in mind to pass it down to.

I'm on an unlimited plan with Verizon, if I could run multiple devices on the same plan without a premium I'd be highly inclined toward the LTE model.

No micro sd card support? They don't have to try and emulate Apple on everything...

Never any chance of it having it. No mention of SD card in any leak. Nothing got to do with Apple, nothing to do with anybody but the big G. If you want SD go to Samsung that is well known. You have the choice with Android.

No nexus device since the Nexus One have had micro SD, no surprise here.

It's probably to encourage users to use Google Drive and other cloud services

They don't want to deal with FAT.

You could use ext3/4 FS on sdcard. The reason gooogle doesn't want SD slot is probably because they want users to use their cloud instead.

Dan Morril's explanation on this: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/mg14z/whoa_whoa_ics...

Or ExFAT

It is probably related to technical limitations. Some app features currently do not work if the app is installed on a sd card.

Link: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/install-locat...

Google has come out and said that they don't believe in having sd card support in their Nexus devices, which is kind of a bummer.

I wonder how soon will Freedreno + Wayland + Plasma Active mix be ready on this device.

My only wish is for a more sturdy display. My Nexus cracked by tapping the screen on the edge of my counter when putting it down and was completely unusable. That being said, it was amazing while I had it.

So they're going to keep the number at 7 to continue the Blade Runner reference? So it's really the 2013 Nexus 7.

Their naming convention is based on flooring the size of the device, not iteration:

Nexus 4 - 4.7" phone

Nexus 7 - 7" tablet

Nexus 10 - 10.1" tablet

I wish they'd called it the Nexus 7.2 or something more distinctive.

Calling it the "Nexus 7v2" would have made sense, but "Nexus 7.2" does not because people will think that the screeen is 0.2 inches bigger than the old version.

Especially since their own search engine can't cope with it.

It's a 7" tablet, that's why 7. But it does look like they are doing what Apple does, not giving the models different marketing names...

I actually love this. Release a New Nexus 4 (or 5) , Nexus 7, and Nexus 10 each year, people can add the year to the end of the name to reference a specific one.

Year, Make, and Model. Test drive the all new 2013 Nexus 7!

Same price I assume?

great read.

I wonder if they ever resolved the storage deterioration problem.

"One year later, the Nexus 7 has gone from the best to worst tablet I’ve ever owned"

http://androidandme.com/2013/06/opinions/one-year-later-the-...

Both my n7 and galaxy nexus have this type of problem. It seemed to start when I got close to using up all the available storage(due to google music caching). I cleared up some space(down to 30% used) and the issue has persisted. No recent updates have fixed the issue. On my GN, it's so bad that using google now, the navigation confirmation times out before it ever shows the dialog. Also, sometimes pages refuse to load in chrome and a hard reset is all that will fix it. It's a real issue, but not everyone seems to have the problem. This leads me to think it's probably hardware related(memory bin/batch perhaps?).

Do you know how to run logcat[1] after connecting a USB cable and enabling USB ebugging and downloading and install Android SDK? It's not that hard. You may see some error messages in the output. That might give you a clue.

Otherwise back everything up (this is not that hard at all) and do a reset. If you navigate to Google Play on a PC you'll see a list of your devices and have a history of all the apps you ever installed and you can reinstall them remotely from the PC. It's cool to see them pushed from the PC through the cloud to your mobile device. Just make sure to back up your contacts (should be automatic by Google I've found, don't ask me how ... but anyway you can make a backup to be sure to be sure by going into contacts and playing around), your SMSes (I use SMS backup app for this to do this automatically), any pics (though you should be using dropbox to do this automatically) and so on.

I'm not saying that this should be happening. It's crap that it is. Maybe Android is the new Windows. Quick ... defrag!

[1] http://developer.android.com/tools/help/logcat.html

> If you navigate to Google Play on a PC you'll see a list of your devices and have a history of all the apps you ever installed and you can reinstall them remotely from the PC.

Yeah... About that... Google removed that feature.

