Gizmodo Australia claims to have a training document which details the rumoured Google Nexus tablet. It's built by Asus, 7", 1280x800, 1.3Ghz Tegra 3 processor, 1GB of RAM, GeForce '12-core' GPU (whatever the heck that means). The 8GB variant will be $199, the 16GB one $299. It looks quite decent, and will run Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Interestingly, the document also states that going forward, Google will take care of Android updates directly - however, it's not made clear if that's for this device only, or for all Android devices. The "going forward" bit would suggest all devices, but as much as I hope so, it seems unlikely.
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I don't know yet if this thing has an SD card slot. But if there was one, can you explain me why one would care about ridiculously overpriced internal storage instead of opting for cheaper and upgradeable external storage like on digital cameras ?
I mean, $100 for 8GB of low-quality flash storage sounds ridiculous to me. Pen drives of that capacity costed much less than that two years ago, and the market moves fast...
Edited 2012-06-26 03:25 UTC
Member since:2006-09-01
I'm betting it won't since none of the Nexus phones have SD card slots.
As for why they don't make removable storage the "/home" partition for user data and applications, I have no idea. I can only speculate that the Android team expected better integration with Google then what's going on now.
The 8GB probably isn't where most of the cost is. That was probably a couple of dollars. Besides, you're supposed to use the Google cloud. 
Member since:2005-07-11
If it's a full-sized SD slot, that would be nice. Up to 16 GB cards are now under $1/GB up here, and the 32+ GB cards are hovering around $2/GB.
MicroSD cards are approx. double that right now (8 GB for just under $20 after taxes).
Obviously, these aren't the fastest SD cards around, but they aren't the crappiest either. Price goes up with speed requirements.
(Prices in CDN$.)
Absolutely amazes me that Apple can charge a $100 US premium for 8 GB of extra storage.
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The A5X also has a lot more memory bandwidth than the Tegras, all of which are limited to a single 32-bit memory channel. 
For all the graphics know-how that Nvidia has, they are really limiting/hampering/hobbling their mobile graphics solutions. Even at 1.6 GHz, with DDR3-1066 memory, the Tegra3 GPU is slow. Just check out the benchmarks for the Asus Transformer Infinity (1900x1200 resolution @ 10.1") at anandtech.com. PowerVR GPUs runs circles around the Tegras.
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2006-06-12
> or for all Android devices.
It is technically impossible. Microsoft force some standard technologies for use with WindowsRT, but Google does not for Android. So, given the fact that Linux modules/drivers are not backward/forward compatible, there is no way they could support all devices at once.
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I'm not sure if that's 100% true. With the last Galaxy Nexus, there seemed to be a handsets running different firmware. Search for "yakju" over at the XDA forums.
Some models got updates straight from Google, while others got them from Samsung, which were often slower. Samsung said that it was done at the request of carriers. I recall a few threads at various Android forums dedicated to owners users with the yakju-alternative firmware flash back to yakju-stock. Not sure about prior Nexus devices though.
Member since:2006-06-12
Same for the N1 and NS. It took 18 months before I got 2.3 and when I did, it bricked my N1. I have to use a few tricks to flash cyanogen as it would not boot anymore. I then installed 4.0.3, something that even google does not support, so if you want updates, Nexus or not, do it yourself.
Edited 2012-06-26 01:29 UTC
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