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Google getting out of the tablet game was inevitable (and smart)
Yesterday afternoon, Google's hardware division made an unusually forthcoming announcement: The company will no longer build its own tablets. Instead, it will focus all of its efforts on laptops. Given that Google released the Pixel Slate (its first Chrome OS tablet) just eight months ago, the news was a bit surprising. But if you've paid attention to Google's checkered history with tablets, it's hard to see this move as anything but logical, particularly when you consider the undeniable success Chromebooks have had lately, particularly in education.
How would you change Google's Nexus 7 (2013)?
Whenever you talk about a Google device, it's hard to know where to assign credit: Google, or ASUS, the company actually building the thing in the first place. The second generation Nexus 7 may have cost $30 more than its $199 predecessor, but that cash seems to have all gone to make the hardware even better. When Brad Molen played with it, he said that it had an "incredible display" and "strong overall performance." We figure that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of you picked up one of these slates, so why not head across the Rubicon and into our forum to talk about your experiences?
The extended Nexus family: Google's golden Android standard
Google's Nexus line has long stood as the company's ideal vision of its widely adopted, open-source Android operating system. The devices, be they smartphones, tablets or even one-off media streamers, are built in conjunction with select hardware partners and represent an ideal marriage of tech specs with an unadulterated version of Android. It's Google's way of dealing with fragmentation (read: skinned versions) in the mobile OS market it created; a reference mark for manufacturers to aspire to, so to speak. On the tail of the original Android handset's sixth anniversary and in the run-up to whatever new Nexuses come next, we take a look back at the hardware path that's been Google's gold standard for Android.
Nexus 7 purchases now come with £50 Play Store credit
If you've been eyeing up Google's latest Nexus 7 tablet but needed a little something to tip you over the edge, then this might give you the incentive you need. Google and ASUS have teamed up to offer £50 credit to spend on Play Store content if you purchase a 16GB Nexus 7 between now and June 1st. There's also some good news if you bought your Nexus earlier in the month: ASUS says that any purchase made from a UK retailer after May 5th will qualify. If you have your Nexus 7 in hand, all you have to do is head to this site within 30 days and follow the instructions to redeem your credit.
Google expands Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 sales to more European countries
Google may have wowed the world yesterday with the introduction of Android Wear, but it turns out it also had some Nexus-related news tucked away too. Already available in 13 countries around the world, the search giant has quietly expanded sales of the Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 across Europe, listing them on the Play Store in eight new markets. These include Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden, giving customers the option to bypass operators and grab themselves an unlocked Nexus device direct from Google. With the Chromecast finally on sale outside of the US and an influx of Android-powered wearables on the way, Google's finally making it easier for Europeans to start investing in its expanding product family.
Tablet deals of the week: 2.21.14
If you've taken a look at our winter 2014 tablet buyer's guide, you now have a good idea of what slates you should be buying. With many purchases, price can be a sticking point, but thanks to our pricing tools, it doesn't have to be. We've compiled some of the best deals from over the past week -- including products from the buyer's guide, and a few older models you should also take a look at -- so you can add a new tablet to your tech arsenal without taking a serious hit to your wallet. If there are other tablets you have your eye on that we haven't included here -- join us and add them to your "Want" list. Every time there's a price cut in the future, you'll get an email alert!
Verizon will offer Google's Nexus 7 tablet starting this Thursday
As reported yesterday, Google's Nexus 7 tablet will finally become available on Verizon Wireless with support for the carrier's LTE network. And it looks like rumors got the date right, too; the 7-inch Android slate will go on sale at Verizon this Thursday, February 13th, with the 32GB model priced at $350. The Nexus 7 will also be available on a two-year contract for $250, though only for a limited time. If you already own a 2013-edition Nexus 7, you'll be able to access Verizon's LTE network once you've downloaded the latest Android software update. Adding the tablet to your Share Everything plan will cost an extra $10 per month. Google's 7-incher had to undergo a lengthy certification process before gaining support for Verizon's network, so today's announcement is good (if overdue) news.
Daily Roundup: SteamOS release, holiday gift guide for the geek, Z Ultra Google Play edition and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Engadget's Holiday Gift Guide 2013: Tablets
Welcome to Engadget's holiday gift guide! Head back to our hub to see the rest of the product guides as they're added throughout the month. Tablets are right up there with 3D-enabled 4K TVs in terms of gift appeal; no one can resist firing them up the moment they've been unwrapped. Maybe it's their super-thin form factors; maybe it's because they make great couch companions; or maybe it's because they're just plain fun. Whether it's an Android, Windows 8.1 or iOS slate you're shopping for, you'll find suitable picks across all budgets below.
