Nexus 9 | Hacker News Reader

Nexus 9

google.com

478 pointsagumonkey158 comments

Wait, they're using the 64 bit K1 as their processor? That's Project Denver[1]! I'm super excited to see how that thing benchmarks. This is basically Transmeta's Efficeon (same IP and team, even) with a bunch of improvements. They mentioned in the Hot Chips talk that they had made improvements like enabling native execution while the optimizer works - they benchmarks they provided said that it was very effective but I'm eager for third party tests.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver

EDIT: And here's Anandtech's article on Project Denver http://www.anandtech.com/show/7622/nvidia-tegra-k1/2

I would expect it to bench pretty much the same as the Shield Tablet. In fact, they are probably almost identical hardware-wise. I'll be interested to see if there is a price difference.

Anand's CPU benchmarks are very browser-oriented. The Shield usually beat all other Android devices, but still lost to the iPad Air. I suspect that has more to do with the quality of Mobile Safari than the differences in hardware. In the GPU benchmarks, the Shield does very, very well. http://www.anandtech.com/show/8296/the-nvidia-shield-tablet-...

Overall, the K1 has both CPU and GPU paper/marketing specs that are theoretically a little better than an Xbox 360. This is demoed by the 360 game Trine 2 running very nearly as well on a Shield as on the 360. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-can-tr...

edit: Looks like the Nexus has a 2048x1536 screen vs the Shield's 1920x1200. 51% more pixels on the same GPU will be a much prettier at the cost of more GPU|battery strain. Given the high power GPU, that seems like a good trade off for a non-gaming-oriented tab.

> I would expect it to bench pretty much the same as the Shield Tablet.

It's not the same chip as in the Shield Tablet (which has an ARMv7 CPU). The GPU is the same but the CPU is the 64 bit Denver CPU (ARMv8). According to benchmarks should be a fair bit faster, especially in single thread execution.

Which one should be faster, the N9 or the Shield?

The N9.

That's possible, but the Shield has a K1 varient with 4 32-bit A15 cores on the chip while the Nexus 9 has a varient of the K9 that has 2 64-bit Project Denver cores. The graphics are identical between the two versions of the K1 so I don't expect much difference in the GPU benchmarks, but I expect the CPU benchmark comparison to be interesting. On one hand we'll have four 3-wide conventional OoO cores. On the other we'll have two cores that are initially narrow and in order but are 7-wide VLIWs once the code morphing software has had a chance to run.

Is that big little cores or four symmetric cores?

Four symmetric cores - all A15s. I don't think NVidia has ever done big.LITTLE even though they had a fifth core with the same architecture but different process/gate sizes for lower power in some previous Tegra chips. But you can see from them all having the same max frequency that all four cores are the same.

32-bit K1 also has the companion core[1] (probaly Cortex A7).

[1] http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/tegra-...

The companion core of the ARMv7 TK1 is a low power Cortex-A15, like the grandparent comment says. This is different from ARM's big.LITTLE which uses different microarchitectures for the two clusters, i.e. Cortex-A15 + Cortex-A7 or Cortex-A53 + Cortex-A57.

It's too small to be A15. I found the information that the companion core was A15 in Tegra 4, but it's similar size to other cores[1].

[1]http://cnet4.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/2013/01/06/318d69ea-fdb7-1...

Sorry, but that looks more like an artist's vision of a die shot than an actual die shot. The TRM is pretty clear that it's an A15: http://i.imgur.com/Fvh2KVT.png

Core size isn't just a matter of the number of gates, but also their size. One important tool for reaching high frequencies in chips is to have gates that drive more capacities load be wider and therefore higher power. But if your goal is to have an architecturally identical core that's lower power one of the tools you have to accomplish that is to not do that. There's probably other ways to shrink a core at the cost of performance, as well.

And of course the day before Apple announces its new iPad (allegedly). I really like having two very well funded companies in all out competition, it makes for some really great features and options in both products.

The size thing is what I'm interested in though. I'm waiting to see if there actually is a 12" iPad pro tomorrow, otherwise I'll pull the trigger on a Note Pro. I get the pocket/purse argument for 9" but my iPad has become pretty much a replacement book. Between 1dollarscan, Oreilly's drm free ebooks, and my pdf library of papers and data sheets, and various magazines, nearly all my space is being consumed by reading material. So for me (weird case I know) it is my library in my hand, and I really would like it to be a 12 - 13" screen.

