News

Its been a long time coming but it’s finally here. Google’s own tablet, the Nexus 7. If you weren’t glued to the Google I/O YouTube stream like we were then you probably missed the announcement for the device along with the announcement of Android 4.1 Jellybean. So for those who have been reading our posts about the rumored 7″ slate from Google, here is what it’s all about.

In essence, this is not a real ‘tablet’, it’s more of a 7″ phone (minus the radio)–we’ll explain later. The Nexus tablet is powered by a Tegra 3 quad core processor with an astonishing 12-core GPU. The device will feature a 7″, 1290×800 HD IPS display and 1.2MP front-facing camera (no rear camera!). It will have 1GB RAM and your choice of 8GB or 16GB internal storage. It weighs 340g which is about the size of a paperback book.

Some more specs here:
4325 mAh (Up to 8 hours of active use)
NFC (Android Beam)
198.5 x 120 x 10.45mm

Now back to what we said earlier about the device being more of a phone. Google has decided to do something a bit strange here. Instead of the tablet version of Jellybean (JB), they’ve decided to run the phone version of the software. This is evident by the pull down notification panel rather than the standard notification panel found in the bottom right corner of typical 7″ Android tablets. With this device it looks like Google isn’t trying design an iPad alternative, but instead, an Amazon Kindle alternative.

As you know, we love tablet apps! We believe that apps should have a specific UI that is suited for devices with large screens. But with the introduction of the Nexus 7, I can safely say that Google has definitely sealed their (not so good) fate in the tablet app ecosystem. I have a feeling that developers will be less inclined to make proper tablet apps, ones with fragments, since their app will undoubtedly scale to fit the Nexus 7′s display ‘pretty well’. Though I can ramble on about all of this, I recommend everyone take a look at a post by Sascha Segan from PC Magazine regarding tablet apps. Though I don’t agree with everything in that post, he has some valid arguments to make.

So let’s turn it over to you guys. What do you think about the new Nexus 7? Will you be picking one up? Let us know in the comments.