Thoughts on the Google Nexus 7 from the perspective of a longtime iOS user [updated]
I bought my first iPhone in 2008 and my first iPad in 2010, and I've upgraded both devices several times since then. Over the last five years, iOS has easily been my second-most used operating system by hours of usage after Windows (which I have to use for my day job as a Java developer). I've never seriously looked at any alternative mobile OS, as I have a substantial commitment to Apple's ecosystem in terms of app purchases, content storage, and sheer muscle memory. So it was something of a plot twist for me when I recently landed a job offer from Google London, working on one of Android teams. As I don't have a great deal of hands-on time with Android, I was nervous that I didn't have a very deep idea -- or even a fairly shallow one -- of what's what on the other major mobile OS. The Google recruiter assured me I wasn't expected to have prior knowledge, but even so, if I rocked up on my first day next year not knowing anything, I'd feel like a complete chump. I figured that I should pick up an Android device and get my feet wet. Having made that decision, and already owning an iPhone 5 and an iPad 3 that I was happy with -- and not wanting to spend any more money than I had to -- the logical decision was clear: a Nexus 7, Google's flagship small tablet device. It's relatively cheap, at $229/£199 for a 16 GB device (compared to $399/£319 for the forthcoming iPad mini with Retina display). In addition to being an Android testbed it also fills a role that I don't currently have matched up with a device: a small, semi-pocketable, one-handable tablet. My life will soon contain a fair bit of commuting via busy London public transport, so I thought a device that needed less elbow room to use than my 9.7" iPad might be a good idea. During my first few days with the device, I kept some detailed notes on what I saw that I liked, as well as what I didn't. I present these notes now for your consideration. I'm not going to pretend that this is any sort of a review; I don't use enough different tablets to be a capable judge. It's just my personal take after a few days of intensive use, from the perspective of a long-term iOS loyalist. Screen and form factor In any tablet, which generally consists of little more than a screen plus a thin bezel, these two subjects are intrinsically linked. Unlike many Apple-centric writers, I've long been intrigued by the 7" tablet size. I picked up a first-generation Kindle Fire from the US for a friend in 2011, long before the release of the iPad mini that legitimized the small tablet form factor for many people. Although the Fire was in many ways a deeply iffy device, my first impression on using it for an hour or so was that a tablet light enough to be comfortably held in one hand is a qualitatively different device to one that cannot. Subsequently, using my wife's iPad mini and now this Nexus device has further cemented this belief. Firstly, in terms of display quality, the Nexus 7 is top notch. Anandtech reports it has terrific color calibration, it's pin-sharp with a better-than-Retina-display dots-per-inch, it's simply lovely all around -- the equal, to my eyes, of any of my iOS devices. One minor gripe though: even at the lowest setting, it's too bright to read at night without illuminating the entire room. The Nexus isn't going to displace my Kindle Paperwhite for that. And of course, the Kindle enjoys battery life that any LCD-packing device could only dream of. So display quality is very similar. In contrast to Apple's offerings, however, the Nexus 7 adopts a very different aspect ratio. The iPads, both mini and traditional, have a 4:3 ratio, so the overall tablet is squarish. To my mind this is an aesthetically pleasing ratio; balanced, if you will. Neither too tall nor too short. There's a reason that 4:3 is a common proportion in photography stretching back over many decades; it's just nice to look at. The Nexus 7, however, has a 16:10 screen; relative to an iPad the screen is narrower but much taller -- like the iPhone 5. This brings some significant advantages. It makes the device itself narrower, which I found made it easier to carry -- the Nexus 7 will fit in the inside pocket of most of my jackets and the back pocket of my jeans, whereas the iPad mini does not. It also means I can more comfortably "span" the device with one hand, with my left thumb curled around the left edge and my fingers curled around the right edge. I find this a bit of a stretch on the mini (I have smallish hands, though). The reduced screen width is also a good fit for some reading tasks. Apps that reflow text to fit the screen (such as Kindle or Pocket), using a font size I find comfortable, and with narrow margins, end up adhering pleasingly close to the typographical rule of thumb that 66 characters per line gives optimum readability. On the iPad mini, I'd need wider margins or a larger font to achieve that. And of course the screen is a natural fit for 16:9 video content. The Nexus 7's screen is 16:10, so widescreen video has just a very small top and bottom letterbox. It's 178 mm across the diagonal, which means it's 151 mm along the long edge and 94 mm on the short edge. With the letterboxing applied, a 16:9 video will therefore be 151 mm x 85 mm in size. By contrast, on an iPad mini with its more expansive 4:3 screeen with a 201 mm diagonal, widescreen video content will be 161 x 91 mm -- barely larger because of the letterboxing. It's not a big deal, but now I've done all the math to prove it's not a big deal I'm damned well going to include these results! However, it's not all sunshine and roses in widescreen land. I found many web pages to feel