That said, the Nook HD+ is my 'budget' 9" Android tablet that is my 'look up things' / 'play music' / 'cast netflix' device and this could easily replace that.

You find 9-10" is insufficient for reading material?

I have a 7" Android I got to test the waters, and reading ebooks/pdfs/textbooks/magazines is my use case so I'm thinking of going up in screen size- but how much?

   > You find 9-10" is insufficient for reading material?

No, I find 12 - 13" better for reading material. The reason my Retina iPad became my default "book" is because it was sufficient. :-)

12.5" is the 'printable' area of an 8.5 x 11" page with 1" margins. (14" if you include the margins). So especially for PDFs that are 'zoomed to the margins' a retina 12.5" display can be pretty much a 1 for 1 reproduction. And that is something I've wanted for a very very long time.

Reference or casual/fiction reading?

I ask because I found the standard sized Ipad to be slightly heavy for bedtime and commute reading, whereas the small Ipad (no retina) was more pleasant experience.

I would really love a Retina quality smaller sized Ipad as long as it maintains battery life quality but considering just going Kindle for day to day and full sized Ipad as textbook / video replacement.

Primarily reference, although I recently read the Daemon/Freedom series on it and it was sufficient for that application, my wife much prefers the Nook e-paper device for fiction. I agree it can be heavy for bedtime reading but for commuting I usually have my bag on my lap and read with the ipad on top of it so I don't get any weight at all (other than the bag of course)

Personally I strongly prefer my Kindle for linear text (e.g. novels). The tablet is primarily for nonlinear and/or mixed-media reading (e.g. reference, magazines, etc)

So far the best PDF annotation device, I have used is the Surface Pro 3. At 12 inches it displays PDFs very well. The pen is pressure sensitive and will reject any outside inputs.

Out of curiosity, have you tried a Samsung tablet with a Wacom digitizer and their S-Pen stylus? I'm currently looking for a device that lets me scribble into language learning work books, I'd be interested in hearing your comparison to a SP3.

Some people in my lab have samsung tablets (including myself), and others have a surface 3. The samsung tablet has all the right hardware but the software is lacking. In general. I've tried all of it, really. Android onenote, lecturenotes, papyrus, s-note, etc. It all kinda blows.

I'm curious about your lecturenotes negatives. It has so many customizable options I have a hard time imagining how it failed you. I've been using it for over a year for mostly math applications and it's been indispensable.

The only feature I would want integrated is the "infinite workspace" of papyrus. But even then who cares I can still have infinite pages.

Bluebeam? ezPDF? Any software than allows on the fly translation (word by word)?

Thanks

FWIW (anecdote warning) I have the Galaxy Note Tab 2014. The Stylus works great, but I only use it for drawing, and definitely wish I'd just waited for the Surface 3.

What program do you use to annotate PDFs? I have a Lenovo thinkpad with wacom support, but I haven't found a good piece of software to sign PDFs with.

I use qPDF Notes (there's also a qPDF Viewer, which I think is their free app) on my Samsung Note Pro (12.2")

I think you can import PDF's into Lecture Notes also, and annotate around them there, but I haven't bothered trying that, and I /expect/ it'd feel sluggish.

Competition is good, though if Apple does put their fingerprint sensor on the iPads it will be hard to steer me towards alternatives. I have gotten spoiled with this feature, it lets me have the best of both worlds - long passwords and fast access.

That and I am still not sold on the apps on Android

I was using this device for last couple months. It's by far the best tablet I've ever used. It feels great when you hold it and thank god for better aspect ratio! (compared to N7). I also have N10, but never really liked it, it was quite cumbersome to hold it. N9 feels much better in hands.

The thing I loved the most though was keyboard cover. It's narrow but you get used to it very fast. Typing on it was such a pleasure! I was not allowed to travel with this device but I could easily see myself just taking N9 instead of laptop for short trips.

How's the performance? I have a first gen Nexus 7 that's getting really slow, and this looks like an interesting option to replace it.

Is it faster, or at least comparable to the Nexus 5? I rarely use my tablet right now as my phone is considerably faster.