What feature? Are you sure? I just remotely installed an app to test it out. Google Play still has a My Apps section. And if you go to https://play.google.com/settings you'll see your devices. Which feature do you think is gone?

Ahh, they moved it to another spot. For weeks I thought they removed the feature altogether.

When? I just tried it moments ago, and successfully remote-installed an app to my GT-i9100.

You know, I was having this problem on my GN for a long time. I was convinced I was experiencing the storage deterioration problem. My GN is rooted and I've been running custom ROMs for a long time, keeping them up to date as time went on, and performance was fine. I was running JDX [1], and was happy with it... but as time went on, the device got slower, and all indications to me were that it was the storage deterioration problem. But then I switched to a more basic ROM [2], and now my GN is running perfect. Google Now is so much faster, switching apps is smooth, etc. etc. A world of difference. This post is now coming off as an ad for this ROM that I'm using... but I just wanted to share my experience. If you're looking into buying a new phone because of the slowness, trying out this ROM might be a last ditch effort to give your GN some new life.

[1] - http://rootzwiki.com/topic/28677-rom-jdx-v143-formerly-jelly... [2] - http://rootzwiki.com/topic/36706-romaosp42271213-shiny-ota-l...

(both those links are specifically for the Verizon GN. If you have a different one, you'd have to look for different builds.)

Thanks for the advice, but I'm not keen on running custom roms. It just aggravates me that Google doesn't acknowledge the issue.

> It just aggravates me that Google doesn't acknowledge the issue.

I guess my point is that "the issue" might not be storage deterioration (for which you'd be inclined to blame Google, or Samsung). Perhaps the ROM you're using (sent to you by your carrier, right?) is the issue. If the custom ROM solves your problem, you'll both a) learn that the issue wasn't storage degradation, and b) make your phone usable. Again, if you're considering getting a new phone anyway (because it's slow), it's worth a shot. And it's kinda fun to hack into your phone, anyway, right?

I had the same problem, and bought an HTC One. I cleared the phone out to give it to my dad, and now it is very, very noticeably faster. It would take 20-30 seconds to launch Chrome (the screen would turn off before the keyboard appeared), but now it takes around a second.

I think it's because I freed lots of space, as I noticed this after I removed most of the apps (before a factory reset or anything else). It might work for you too.

I picked up a Nexus 7 immediately and haven't experienced anything of the sort described. I haven't heard any complaints from the half dozen folks I know who own them either.

Same here. My original one had the screen lift issue, so I sent it back and got a replacement, but I haven't noticed a bit of slowness, deterioration, or any other hardware/software issues out of it. I've used it almost daily since the day it was released.

This problem can be fixed. I have done it myself with a Galaxy Nexus and a Nexus 7.

This is a trimming issue of the internal memory.

- Root the tablet (if you haven't already).

- Install lagfix (free) from the market or crosscompile fstrim and run it on your sd card.

Your tablet / phone will be fast again.

The nexus 7 doesn't have an SD slot.

The mount point of the internal storage is /sdcard, that's probably what he meant.

That's not right either. On the Galaxy Nexus, there is a single /data partition. A subdirectory of this is mounted (via a FUSE gadget which enforced FAT-like semantics) for use as the "sdcard" partition, and /sdcard is a symlink to that. (It's a symlink so it can be redirected for different device users).

There is no action that can be taken on an "sdcard" partition on a GNex. It has to be done on /data.

Yes you are right. I meant, copy it on your tablet / phone.

V1 of the nexus 7 doesn't have an SD slot either.

I've had mine for over a year and not had any issues. I have been using very extensively this entire time also.

How close are you to filling your storage? I think the storage issue is aggravated when you're close to filling the SSD up. I have an 8GB that was unusably slow, while a friends 32GB never had any problems.

For people who are experiencing that kind of problem...