somewhat cramped. In portrait mode, the text of a typical desktop-layout web page is often a little small until you zoom to just the content column, but now you've sacrificed visibility of the navigation tools and any other horizontal content. An iPad mini would be able to show the whole width of the page without bother. Perhaps tellingly, Google's Chrome browser defaulted with the option to "request desktop sites" set to false, thus preferring mobile sites. Some mobile sites, however, looked a little odd to me on the 7" screen -- sparse, somehow, as they are blown up into an amount of space they were not designed for. Then there's landscape mode, which exacerbates these problems; I feel like I'm peering at the world through a letter box, condemned to scroll every few seconds as I reach the bottom of the screen again and again. The keyboard occupies over half the screen, leaving only six to eight lines of text visible in even a smallish font -- hopeless for text editing. Fortunately the Nexus, like the iPad mini, is narrow enough to make thumb typing in portrait mode quite practical. I wrote most of this article that way and found it reasonably agreeable, although I wouldn't want to write a novel on it. It's no substitute for my iPad paired with my trusty Logitech Ultrathin keyboard cover. A tale of two app stores Much has been written about the relative sizes and quality of Google's and Apple's competing app stores. Perhaps too much emphasis is placed on this, in fact. Consider Apple's recent boasts that is has paid $13 billion to iOS developers across the lifetime of the platform, and that lifetime sales of iOS devices now stand at 700 million. Big numbers, to be sure. But divide one by the other and you calculate that the total amount spent on apps across the lifetime of the average iOS device is just $26.52 -- so perhaps 15 or 20 paid apps purchased, in total. I do wonder if the typical person simply doesn't care about apps as much as we power users do (or, perhaps, that they gravitate toward only free or freemium apps). I must also note that anyone's experience of an app store is going to be highly personal. For example, I have it on good authority that music production tools (of which GarageBand is merely the most visible tip of the iceberg) flourish on the Apple App Store, whereas the Play store has little to compete. I don't make music beyond some therapeutic drum playing occasionally, so I cannot comment on that with authority. Likewise, there are many other categories of app, and doing a detailed comparison across the hundreds of thousands of apps across the two stores is impossible. But I will add a few notes on how I fared with the apps I care about, most of which are (I think) pretty mainstream. I was pleased to find that most such apps are on Android, even less famous ones like OurGroceries (an outstanding cloud synced shopping list app, by the way) and Paprika (my favourite recipes app). Flipboard synced my subscriptions over from iOS. Common services like Flickr, Foursquare, Simplenote, Pocket, Tumblr, Yelp, iPlayer, BBC News, the remote control for my Sky DVR, and more were all present and correct. The financial impact wasn't very large, either: I'll have to spend about £10-15 or so ($15-20) to replace all my must-have premium apps. It wasn't all great, though. The most glaring casualties, however, were the very top tier of iOS apps: I've tried a few but found no Twitter client that's even in the same league as Tweetbot. (To be completely fair, I must acknowledge that my love for Tweetbot is so great that it has come to mold how I use Twitter, and no other client on any platform can compete with it for my affections either.) The field of Dropbox-powered Markdown-supporting text editors, whilst not completely barren, is much reduced on Android; I can't find anything to challenge Editorial or Writing Kit. Although niche, these are tools I rely on for writing on my iPad. Alternative calendar apps also seem to be thinner on the ground than on iOS; I can't find anything to challenge Calendars+, Calvetica, or my personal favourite, Fantastical. There seems to be rather fewer interesting games on Android, although the big names like Where's My Water, Candy Crush Saga, and Angry Birds are of course all there. This strikes me as a shame as the Nexus 7 would probably be a better gaming device than either my iPad 3 (too heavy) or my iPhone 5 (too small a screen). Several bigger games I would have liked to have tried on it were missing, like XCOM, Civilization Revolution, and Baldur's Gate (although the latter is "coming soon"). On the other hand, the Play store has emulators in it for various consoles, which opens up the intriguing idea that I could play Advance Wars DS on my tablet. I intend to investigate this at some point. The idea of playing action games intended for physical controls on a tablet via touch screen controls doesn't thrill me (and using a PS3 controller with the Nexus, whilst possible, seems fantastically clunky) but more sedate games should survive the transfer relatively unharmed, I think. Related to the topic of app store size is also media store size: music, TV shows, books, films. I don't watch a lot of video on my tablet so I'm not best placed to draw conclusions from the brief look I did have at. However, anecdotally, I've heard many people say that Google's Play media store is rather smaller than Apple's, particularly outside the US where the tangled web of international video distribution rights makes it hard to get a good range of content. Of course if you mostly use independent services anyway -- Netflix, Kindle, and so forth -- then you'll find an equivalent experience on any platform; I find that a reason to prefer that