Holy crap yes my old n7 just crawls. Makes me seriously suspicious of Asus hardware in the future. My only thing is that I love the n7 size. Maybe I should suck it up and buy a galaxy tab but I want stock Android.

My 2013 N7 still runs like a dream. It was such a better device.

What is your relationship with Google?

According to his HN profile he's a Googler

Yeah, thanks, I can see that, I'm just curious in what capacity he or she is using it.

The price is $400 [1], in case anyone else was wondering:

> Google’s Nexus 9 goes up for pre-order on October 17th, and should hit the shelves on November 3rd. The 16GB model will go for $400, the 32GB for $480, and a 32GB model with LTE built in will set you back $600.

[1]: http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/15/google-nexus-9/

Top of the line is 32GB and costs $600? That's not just a bit dissapointing. How much can another 32GB of flash storage cost at OEM prices, $10? And no, I don't want to store everything on your servers, Google.

It's a way for Google to allow users to price-discriminate themselves, it has very little to do with their marginal cost.

Considering they're charging just $80 more at $480, I'd say it's not terrible. $600 includes LTE.

I agree that flash prices shouldn't be as high as they're charging but I also think you should know that they're higher than you think. Here, for example is a pretty raw eMMC module: http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code... ($49 for 32GB) and a larger one http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code... ($79 for 64GB). That's a $30 price difference at the OEM level.

You need to keep in mind that the flash storage baked onto devices is of an entirely different class to the flash storage you buy on a USB key or something. Phone storage has to perform well (it's where the OS lives) as well as survive the lifetime of the phone with near constant use 24/7. They need something a bit higher quality than what you're used to so the price is higher.

That is a module with a connector and PCB, and also sold at a rather high markup. Prices are actually quite a bit cheaper for the actual IC itself:

http://en.chinaflashmarket.com/pricecenter/emmc

Considering the Xiaomi Mi Pad 64GB costs only $35 more[] than the 16GB version, I doubt those are OEM prices.

[] http://www.xiaomishop.com/31-xiaomi-mipad

>How much can another 32GB of flash storage cost at OEM prices, $10?

The extra cost is a subsidy for the 16gb version.

I love the 4:3 aspect ratio - after switching from iPad that was the thing that bothered me the most on Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 models. They were either not tall enough or too narrow for comfortable web browsing and reading (also, holding N10 in portrait was pretty tiring due to weight balance).

So finally having a good 4:3 Android tablet is good news for readers :)

That's fantastic news, I have been scouring the market for a good 4:3 Android for months...

yeah, I think the 16:9 form factor works for devices that are small-enough to thumb-type when held in portrait orientation (n7 is great at this) but once you go above that size I love 4:3.

Sad to see no SD card slot. I know that's not Google's thing, but Asus and Samsung have defied them in the past to include them in Nexus models and I was hoping HTC would follow suit.

That said, I hope this sells well. HTC badly needs some success.

Last year's nexus 5 didn't have an SD card slot either. They're pretty much a dying breed at this point.

No nexus has ever had an SD card slot [ED: since the nexus one!]. It's their thing, to push people into the cloud.

>dying breed

Rubbish, quite the opposite: every (other) flagship android phone has one this year: S5, One M8, LG G3, xperia Z3. Every windows tablet has one. Compare this to the last round when it was pretty much just the S4.

Nexus One does.

(New) Moto X doesn't.

I assume by the down votes I'm wrong? I checked some reviews and they all say it doesn't have one. Has it changed?

In general, no way. In Nexus, well yeah, Google wants you spending money on cloud storage.

Until we all have affordable wireless signaling at 300+MB/s without stupid data limits, then local storage matters.

They're only dead for Nexus phones because of license costs and cloud storage etc.

Ehm.. no nexus since Nexus One had SD card slot. Which Nexus models are you talking about exactly?

and nexus one was also the only nexus to have an SD card. so I think he is talking about every nexus phone/tablet except the nexus one.

Do you consider the G1 to be a 'nexus' ? It had a micro-sd slot.

The reason for not including an SD card slot is that this second-class storage is said to confuse users. It mounts after the system sends the BOOT_COMPLETED broadcast and may be removed at any time. Consequently, some operations are (or were) forbidden, like installing apps on the sdcard. Explaining this to users is fairly hard and, by removing the slot, unnecessary.