If you've rooted your device, you have several things to try to see what is going on exactly. One key thing to look at would be the 'dmesg' output. If there are a lot of read/write errors to the internal eMMC storage, then that probably indicates a hardware problem. If that isn't happening, and 'logcat' also doesn't show anything suspicious, then maybe do a full backup (like with Titanium Backup). After that, you can try to clear the caches and see if that helps. If you're still having problems, then maybe it is time to try a full factory wipe, which will erase all your data.

Mine started randomly shutting itself down a couple of weeks ago. A factory reset seems to have abated it for now, but I'm constantly worried that it's going to happen again.

Thank you. I'll keep using my Nokia n900

'Wi-Fi models available in the U.S. July 30, LTE edition and global models “in the coming weeks”'

Wi-Fi should be included with every model IMHO.

I assumed they meant "WiFi only models"

It is.

Pretty boring spec increase. If they were an OEM they'd have to try to distinguish themselves, but it isn't life or death for them, so I suppose a boring entry is par for the course.

They aren't even keeping pace with Samsung's IR camera gesture support or HTC's all metal body and TV remote capability we're seeing on phones.

Well, boring as in extremely high specs for a very low price. I don't really need more distinguishment than that.

It's using last year's SoC, basically a two year old GPU and it still has a paltry amount of RAM (They count all the RAM, including CPU and GPU buffers).

Still, this is a better showing of "cheap but good" than the original N7...I'm rather disappointed in mine and it's been relegated to being the Jukebox in my house

Is there anything with better bang/buck available? I must admit I haven't really looked since the Nexus 7 always seemed extraordinary in that regard. Same for the Nexus 4. Maybe I'm victim to some new kind of RDF.

Arguably the Nook HD+, which is at this moment $139 new on eBay. Downside is it's a bit of an orphan already, and the hardware is quite a bit older.

At this point, that's basically a closeout price. It's been out of production for a while. http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/barnes-noble-discontinue...

I was tempted by the Nook HD or HD+ clearance pricing, but apart from being generally older hardware, the lack of GPS and lack of a camera make it not worth the ~$60 savings to me. Those may not matter if you use the tablet only as a reading/gaming device though.

It has largely the same SoC and GPU as the just-released-to-great-acclaim international Galaxy S4 (running at a slightly slower clockspeed in the Nexus 7 2013).

As to the RAM being "paltry", compared to what? A desktop? There is no non-Intel tablet that I know of with more RAM. And of course it's shared memory, as it is on every comparable device -- again, are you comparing this with Haswell laptops or something?

The Nexus tablet is a very inexpensive device (as is the Nexus 4, for that matter). It is not intended to push any boundaries, but is to bring the advantages that other, much more expensive products brought to market to the low-end.

Apparently great screen, very decent SoC, dual cameras...$229. Yeah, it's a pretty good entrant.

I've been quite disappointed in my Nexus 7s as well, though half of that I attribute to nvidia -- they are the kings of overpromising and underdelivering. It also has suffered the well known flash degradation, and hopefully Asus/Google have learned something from that debacle.

OEMs trying to "distinguish themselves" is what gave us crapware on the PC and buggy UI overlays on tablets and phones. 40% of android devices online today are stuck on 2.3 because some OEM was "trying to distinguish themselves" with fancy animations but can't be assed to update any of it today, when they have a new gimmick to sell you. I'd rather take solid hardware at a great price and know I'll get updates for the next two years.

Selling stuff on the specs is a bit 2005. Part of the reasons I moved away from Windows was I was bored of machines with higher and higher specs getting no faster in any way that mattered to me as the OS kept sucking the extra resource.

Other than the storage capacity (and even then I want to know what's usable cough Surface cough not what's on the hardware) just tell me what I can do with it and make it work well, the rest is frankly marketing bullshit.

Might as well say "NSA Unveils new Nexus 7 Tablet". Yes, sorry, I am bitter, I know, but I don't want people to forget Google's role in the recent surveillance story.

Recently there was a leak from Rogers about the Moto X and how you can activate it by simply saying "OK Google Now". Well Verge made a post about this leak on Google+ and I commented how the hot-phrase is too cumbersome so they should've just gone with "OK NSA,". I was quite proud of myself.

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