sort of service, personally. Openness Much tedious squabbling has been done about the openness or otherwise of the Android operating system, and I do not intend to retread that tired ground here. However I must note that there are real, practical advantages to Android's willingness to allow users to customise aspects of the user experience that can make iOS feel a bit chafing and oppressive by comparison. Keyboards can be swapped out, a feature that has allowed experimental alternatives like Swype and Swiftkey to become established. Alternative browsers and mail clients and PDF viewers and photo galleries and so forth can be installed, as with iOS, but then can also be configured to be used as the default choice throughout the operating system. [Google's "shadow ecosystem" on iOS allows Chrome to launch Google Maps along with similar interactions among Google-branded apps, but does not change the wider experience. –Ed.] The home screen can be populated with a variety of information-rich widgets for at-a-glance access to whatever you care about most. I must admit I found this less compelling than I thought I would, but it's early days and I'm still experimenting with the large range of options available to me. I think I'll come to value this more as I find a mixture of widgets I'm happy with. The arrangement of app icons on the home screen, whilst snapped to a grid, does not need to be filled from the upper left corner first -- a small point, but I found this particularly liberating. The "sharing" feature works properly, which is to say it works like the Services menu in OS X. Once an app is installed, it appears throughout the operating system; so in Chrome, for example, I can send a URL directly to my Twitter client, or to Evernote, or to Pocket, or Tumblr, or any number of other apps I have installed. This is much more useful to me than the situation on iOS where only services Apple blesses (so just Twitter and Facebook) can get into the system-wide sharing options. There are further intriguing possibilities for customisation on the horizon, like the forthcoming app Cover. Cover adds to your touchscreen a strip of icons for the apps it thinks you're most likely to want right now, based on data culled from various sensors on your device, like location and travel speed. So if you're in work, you get options for your corporate mail and your calendar; if you're at home, you might see icons for Flipboard and Facebook; if you're driving, you might see Google Maps and Spotify. I think this trend of smartphones becoming better at predicting our needs by harnessing their rich trove of data about where we are and what we're doing is going to be important in the future. Apps with this anticipatory computing backbone are becoming more prevalent in both Google and Apple's ecosystems. Voice recognition Much the same as Apple, Google integrates voice recognition deeply into the operating system. Voice prompts can be found in various search boxes and in any text entry field via a dedicated button on the keyboard, very similar to iOS. You don't get many spoken responses back like Siri provides (or at least, I didn't -- there is a setting somewhere for a car mode so it must exist), which makes it seem rather characterless. You don't get Siri's jokes and Easter eggs either. But it can do many of the same tricks, like setting reminders and alarms, creating calendar entries, and so forth; getting information about sports scores or actors or movies works by shunting you to a Google search. More importantly, however, than the fine-grained features is how fast and accurate Google's voice transcription is. It's like night and day compared to Apple's offering. If you've never seen it, find someone with an Android phone and try it out -- then think about how much more often you'd reach for Siri if it was this good. Lightning port vs micro USB Apple's introduction of the Lightning port produced a lot of heat and noise across the blogosphere, mostly focussed on how expensive the charging cables were. Defenses of the standard usually hinged on the fact that it's a much more capable port than micro USB. However, via its micro USB port my Nexus 7 can: be charged quickly from the supplied 7 W charger (by comparison, the iPad mini comes with a 5 W charger and the iPad Air a 12 W one) be charged slowly from any USB port, over a generic cable I can buy for a few cents; spare Lightning cables cost $19 or $29 depending on length be connected to a USB card reader via a $1.38 adapter; the equivalent Apple adapter costs $29 be connected to a HDMI television via a $15 adapter; the Apple equivalent costs $49 Lightning has theoretical advantages, particularly in terms of future expansion, and the bidirectional plug is a pleasure to use. But I'm struggling to see meaningful practical advantages here. What I found in the Nexus was a tablet that can connect to everything I want it to connect to and save me a decent chunk of change into the bargain. Online services and lock-in My Google email, calendar and contacts list all work on iOS just fine. Yet my iCloud email, calendars and contact lists are inaccessible to Android. Hence, if I want to be free to access my data on all my devices, this asymmetry means I'm much better off with all my data in Google's hands than in Apple's. I wonder if, in the long term, that's a good thing for Apple; is it driving people who care about interoperability into the hands of competing providers? Certainly, I find myself giving serious thought to moving my primary calendar over from iCloud to Google now. [Update: numerous commenters below and elsewhere have pointed me to various Android apps that can bridge this gap, allowing you to access iCloud calendars and reminders