With 64GB inbuilt, I don't really see that as a problem, but for my 16GB N5 and N7, it's annoying at times. Also, file transfer on Linux is... improvable. I use adb to push my music onto the phone. :P

But you explained it pretty well in three sentences! Doesn't seem that hard to explain. People cope with SD cards in PCs and laptops and they are subject to the same restrictions / problems, and everyone appears to cope with them.

Heck, even USB sticks can be removed whilst they are in the middle of writing (and I've seen people do it), and the OS will typically warn you. We haven't seen the removal of USB ports from machines with the same defence (although some PC manufacturers like to put clusters of USB ports all together so you can't actually plug in two USB sticks next to each other...)

It has an arm64 CPU. It looks like this will be the first cheap, easily obtainable and hackable (?) arm64 hardware out there.

I'm writing the arm64 Go compiler. I wonder if it's feasible to start testing on this machine too (e.g. how open it really is, how hard is to get a sane working environment, etc).

You could jailbreak an iPhone 5S for a year now.

I'm interesting in running Go on arm64 servers, so Linux. Linux/arm64 hardware is not widely available, but it is available if you need it. I'm interested in this tablet because then I could have my own arm64 hardware, with Linux, to test on. Right now I don't own the hardware that I use. A darwin/arm64 port doesn't interest me.

After I will have finished linux/arm64, I am sure someone else will do darwin/arm64 soon, and it won't be too difficult. Arm64 is difficult because I need to write a new compiler, but once we have that, adding another target to an already supported operating system is a breeze.

On top of that darwin/arm64 would never become an official port if it required a jailbroken device (same reason why there's no official darwin/arm, although that might change).

Put Linux on this and you've got a very viable development machine. I look forward to one day running arm64 Go on this machine in the near future! :) (Among other things..)

Yeah, the "put Linux on this" thing concerns me. In principle it's not that hard; in practice someone has to do the work. I don't want to be the guy that does the work :).

Hopefully somebody will do it soon.

It boots a perfectly ordinary Linux-kernel, but with a non-standard initrd and init-sequence.

It's a Nexus so the bootloader will be open and unlockable, and you will have the source available for the kernel too.

That's not the same as having access to all the userland utils and a full, ready distro. No. But it's a pretty open end with almost no restrictions, completely unlike anything made by Apple so far.

Yan can boot the device with any kernel and initrd you like, you can transfer files to the devices and test your compiled arm64 binaries from a terminal. You will be met with zero technical restrictions or locked doors.

Before I got my Mustang (:-) I was hacking on the OCaml arm64 compiler backend using this technique. The article describes setting it up for Fedora. Follow through the links for how to do this on SUSE and Debian. It's fairly reasonable as a userspace dev environment.

http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/how-to-run-aarch64-bina...

Yes, I started with QEMU user emulation. It was so lame (lots of bugs in QEMU; both related to unsupported instructions and other miscellany that affected Go) that I just wrote my own arm64 emulator eventually (didn't take long, it's a variant of Plan 9's [5kqv]i user space emulators, I forgot to mention that all this work started on Plan 9). Now I have hardware but my emulator still gets its use, it's a great debugger too.

Are you working on this code publicly? I would love to take a look, as I've become quite interested in the gc compiler lately.

Sorry, this is not publicly available yet (soon!), but if you have a bitbucket account I can give you access.

You should have a look at Nvidia's K1 dev kit. (edit: guess that's not 64 bit...)

https://developer.nvidia.com/jetson-tk1

https://developer.nvidia.com/tegra-development

Nvidia's dev support team is great. Using the Tegra Dev pack on a Shield is by far the best NDK environment I've found.

It bothers me that we've lost the meaning of "memory" in the technical marketing of mobile gadgets.

"Memory: 16 GB & 32 GB." Google, of course, means storage.

At some point we'll have unified memory and storage anyway. Our brains are already unified in our perception of memory, so I have no problem telling people the storage amount as "memory".

Our brains are not unified. Separating long and short memory makes a lot of sense.

I hope not! All that rubbish we put in RAM doesn't need permanently storing! That's why the distinction exists, plus writing to non-volatile permanent storage systems is slower. Much slower.

This confusion has existed since the beginning of consumer PCs. Loads of people mix up RAM and HDD space (probably because they're the same units)

Yeah, the name of flash memory ruins the shorthand of "memory" meaning "volatile memory". As you point out, "storage" is still a good term for persistent memory.

