Pages Navigation Menu

"It's not about the destination, it's about the journey. "

Google reveals its new tablet: Nexus 7

Posted by on Jun 29, 2012 in Technology

A few days ago Google revealed its new tablet called Nexus 7 which it hopes to release into the mar­ket by 2013.

Spec­i­fi­ca­tions:

7″ 1280x800 HD display

1.2 megapixel cam­era (Front camera)

1GB of RAM

Quad-core Tegra 3 chip

4325 mAh (Up to 8 hours of active use)

WiFi 802.11 b/g/n

Android OS 4.1 (Jelly Bean)

Micro USB

Price: $199

[Source, more info]

Although the screen is only 7″ and the only cam­era (The front cam­era) is quite poor com­par­i­son to the $499 iPad 2’s 5 megapixel cam­era, for the price of $199, you can’t ask for much more. How­ever, if you just want to use this for brows­ing the web, then this is the per­fect tool. Granted you need to be in a WiFi equipped area to use most of the tablet’s func­tions, you can in-fact use your phone’s 3G con­nec­tion to cre­ate a WiFi hotspot. That’s really my main con­cern, as it’s quite trou­ble­some or incon­ve­nient to be set­ting up a con­nec­tion like that every time you want to access the internet.

I guess the main advan­tage on this tablet in com­par­i­son to Apple’s iPad is that you can con­nect this to your com­puter and then you can down­load films onto it with­out too much hassle.

I really want to buy this when it gets released, but hey, it’ll be released by 2013. I wouldn’t be sur­prised if they released it by Christ­mas time to rake in some Christ­mas sales.

I’m def­i­nitely look­ing at this as a seri­ous buy as a gift I’d like to buy for myself. How­ever, at the moment, I think my cur­rent smart phone is more than capa­ble of doing the job that I require it to do.

Also, the actual tablet is being devel­oped by a Tai­wanese com­pany, the large firm ASUS which has cre­ated pre­vi­ous “Google phones”. You would really have thought they would have con­tracted Motorola to develop the hard­ware for their new tablet, see­ing as they bought Motorola for quite an expen­sive price tag. But hey, I’m glad they are sup­port­ing a com­pany that oper­ates in my coun­try. (Tai­wan) :)

 

Related posts:

  1. New train­ers and webcam
  2. Google inter­ac­tive timeline
  3. Holy bat­man, Apple now worth $469 billion
  4. Made a new friend

2 Comments

  1. Julia / August 13, 2012

    Let me begin by snyiag this upfront, I don’t work for Apple, I don’t own Apple Stock, and whether you buy an iPad, Xoom, a lap­top or a pad of paper and pen­cil I don’t get any­thing for writ­ing this. I’m not an Apple fan­boy although I can give credit where credit is due and lately Apple has deserved a lot of credit for some of their products.

    Phys­i­cal Char­ac­ter­is­tics, the iPad 2 is absurdly thin. More impor­tantly than it’s thin­ness is its tapered edge which feels more nat­ural in your hand. One of the biggest com­plaints about the orig­i­nal iPad was it really wasn’t tremen­dously com­fort­able to hold for long peri­ods at a time. For a tablet device designed to be held, that’s a pretty big deal.

    Apple really has done an amaz­ing job of cram­ming every­thing into an even smaller space than before and the dif­fer­ence is really notice­able when you’re hold­ing the device. In addi­tion to the tapered edge, Apple man­aged to reduce the over­all weight of the iPad 2. That might not seem like a huge deal to most, espe­cially when you con­sider the weight dif­fer­ence isn’t tremen­dous when you’re already under 2 pounds, but I spend a good part of my day hold­ing the iPad in my hands and the weight dif­fer­ence is sur­pris­ing by the end of the day. The first gen­er­a­tion isn’t heavy by any means, but the iPad 2 out­shines it.

    New and improved Apple dou­bled the RAM in the iPad 2 from 256MB to 512MB. What does that mean? For most casual users, prob­a­bly not a whole lot. There is a per­for­mance bump that every­one will see the effects of in things like load­ing times for web­pages that are open in the back­ground, but 256MB was suf­fi­cient for most daily use and games. If you’re plan­ning to use your device for some of the more graph­i­cally intense games the iPad 2 does offer a bet­ter method of graph­ics pro­cess­ing that’ll help deliver faster images with fewer jerky movements.

    If you’re just play­ing Angry birds and read­ing e-mail you’re not going to know the dif­fer­ence. The screen is the same for all real pur­poses. It is tech­ni­cally a new part in that it isn’t iden­ti­cal to the old, it’s a bit thin­ner and more effi­cient, but it’s the same res­o­lu­tion. The Glass is thin­ner though, and this amounts to a fair bit of the weight loss from one gen­er­a­tion to the next. In play­ing with the device it seems sur­pris­ing but despite feel­ing lighter it actu­ally feels more sturdy in your hands. I still wouldn’t sug­gest drop­ping it, but if it were to fall the iPad 2 cer­tainly feels like it might stand a bet­ter chance to sur­vive. Try not to drop it though. The addi­tion of 2 cam­eras was expected.

    Some were a bit sur­prised to see the first gen­er­a­tion released with­out the cam­eras. Whether it was for a price point con­sid­er­a­tion, or a means to get peo­ple to upgrade, Apple held off until iPad 2. The cam­eras do a rea­son­able job, but they’re not going to replace a ded­i­cated dig­i­tal cam­era, or really even the cam­era on your phone for most still images. The cam­eras do a sub­stan­tially bet­ter job with video, and Face­Time is prob­a­bly one of the best rea­sons to get the iPad 2 over the orig­i­nal iPad. For those who might not be famil­iar, Face­Time is Apple’s face to face con­fer­enc­ing sys­tem, kind of like Skype, or if you’d rather, kind of like the Jetson’s TV/Phone.

    With the push of a but­ton you can be hav­ing a face to face chat with a loved one just about any­where in the world (pro­vided they’re on a wire­less net­work at the time). Face­Time doesn’t work over 3G natively (it can be used over a wifi con­nec­tion cre­ated by a 3G device how­ever) so you’re not going to be able to use it in your car any­time soon. This is prob­a­bly a good thing though. It is incred­i­bly easy to use and if you know other peo­ple with an iPad 2, iPhone 4, or Mac it’s a lot of fun. Smart Cov­ers aren’t really smart but they’re really very useful.

    Not only do they pro­vide a styl­is­tic enhance­ment of the device, but they serve a prac­ti­cal and func­tional pur­pose of dou­bling as a screen pro­tec­tor and stand in 2 con­fig­u­ra­tions. You can find them in a vari­ety of col­ors and from third mar­ket sup­pli­ers, and it’s a safe bet that more will be out soon to cap­i­tal­ize on the mag­netic sen­sors in the iPad 2. It’s unfor­tu­nate that this same fea­ture can’t some­how be retro­fit­ted to the iPad 1, I wouldn’t have thought a case would be a com­pelling rea­son to con­sider a prod­uct over it’s com­peti­tor, but these cov­ers are really so use­ful it’s hard to under­stand why they’ve not been there since the begin­ning. Mul­ti­task­ing sup­port is important.

    Reply
    • Jonny / August 25, 2012

      Thanks, but an iPad cost $500+ while I can buy this tablet and it would only cost me around $199. While I agree that due to the price dis­par­ity, there must be a good rea­son for that. I know there are many pros and cons, but to be hon­est, I can’t afford to waste $500 just for enjoy­ment. I’d rather spend the rest of that money doing some­thing which is actu­ally fun.

      Reply