on Android. SmoothSync seems to be the most common recommendation. Also, iCloud mail of course supports standard IMAP (which had entirely slipped my mind) so can be directly access through standard Android apps.] On the other hand, several times I wanted to reply to an iMessage, or tick off a completed task in Reminders, and I found myself reaching for the Nexus before realising that wasn't going to work and picking up my iPhone instead. My reminders list is shared with my wife, so I can't easily leave that behind. Many of my friends use iMessage, so when messaging with them I enjoy free texts (sometimes internationally), high quality images, and the ability to see when they have read a message and when they are typing a reply. (Plus sometimes iMessage even delivers all my messages promptly and in the correct order. Bonus!) All these Apple-only integrations create little patches of friction that stand in the way of me leaving iOS behind, and in aggregate they provide a powerful disincentive for me to try and run a mixed environment where some of my devices run iOS and some run Android. But another option I have is to entirely abandon iOS and embrace competitor devices and platforms wholesale. If it's easier for me to bypass this friction forever by dropping iOS than endure the hassle of mixing my devices across platforms... well, let's just say I'm not sure that's what Apple wanted to achieve. [Update: I neglected to add, photo syncing is a major pain point for me. I'm fully committed to Apple's infrastructure: Aperture for post-processing and storage, various albums synced to iPhone and all my photos synced to my iPad via iTunes, and Photo Stream for ad hoc sharing with friends. Integrating Android into that workflow in any meaningful way has so far defeated me. I had high hopes for an Everpix Android app, which would be perfect, but the company's sad demise has scuppered that option.] The "hardware" back button I say "hardware" because on the Nexus 7 it is actually a strip on the bottom of the touchscreen, albeit one that is almost omnipresent. Video playback apps and full screen photo viewing sometimes reduce it to a blurred-out dot, presumably to be less intrusive; apparently in the next release of Android they will be able to hide it entirely. I found the back button to be a mixed bag. About 80% of the time, it did exactly what I thought it would: took me out of a full-screen image viewer and into the app that opened it, say. Or if one app had just loaded another, it went back from the second app into the first; that was disconcerting at first but came to feel natural. But some apps were less consistent and I find myself agreeing with John Gruber's spot-on observation. In the Twitter app Carbon, for example, you swipe between three panes showing your timeline, @-replies, and private messages. Many times, I would move from one of those views to the other, then instinctively press the back button to move back to the previous view: but that would usually exit the app entirely instead. This was maddening, and I can't seem to reprogram my expectations so I'm still pressing that dratted back button! Now, you could argue that this was an isolated example of an app that implements this feature clumsily. Or, as Gruber posits, you could equally argue that this is an idea that's ripe to accidental misuse by devs and is simply never going to work right across every app in the Play Store. I'm not sure which side of that line I sit on yet. Miscellany A few extra small observations that didn't deserve a section of their own. The good: You can easily create a Google account without attaching a credit card -- something which requires arcane incantations on iOS. Free apps can also be downloaded without entering your Play password. Screenshots go into their own gallery -- far preferable to the iOS approach where they are mixed in with your photos. Apps can have free trials -- for example SwiftKey allowed me to install a feature complete version of the software that will work for a month. That's not allowed under Apple's App Store rules. All my full-size iPads have been Wifi-only models, and that's never bothered me. But the sheer portability of the Nexus 7 make it somehow jarring that I have the Wifi-only model of that. I expect I'd feel the same way about the iPad mini if I owned one myself rather than just borrowing one occasionally. A curious psychological effect: you know how the iPhone 5's larger screen makes the iPhone 4 feel cramped and constrained when you go back to it? The Nexus 7 made me feel that about my iPhone 5, like the screen was suddenly too small. What's curious is that my 9.7" iPad has never done this; I think it's because it feels like a totally different device (due to the weight, mostly) whereas the Nexus 7 and the iPhone 5 are somehow more similar. It makes a little bit more sense to me now why massive smartphones like the 5" Nexus 5 seem to be popular with my friends. The Nexus 7's stereo speakers are on the left and right of the device when it's held in landscape mode, whereas the iPad mini's are on the left and right of the device when it's held in portrait. I most care about getting stereo sound out of my tablet when I'm watching video, which means it's in landscape mode; I find Apple's decision here highly questionable. The Nexus doesn't sound bad, either, by the standards of tiny tinny tablet speakers. (Disclaimer: I'm a speaker snob. 5.1 floorstanders in my lounge and I disabled my TV's built-in speakers immediately after installing it.) [Update] Craig Grannell reminded me of something I liked but forgot to write about: on any web browser signed into your Google account, a single click of a button in the Google Play store can remote