Apple finally admitted that bigger phones are better. Looks like Google is finally admitting that 4:3 is the right tablet aspect ratio.

I'm kind of curious what the secret sauce is that makes Google think they are ready to sell a premium-priced tablet. Lollipop may be better than iOS 8 but is that enough to overcome the app gap?

(Anecdata: my wife had her ipad mini stolen last week. We have 5 Android devices in the house, but as long as Civilization is only available on iOS this isn't a serious contender for a replacement.)

I'm not quite sure the 'app gap' exists still, does it? Recently switched from iPhone 5S > HTC One M8, and nothing reallllly I miss.

That's on phones. The tablet app gap still exists.

It's a big problem for music apps. Android has not delivered low-latency MIDI/audio up to now, allowing Apple to own that market (much like it did with Mac v windows for a long time).

What kind of music apps are you referring to, and how big is the audience?

To clarify, you are talking about music production apps? Android L introduced new APIs to improve that, so hopefully it will improve soon.

Yes. I was glad to see it has finally been addressed but realistically it will take several years to close the gap, since people who have gotten used to various iPad apps have little incentive to switch platform.

And what exactly would that "app gap" be? I'm genuinely curious.

In my experience, it's not the amount of software, but the amount of quality software. For instance, I wasn't able to find a decent RSS reader that doesn't stutter on the Nexus 7 (2013). Not to mention the ridiculous amount of rights some of the readers want. On my iphone, it's hard to decide which reader I'll use because they are really good (I've tried quite a few).

Music apps are still pretty much dominated by iOS. Also some quality games are only available on iOS or are released much later on Android.

While I do think that the "app gap" does indeed exist, I believe only dedicated geeks/musicians/gamers will notice it.

Feedly works great. Press too.

I've always, always had a hard time finding:

* A good Twitter app for Android (like iOS' Tweetbot or Twitteriffic) * A decent RSS app (like Reeder - slick, w/ Instapaper + Evernote hooks) * A reasonable SSH client (like Prompt, although I haven't looked too hard here)

I'd also miss Office - using Word + Excel out in the field for work (i.e. RF spreadsheets during field surveys) are a huge bonus. Not sure how good Google Sheets is on tablets/Android.

Otherwise, the Nexus 9 + keyboard would be great for travelling and I'm tempted to sell my iPad Mini Retina for one, if not just to experience Android L.

Press is a brilliant RSS reader.

For a Twitter client, Fenix (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.mvilla.andr...) is beautiful and fast, and doesn't make me miss Tweetbot when I'm not using my computer.

Twidere works quite well for Twitter.

My recommendation for phones (not sure about Tablet versions) - SSH: JuiceSSH (simply the best i have used so far) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sonelli.ju... - Twitter: Falcon Pro (works on tablets) - RSS: Press or why not Google Newstand or Flipboard ? - Office: QuickOffice, MSOffice or Google Docs

They're releasing a big expensive tablet in 2014 and the top-end storage size is 32GB? Really?

Well they are a cloud company. They probably just expect you to not store anything locally.

No company puts a good amount of storage in their device for a reasonable price. It's a problem on par with battery life.

The Nexus 6 has 32 and 64GB options. I'm a bit disappointed that they don't match this with the Nexus 9.

Excitedly waiting for a new Android tablet but 32GB max is too little for that price tag.

I suppose Google expects more photo/video taking on phones vs tablet hence lower storage?

They might well release a 64GB version later. They released a 32GB version of the N7 2012 some months after initial release and removed the 8GB version.

Where did you get that this is expensive? I don't see a price on the page anywhere.

It's not stated on that page yet but other news articles have prices. $400 for 16GB and $600 for 32GB.

I'm not rich at all and would have to save for a little while to afford one of those, but I don't feel like $400 is expensive at all for one such device.

For the record, I wasn't stating it was expensive (that was a different person). I was just responding to "I don't see a price on the page" part.

It used to be you'd upgrade that with an SD card, but now that's not an option? That's a little odd.

