Google Nexus 7
Google’s Nexus 7 tablet is not exactly a surprise. Nor is the fact that
I’m able to work on a review of the product just hours after the device
was announced. For years now, Google has had the uncanny habit of not
only making big announcements at its I/O events, but then immediately
sharing what it has shown off with developers and members of the press.
This year was over the top. Not only did Google hand out its new,
7-inch, $199 Nexus 7 tablet, but it also introduced a new version of
Android (4.1) called Jelly Bean, upgraded its flagship phone, and...
rolled out the Nexus Q. Perhaps the most odd of all, the Q is a
spherical media player / amp which functions as a wired audio and video
output for all of your Google content.
But the main course is obviously the tablet — a stock Google experience
with a price point clearly meant to put a hurt on Amazon’s Kindle Fire,
and sway potential buyers of
Apple's lower-end iPad 2. Android as a
tablet platform has stumbled thus far — can Google
finally begin to make
an impact in an increasingly crowded market? Read on for my full
review
to find out
Design and Display
Rumours surrounding the second-gen Nexus have so far mainly emphasised how
it’ll feature an updated Full HD 1080p display and a sleeker, more refined bodyshell surrounding the glass panel.
Reports have repeatedly cited a 1920x1200 pixel resolution but most
recently there’s
been mention of an LTPS display technology being used,
which stands for Low Temperature
Polycrystalline silicon.
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There’s a lot of technical wizardry behind why this tech is advantageous
but, in short, it
offers a higher resolution, higher pixel density and
smoother latency than conventional LCDs.
Here’s an excerpt from PCMag’s glossary:
‘The larger and more uniform grains of polysilicon (poly-Si) allow
electrons to flow
100 times faster than they do through the random-sized
grains of amorphous silicon (a-Si),
enabling higher resolutions and
higher speed. In addition, instead of surrounding the screen area, t
he
row/column driver electronics are integrated onto the glass substrate,
thereby reducing the TFT
section and the wiring between the pixels.
Thus, LTPS LCD pixels can be closer together and achieve
densities of
200 dpi and greater.’
Neat stuff.
Other related rumours claim we’ll see a narrower bezel around the
outside of the screen and an overall thinner profile for the whole
device. A recent leak says it’ll be between 7.5mm and 8mm thick. The
display pixel density has been touted as 323 pixels-per-inch (ppi) which
would place the Nexus 7 secon-gen as the sharpest tablet on the market.
Hardware
The first Nexus 7 used Nvidia’s Tegra 3 quad-core processor, so there’s
been some debate over whether the successor
might opt for the updated
Tegra 4 chip from the same manufacturer, or go for the now ubiquitous
Snapdragon hardware from rival Qualcomm.
The most recent rumoured details suggest the Nexus 7 second-gen could
have a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro
quad-core processor, which while now a
little dated would still be an improvement on the old Tegra 3 and would
also help to keep
the cost down while significant (ie: expensive)
upgrades are happening to the display and the like. The specific model
quoted is Qualcomm’s APQ8064 chip which features an Adreno 320 graphics
processing unit (GPU) and 2GB of RAM.
On the subject of storage, the same leak suggests 32GB of internal
capacity and, as with previous Nexus models, there’s no word of microSD, which means it’s probably unlikely.
An earlier report suggested a starting price and implied this would
apply to a base model with 16GB of built-in storage. Certainly we think
an 8GB model is out of the question as the 8GB Nexus 7 first-gen did not
sell as well as its 16GB counterpart, to the point where Google
eventually discontinued it and shifted its pricing regime to make the
16GB the base model.
We think this time round it will just cut to the chase and start with 16GB as the base model at the lowest price.
Imaging isn’t a huge priority on tablets for most users so the rumour
goes that there’ll be a 5-megapixel snapper on the back and a
r
udimentary 1.3-megapixel setup on the front for video calls.
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