install an app to your Android device. That's something I wish Apple would copy. [Update] The notification center has a "remove all" button. C'mon Apple, throw me a bone. Bad stuff: Jerky/laggy/hesitant scrolling -- particularly bothersome in the Tumblr app, but I've seen it in lots of places, including official apps like Play. Pages with large graphics or embedded videos seem to be particularly grevious offenders. Somewhat baffling given the very high specs of the Nexus 7 (a quad core CPU and 2 GB RAM). I've heard some reports that the experimental ART runtime that can optionally replace Dalvik in KitKat can help with this. Android seems to have no equivalent to iOS's scroll-to-top tap-the-clock feature. I miss that dearly. Flinging a long list like a Twitter client again and again to get to the newest content is clunky. Some apps include it as a button or menu option, but not many. After I installed the BBC iPlayer app, I tried to watch something and was confronted by a dialog saying "to watch BBC programmes you need to install the BBC media player from the market place." I had to download this second app from the Play store before it would work. Could be something specific to the BBC, although I can't help but think that anything that clunky would never make it through Apple's app guidelines. Duplicated versions of apps -- for example, out of the box, I was confronted by "Photos" and "Gallery". I believe the former is an older, less powerful app that is part of the Android Open Source Project, whilst the latter is a closed-source official-Android-only more powerful app, but it's confusing to have the duplication and the difference isn't made explicit anywhere. [Update: Apparently I had this backward; Gallery is the older app, and "Photos" -- which was "G+ Photos" until recently -- is the newer. The general feeling seems to be that Photos will replace Gallery in time, as has happened with Chrome replacing the older Browser app.] The .com popup button on keyboard when entering URLs offers .net and a few other alternatives -- but it doesn't have .co.uk, despite my keyboard being set to "English (UK)." Apple gets this right. No AirPlay -- there's some sort of open standard equivalent, Miracast, but I don't have any compatible receivers to test it with. I don't use AirPlay a lot for TV watching but it does get a reasonable amount of use in our house for my wife and I to share content or shunt short YouTube clips and the like to our lounge TV. Of course, the Google Way would be to pick up a Chromecast for this use case. [Update: commenters below have pointed me to several options on the Play store for third-party apps that can stream to AirPlay receivers.] The camera's mediocre at best, but that doesn't bother me at all. I've taken no more than a dozen photos with my iPads in years of use. [Update] I miss my red badges on app icons. I think that, enabled sparingly on only those apps you care about, they are an elegant way to draw your attention to the stuff that matters most to you (whereas the iOS notification center is a cacophony of things I don't care about that I mostly ignore). I suspect that careful selection of homescreen widgets is a more Android-ish way of addressing this use case, so perhaps this feeling will pass. Stuff where I was tripped up because of my unfamilarity: It took me ages to find the rotation lock -- repeated Google searches returned conflicting information relating to different versions of Android and various other devices. Turns out the answer is to pull down from the upper right of the screen to access a quick settings panel (as opposed to the upper left, which is the notification centre.) The setting to turn off the odious key click sounds is found under "keyboards" and not "sounds", which confused me briefly. Swiping keyboards -- all my Android using friends are nuts about these swiping 'boards, and I gave Swiftkey a good go, but I can't seem to get on with it. I'm going to persevere as it's supposed to adapt to your writing style over time. I must admit to getting a rather queasy feeling when installing it, however, and clicking through a warning dialog that pointed out that third party keyboards could "see anything you type, including passwords and credit card numbers". Food for thought, for sure, and I daresay one of the reasons that Apple doesn't offer user-installable keyboards under iOS. Text selection semantics are different to iOS -- the way in which you position your cursor and select blocks of text is different. This has consistently driven me crazy when drafting this article. The bottom line The Nexus 7 is a really nice little bit of hardware. I'm very pleased with how portable it is and the quality of the screen. On the software side, there were some rough edges in adapting to Android -- some of them rooted in my own unfamiliarity rather than any outright badness, to be fair -- but overall this has definitely been a positive experience. If you find yourself torn between an iPad Air and an iPad mini with Retina display, if you really want both the big screen and the ultimate portability but both iPads is more than you want to spend -- well, you could do worse than consider an iPad Air with a Nexus 7 as a sidekick. It's working for me. [Update: One striking thing, as I have noted in some updates throughout the body of this article, is how many of my observations can be addressed through third-party apps that would be impossible on iOS. Background services that sync iCloud calendars to the Android calendar list, for example, or third party apps that install AirPlay services. This is, it seems to me, a key strength of the Android offering -- that third party apps have more control over the operating system, more flexibility to serve your needs. Of course with great power comes great responsibility; this very control leaves the door open to all manner of malware. I've certainly been wary of installing random apps from the store, rightly or wrongly, finding myself scrutinising the trustworthiness of an app in a way I never would on iOS. I am greatful to anyone who took the time to leave a comment and point me in the direction of apps that solve my problems. Many thanks to you all. --Rich]