This marks an interesting if subtle change in direction for Google. Suddenly they are talking about productivity on their tablet and even including a keyboard. Also recently we've seen massive upgrades to the Google Docs suite of apps as well, after they long languished as almost comically useless on Android for a long time. Once again, it makes me question whether Pichai taking over has had the unexpected effect of boosting Android and making it into their premier platform across a range of form factors instead of what seemed before to be mainly pigeon holing it as a phone / small tablet platform mainly for entertainment. Interesting times.

Yeah, looks like they're aiming to attack Surface at the same time as iPad. Might be time for an upgrade...

I assume this is the real, official end of the dream that I will ever get the case they initially showed off for my Nexus 10.

I enjoy the Nexus 10, but I really feel like I've kind of just been left in the cold. Android updates haven't been kind to the device in my experience.

On the other hand, Android 5.0 was announced for 10 as well, even though I agree, my 10 always felt like a bastard child of Nexus family.

Oh really? Source, please?

So is it confirmed that there's no new Nexus 7? What is the best new alternative with some kind of clean Android mini tablet?

The Nexus 6 with no plan?

The 6 is more than twice the price of the 7, and while IMO too big for a phone, also too small for a tablet.

.. is only twice the price

The 6 is half the screen area for three to mes the price compared to the 7.

I spent a week and tracked down the Nexus 7 2nd gen last week to replace my older Nexus 7 tablet. I knew the new devices were coming out this week, but I love the form factor of the 7" and the device itself. They are still worth buying, you can find them for cheaper now. I'm generally an Apple user but the Nexus 7 is a great device, once you fall for it its hard to give it up.

Probably the nvidia shield tablet... Now that this is announced, I may go ahead and order one.

http://shield.nvidia.com/gaming-tablet/

I don't understand why Google is making a Nexus 9. It seems crazy. Doesn't everyone understand at this point that 7-8" is the right size for a tablet?

Are they just of the impression that phablets will eat small tablets?

(I should say that of course there is SOME market for larger tablets out there. If they were producing a Nexus 7 and a Nexus 9, that would make more sense. But I thought that both expert consensus and sales were clear: the market for small tablets is much bigger than the market for big tablets. Unless you believe that small tablets are going to get replaced by phablets).

> Doesn't everyone understand at this point that 7-8" is the right size for a tablet?

I've grown to loathe the Nexus 7. It's got a nice weight and feel to it from a hardware perspective but it feels too tall/thin in portrait and too short in landscape. I'm much more likely to pick up my older iPad instead. The performance of the 7 (second version) was also very disappointing. I'm actually interested in seeing the Nexus 9 not only because it fits me a bit better being a bit bigger but by going to 4:3 I think some of what I hate about the 7 will be eliminated. That being said it doesn't have enough storage so I probably won't get one.

I only use landscape for videos. Portrait for text and apps looks good to me, although I haven't tried other screen sizes.

Going back and forth between the iPad and the Nexus 7 probably influences my opinion. The 7 is just underwhelming in many areas. I'm not a fan of the iPad mini either though I prefer reading on it to the Nexus 7.

> I don't understand why Google is making a Nexus 9. It seems crazy. Doesn't everyone understand at this point that 7-8" is the right size for a tablet?

No, everyone doesn't agree with your opinion that 7-8" is the right size for a tablet (I don't even agree that there is one right size.)

> Are they just of the impression that phablets will eat small tablets?

Probably. Given that even Apple has given up and gone to big and bigger with its phones, the space for mini tablets is narrowing.

>Doesn't everyone understand at this point that 7-8" is the right size for a tablet?

I never liked the 7'' size. I stuck with my iPad 2 over getting a Nexus 7 because of this. This one looks perfect.

Sony Z3 Tablet compact.

A nexus 6 wifi-only device could be a nice successor to the n7 and a nice shot at the oft-forgotten iPod too. But android companies seem to always forget the iPod exists.

Anyone have experience installing Linux on an Android tablet to use for development work? I'd love to use it with tmux/vim to hack on stuff.

Is battery life worth it?

Honestly, not really. It's cumbersome, slow and really takes too much effort. There are Atom transformer tablets that come with Win 8 and have Linux installable that are way better for that job.

I'll check that out, thanks!

A lot of people have used an SSH client on a tablet for development on a VPS or other server.

There is a blog about it here: http://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my-macbook-...

RDP app on Android from Microsoft works great though with this Nexus 9 I would hope they allow you to change the resolution on the RDP client side.

My experience working on an Android tablet: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/working-on-android/

I did a long weekend project a few months ago bringing up GNU/Linux on a low cost tablet. Here's a picture of it running XFCE: http://i.imgur.com/jmh8N0W.jpeg

If you at least have a kernel source for the SoC, it's doable. However, especially if you don't have the source for your specific device (because manufacturers play fast and loose with the GPL), you'll probably spend the first few days getting it working and then many, many weekends getting it to be usable. I did stop before I got to that point.

Here's some of the issues I ran into:

* The parallel RGB to MIPI bridge doesn't have complete publicly available documentation and it requires LCD-specific configuration. I've sniffed it from the Android kernel with a logic analyzer.

* The touchscreen controller doesn't have complete publicly available documentation and it requires device-specific configuration.

* The BMS doesn't have complete publicly available documentation and it requires device-specific configuration

I guess you can see a trend. :) If you have the time, you can RE this stuff with some basic soldering skills and a logic analyzer or scope.

But actually the issues which made me lose enthusiasm were the following:

* Rotating the framebuffer to landscape orientation in software is freaking slow. Android seems to be doing it using OpenGL ES, but I'm not aware of any GNU/Linux window manager capable of this. The display controller didn't support rotation and the only remaining alternative would have been too hacky for my taste, to use the image processing engine to maintain a rotated shadow copy.

* Limited capabilities: processing speed is mostly OK, but only 2 GB of RAM and the slow framebuffer are not great. There's almost no I/O, essentially you only have a USB OTG port. Tablets are not thermally designed to sustain high loads. Battery life will probably not be that great and it seems difficult to upgrade the battery.

Now, some of this stuff doesn't fully apply to Nexus 9. I expect Google to be better at providing a kernel source closer to that's running on the device and the hardware itself it much more capable, it even has OpenGL (non-ES) support. This still leaves quite a few issues. Chromebooks (used for running GNU/Linux, of course) might be worth looking into.

Did you use libhybris for this? What bootloader did your device have? How did you do the initial bringup without being able to see the console? (or did you have UART?)

Basically, do you feel like doing a longer writeup?

I'm sick to death of "Linux on XYZ Android device" meaning a chroot - I would have hoped there'd be more interest in running Debian or whatever everywhere.

No, I did not use libhybris. It boots the kernel I've patched and it uses a full Linaro filesystem on a micro SD. The Android FS is not even mounted when running GNU/Linux.

The SoC is RK3188 and it uses a proprietary bootloader to do some hardware initialization IIRC.

The device does have an UART port, which I've used.

Similar to "bergie", I have used Terminal IDE on my 2nd gen Nexus 7 to do some exploratory work programming Android.

It's doable, and battery life is quite good, but having an IDE on a PC to work on the screen layout XML file helps. Also, the Android API documentation layout sucks, which makes it harder to look things up. Auto-complete in a real IDE also helps compensate for how bad the online documentation for the API is.

If it was up to me, the Android documentation would be better, and an API to programmatically set up the screen layout would be readily accessible.

For all of Java's faults, I like how compact the online javadoc is for the runtime library, compared to the crap layout with mandatory frames that Android API uses (or MS .NET, for that matter).

I used "Terminal IDE" for the environment: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spartacusr...

An example Android program to make a "D Pad" to move a circle around on the screen (written using above): https://github.com/roboprog/dpad

I use a bluetooth mouse and keyboard. The keyboard has exactly the same layout as my Mac Pro: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E1MRYK2/ref=oh_aui_detai...

Using linux on the asus TF101, the battery life is A-OK, I could get ~12h with the secondary battery, my main issues has been RAM (1G is barely enough). Without resorting to install linux I would recommend KBOX2 [http://kevinboone.net/kbox2.html] which offer a lot of useful tools for a developper (vim, gcc, shh ...), and rely on the excellent Android Terminal Emulator.

Of course linux provide a more complete ecosystem for developers, but even without replacing android there is still enough to be useful.

I'm impressed this is even lighter than the current iPad air (although it remains to be seen what happens with Apple's announcement tomorrow), and not by a trivial amount--almost 50 grams lighter. I've been a happy Nexus 7 user but am starting to feel I need a little bit bigger screen, and the 4:3 aspect ratio is much nicer for web browsing.