Google debuts new wireless charging pad with support for Nexus 5 and 7
Last year, Google unveiled a new wireless charging pad alongside the Nexus 4 and Nexus 10, and the company has taken advantage of 2013 to come up with another one. This new charging pad has been announced in tandem with the Nexus 5, and will include support for it and the Nexus 7. It's supposed to go on sale in the Play Store today, though pricing is still an unknown. So what's different this time around? The new pad, which should work with any device that offers Qi compatibility, has been completely redesigned (it's shaped like a square instead of a hockey puck) and now features magnets that will make it easier for devices to stick on it -- provided those phones and tablets in question have magnets built in as well. We'll have more information about the chargers as we get it, so stay tuned! Nicole Lee contributed to this post.
New Nexus 7 gets update to fix buggy multitouch (update: and wonky GPS, too)
If you're one of the 2013 Nexus 7 users who's experienced some wonkiness with multitouch, this is (hopefully) your lucky day. Over on Google's product forums today, Mountain View staffer Paulw confirmed a system update that addresses the touchscreen issues. Build JSS15Q is reportedly rolling out now -- if you've received the update, be sure to let us know if your Nexus 7 is finally screen freakout-free. Update: Looks like the update addresses an issue with the unit's GPS sensitivity, too.
Users report new Nexus 7 suffering from GPS issues
The urban-hunchback shuffle is usually demonstrated by commuters slouching over a phone, in search of a pre-meeting coffee-house. But, if you're attempting something similar with the latest Nexus 7, maybe leave a little earlier. Why? Because word is that some users are reporting funky behaviour with the tablet's GPS -- perhaps causing a little deja vu for ASUS slate owners. Issues vary from total flake out, to halting after 10 to 30 minutes. Several attempted fixes -- including complete reinstalls -- haven't fixed things. Google is aware of the problem, and working on a fix -- but no details on when this might be delivered. It's suggested that disabling Google Play Services might help things. This component of Android is used by other apps though, so proceed with caution. Is it affecting you? Let us know in the comments.
New Nexus 7 now available to order from Google's US Play Store
As of now, Apple's still wholly content letting Google and its clan of followers dominate the sub-$300 tablet market. Hence, the new Nexus 7. For those drawn to a thinner, lighter, more powerful version of the Android-based slate, orders can now be placed directly through Google's Play Store... for customers located in the United States. Both the 16GB and 32GB WiFi-only models are still on track to ship by next Tuesday, while those on the lookout for a cellular version will need to wait a few more weeks. It's Friday. You probably just got paid. And really, what's $230 between friends?
New Nexus 7 to arrive today at Best Buy, ahead of schedule (update: confirmed)
A tipster has told us that the latest Nexus 7 from Asus and Google will hit Best Buy stores today, and a pre-order we placed earlier for the device seems to confirm that. We put our money down for one when the order page first went up, and while the confirmation originally said it would arrive on the original July 30th launch date, it's now telling us that we can expect our tablet later today. That jibes with info we were given by a source claiming to be the manager of a Best Buy store. He said that while pre-orders started yesterday, "there were few (of them) in my region," meaning that "if you are present at a (Best Buy) location today at opening, you have a good chance of buying the tablet." He added that some stores don't have stock yet due to agreements with Google, but pre-orders are still possible at those locations. Until we receive confirmation, however, you may not want to make a long journey to one of the outlets. Meanwhile, we've reached out to both Google and Best Buy. Update: Best Buy has touched base, telling us "we can confirm that the Nexus is available at all Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores and BestBuy.com now." [Thanks, Anonymous]
New Nexus 7 tablet coming July 30, carried by GameStop
A new version of the Nexus 7 tablet is coming to market on July 30, anxious to show off its thinner and lighter summer body to the world. The new Nexus 7, which sports an increased 1,920 x 1,200 resolution and upgraded innards, will retail for $230 for the 16GB model and $270 for the 32GB model. A $350 model supporting LTE will be available "in the coming weeks." The latest version of Android, Jelly Bean 4.3, is on board the 7-inch tablet. Just as it did with the original Nexus 7 tablet, GameStop will be selling the updated Nexus 7 tablet - both online and in-store. "The original Nexus 7 was a great success for both GameStop and Google, and we are excited to continue this success as the 7-inch tablet and Android market continue to grow," said GameStop's VP of mobile, Joe Gorman, in an announcement. Anyone who comes into GameStop and trades in goods toward a new Nexus 7 will receive an extra 30% in credit for a limited time.