"I'm impressed this is even lighter than the current iPad air"

It's also smaller, sporting an 8.9" screen vs. the iPad Airs 9.7" screen.

That doesn't sound good to me. I've never used cases for my devices, dropped them all, only ever had one death - the nexus 7 on first drop. My opinion of them since is that they're cheap tat. That was no laboratory study, but I've avoided the nexus range since. And yes, some people will say I should use cases.

I'm aware that Nexus devices have lacked SD card slots seemingly as a matter of policy, but I still don't understand the logic of it for a tablet this powerful. You can buy micro SD cards with mind boggling capacity now. All the other specs are state of the art. And then you are limited to 32GB.

Where do you guys think Nexus 9 fits? I have gotten used to Nexus 7 for reading and Nexus 10 for writing/media consumption reading graphically rich stuff like magazine. Do you think Nexus 9 replaces both of those different types of works.

I think the onward march of phone sizes into the 6" range is cannibalizing the market for small tablets, and 9-10" for tablets is the remaining sweet spot between phones and laptops.

Given the Nexus 6, I actually think this is too small. If I'm going to have a six inch phone, I'd prefer a tablet that is upwards of 12". I think huge tablets are currently an unexplored niche that could kick off just like big phones did.

> I think huge tablets are currently an unexplored niche that could kick off just like big phones did.

Huge tablets aren't exactly an unexplored niche; the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 and Microsoft Surface, and even a few bigger tablets, do exist.

I wasn't aware of the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2. Thanks -- I'm not keen on Samsung's products, but I do like to see the space being explored.

I guess I unintentionally excluded the Surface Pro 3 since it's so much more than just a tablet.

Unless apps are specifically designed for 12" screen and they work like traditional desktop I am not buying them. A screen as big as 12" needs to multitask. It has to has a dedicated taskbar not clicking the 3rd button to bring a bunch of backstack windows.

Seems like a step back from Nexus 10.

My Nexus 7's battery went kaput, so this looks like it'd be a nice replacement. Overall, I'm quite happy to use the Nexus stuff: the experience is very consistent, and they get regular upgrades.

4:3 aspect ratio on an andriod tablet! This should be interesting.

What's up with keyboards that lack a right side ctrl key? Is it bad form to type using right-ctrl or something? Can someone shed some light on this? :\

What would you remove from the keyboard to accommodate a right side ctrl key?

In this case the alt keys appear to be the size of two letter keys. We could steal some room from there. Maybe I'm just too picky, it's a small form factor.

Just a personal anecdote but I've never purposefully hit the right-side ctrl key. It seems redundant to me.

It's not at all redundant for touch-typing.

A bit suspicious that there's no resolution announced, especially considering the Nexus 10 had its resolution advertised ad nauseam from the day it was announced, and the Nexus 6 has its high resolution hyped up as well. It'll be curious to see if they've pulled back on the resolution arms race in favor of something like battery life or price range.

There is a button to expand the tech specs and see additional details:

Display

  8.9" IPS LCD
  4:3 aspect ratio
  QXGA (2048x1536)
  Gorilla Glass 3
  Double tap to wake

Ah, that's what that does. Didn't even realize it was a button until you said so. Seems like they didn't want to draw attention to the resolution drop (admittedly to a smaller screen) between the Nexus 10 and the Nexus 9.

I throw these eye-candy Google websites into a text-only browser and start /'ing; it is _way_ easier to find the info you're looking for.

I sure hope somebody does soon. I'm looking forward to devices with enough power to do more than just push pixels to the screen. Of course, I exaggerate, but it's doubtless a factor in performance.

> The 8.9" screen is big enough to work and watch on, but small enough to carry around in one hand.

Really I could carry that in one hand? That's amazing! Know what else I can carry in one-hand? My fucking 17 inch macbook.

That's a good point in a way. At that size (especially with the 4:3 screen ratio) it's certainly uncomfortable to hold it like a phone, even with huge hands. Ergo, screen size doesn't really matter that much (of course it matters somewhat; think of the forces and you realize what affects torque) – you hold it like an iPad Air, and the more interesting spec would be weight which I couldn't find by glancing the product page.

425g (WiFi) or 436 (LTE). You have to expand the tech specs to see it, which isn't very obvious. The jewel looks like something you'd drag, not click.

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