The new Nexus 7 vs. last year's model: what's changed?
Google's second-generation Nexus 7 hasn't been the company's best kept secret -- we've seen leak after leak, after leak and, well, you get the point. Still, now that the revamped 7-inch slate is officially out the bag, we can finally leave speculation behind and attach some formal specifications to the thing. As expected, the new Nexus 7 brings a number of internal upgrades to the table, while its outer shell has seen a few minor aesthetic changes. All signs point toward it being a worthy successor to Mountain View's popular tablet, but how big of an upgrade are we talking about, exactly? Those answers await after the jump, where we break down the specs and spell out what's different between the old and new Nexus 7.
New Nexus 7 with LTE headed to AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile (update: 32GB LTE model available in the 'coming weeks')
Coming as no surprise at all, Google's just unveiled its newest Nexus 7 tablet at a breakfast meeting in San Francisco this morning. What has caught us off guard, however, is news that the Android 4.3 tablet will bow on three of the US' top wireless carriers -- that's AT&T, Verizon* and T-Mobile -- as a single SKU and with support for LTE. No release date or pricing has yet been announced for the 7-incher, but when it does launch, it'll be the premier device to ship with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. Update: Google's just released pricing and availability for the new Nexus 7, pegging the WiFi version for a July 30th bow in-store and online. There'll be two configurations -- a 16GB and 32GB -- that'll retail for $229 and $269, respectively. Users that prefer to wait for the LTE-enabled version will have to fork over $349 for a 32GB model, although this variant still doesn't have a solid street date; Google's saying it'll hit retail in the "coming weeks." *the Nexus 7 LTE will not support CDMA (read: 3G service) on Verizon
New Nexus 7 press shots leaked, spotted in Best Buy ad
The new Nexus 7's official unveiling might still be a few days away, but impatient tablet fans can get a peek right now: @evleaks seems to have come across the alleged device's official press render. The image doesn't do much to confirm the 7-inch tablet's internal specifications, but what we can see matches previous leaks, giving us a clearer view of the device's rumored 5MP rear-facing camera and and a branded backside -- now lacking the dimples of the original. A pair of speakers can be seen on the rear's north and south ends and volume, power and a microphone input line the tablet's right edge. On the front we can see an offset front-facing shooter, an underlining notification LED and what is most likely Android 4.3. Although the press shot doesn't reveal anything about the device's screen, a Best Buy ad featuring it pegs it as a 1,920 x 1,200 display, pricing the 16GB variant of the upcoming tablet at $229 --$40 less than the reported price of the slate's 32GB model. Phone Arena says the leaked ad is scheduled to run next week, placing the circular's promised Tuesday availability for the Nexus 7 on July 30th. We'll wait for Google to give us the full story on the 24th before jumping the gun, but if you just can't wait, feel free to ogle Best Buy's unreleased insert after the break. Update: Android Police has nine additional press shots, showing a clearer view of the device's sides (and SIM card slot) as well as an updated background. Check them out at the source link below.
ASUS sells 3 million tablets in 2013 Q1, rakes in $202 million profit
The PC market may be shrinking, but ASUS' plan to avoid being swept away by its rivals seems to be working. The Nexus 7 maker's latest financials reveal it made $3.5 billion in revenue, coining a quarterly profit of $202 million in the process -- up 5.8 percent compared to both the previous quarter and the same quarter in 2012. While ASUS did see sales drops in its Notebook and PC Component divisions, these were offset by sales of 3 million tablets in the first three months of the year. The company is also making gains in America, which now accounts for 23 percent of ASUS' business -- up from 17 percent at the start of last year. While these current results are the company's seventh consecutive earnings increase, ASUS is predicting sales will remain flat in the next quarter -- perhaps affirming the rumor that we won't see that rumored Nexus 7 replacement until Q3.
