Nobody needs a tablet, but many people still want a tablet. This is still the core differentiator between a ‘real’ computer and a tablet. At least in The Netherlands, you can’t function in society without a desktop or laptop connected to the internet, so people need a computer. A tablet, though? Hence, the most common thing people have told me when they played with my iPad 2 is this: I’d love to have a tablet, but not for hundreds of euros. Enter Google’s Nexus 7, the first ‘cheap’ tablet that doesn’t just validate Android as a tablet platform, but also gives the iPad a run for its money.
Seems like I have to pick one up
Where have you been able to buy one in the Netherlands? Or did you import it from the U.S.?
A tablet (especially one like this intended for media consumption) needs more storage than what the Nexus 7 series offers. The lack of any way to add user-loadable storage just kills this device. Too bad because I was actually pretty excited about it up until I discovered this failing.
I understand that some people are fortunate to be somewhere where everyone has fiber optic connections to the Internet and free WiFi is available at all times–but most people do not live in such an environment. Saying that you can get everything from the cloud only works if you can always count on being somewhere with access to that cloud. The cloud is not the answer here.
Besides I would think with the Megaupload situation and the prevalence of false DMCA attacks, anyone trusting in storage they can’t physically access is being foolish. Did we learn nothing from the shuttering of Google Video? From the Plays for Sure debacle?
Nice toy, but even at these low prices I’m still not convinced the Nexus 7 is a buy. Looks like I’m going to be sticking with my Nook Color for a little bit longer after all….
–bornagainpenguin
PS: For those who’d like a more iOS like experience on Android, give Espier Launcher a try with the iPad option checked in settings and you may be pleasantly surprised. Personally I’m still holding out hope for a JoyOS port to CM9\10 in the near future….
Edited 2012-08-11 17:47 UTC
1) 16 gig is plenty for local storage
2) it is meant for cloud based services more than local media
3) if you are in a situation where you need to have local media, 16 gigs is plenty.
1) 16 gig is plenty for local storage
Not everyone has the same usage pattern for these devices. Might be plenty enough for you and most people, but not for others.
2) it is meant for cloud based services more than local media
Not everyone wants to deal with cloud. I have almost everything iCloud turned off on my iPad because I often time have to use it without internet connection.
3) if you are in a situation where you need to have local media, 16 gigs is plenty.
Again, not everyone as the same usage pattern. There’s no such thing as a “one size fit all”. I’m sure Google did it because it’s enough for most users. But many other people definitely may need more.
If the intended usage doesn’t fit you, then don’t buy it.
I never said otherwise. I’m definitely not buying it
I do believe–Yes–he(bornagainpenguin)did introduce the easily understood concept that a tablet lacking SdCard memory expandability isn’t always appropriate when in areas where the cloud isn’t always available, and/or–I’ll add–if the user wants to retain full control over all their media, values their privacy, and/or doesn’t want to risk being “Honan’d” (Matt Honan). So to sum it up, the Nexus 7 does in fact have a serious shortcoming in that regard, and it is definitely a deal-breaker for some. Myself being one of them.
However, thank you ever so very much for setting us all straight as to “16 gigs being plenty for local storage”, and being also good enough to repeat it twice in your three point argument, with your only other point “it is meant for cloud based services more than local media” being the utter epitome of “You don’t say”. “Really?”.
Who are you, or anyone, to even think you know what is appropriate storage for everyone’s needs? Much less to make some B.S. declaration akin to Moses waving his hand to part the Red Sea, over this issue?
Getting a little weary of people ramming what is (IMHO)this whole “connected 24-7 cloud storage/Google Now perpetual umbilical cord nonsense” down people’s throats like we simply can no longer survive without it.
Further, who, besides a very select few industry or political na-bobs, unfortunate Alzheimer patients or just plain retarded people, need to have Google Now to tell them when to catch a flight, when to leave for work, or when to stuff a Burrito/etc.. in their effing suck-holes?
Having the thing give me the traffic situation automatically just before I leave for work is pretty useful, though.
Sucks for sports, since it only seems to know basketball, handegg and luckswing.
Well, here’s some news for you, and I know it might shock the shit out of you, but… there are indeed other tablets to choose from that not only have bigger capacities, but also SD card slots. The Nexus 7 is a budget tablet, designed to compete with the Kindle Fire, so of course it’s not going to have all the bells and whistles that everyone wants.
I myself don’t have a need for an SD card slot, and 16gb is more than enough, since I mostly read on mine and stream music online. If that wasn’t the case, I would’ve looked for a different tablet.
That being said though, I wish Google would release a higher-end 7″ tablet with an SD card slot and HDMI out so I could have all that on a pure Google tablet, but we don’t live in a perfect world
Oof, 16 GB is not plenty, especially if you can’t count on a decent network connection. 16 GB downright sucks.
You can get literally terabytes of storage with an external hard drive and an adapter.
I thought this was about mobile computing?
Yes, but if you’re swapping SD cards around for more storage, you need a place to hold them, and if that place is any bigger than your pocket it can probably hold a 3.5″ portable drive.
Sure it could, but you forget that mechanical hard drives are more prone to physical damage from being moved around than flash memory. Not to mention that most 3.5-inch drives require AC power to function. 2.5-inch drives usually don’t, but they’re even more prone to damage from being bumped around.
Honestly, SD support would not have been expensive to include. They wouldn’t even have had to do any work to the os, as Android has supported removable storage from day one (which makes sense considering the use of the Linux kernel). Still I agree with some other here: If you need to expand your storage, buy a different tablet. I might also add that you make it known to Google why you are going with another option. Enough demand might convince them to add the hardware in a future revision or, at the least, to offer a larger internal storage option.
A someone I know of uses a 64GB usb flash drive attached to the usb adapter on his Ainol Novo 7 Elf II for extra storage.
Swapping cards isn’t something most people would need to do on a regular basis. Stick in a 32GB card and leave it there.
You wouldn’t believe the speed you can get out of a RAID array! Ok, now, can we go back to tablets?
I agree with you. If I was into Android & smaller tablets, the Nexus 7 would be one of the top contenders, but in the end the small amount of storage would play against it.
My iPad 3 has the max storage (64 Gig) and I’m always borderline full. Having to deal with only 16 Gig would give me too much headache. To be honest, maybe I’m just an edge case and most people would be just fine with it.
Also if I was into Android/smaller tablets, I would probably wait and see what Amazon is planning for the next Kindle Fire, as I personally like more controlled eco-systems for my tablets/phones.
Just curious – but what would you want to store on the tablet? The reason I’m asking is my Internet options where I live are zilch – I’m stuck using a rural phone carrier and only get 1.5 Mbps. I use Google Music for storing my music (my music collection hasn’t surpassed 20,000 songs) and I use Google Drive for storing everything else. I haven’t really ran into any problems with needing additional storage on the device. To be honest, I rarely watch movies on it, and if I do, it’s either using Netflix or my Amazon Prime Instant account. I fully realize my needs aren’t the same as everyone elses. Just curious about the desire for additional storage………
If you get 1.5Mbps on a 3G connection you have a really great connection. A great use of a tablet is watching movies and series away from home. If you don’t want to load everything you might want to watch every day on your tablet 16GB is not enough. One season is already 8GB+. And I wish I could get netflix or amazon prime instant but most of the world doesn’t have that.
My apologies for not clarifying a bit more – the 1.5 is my max speed for DSL that I get.
To answer your question, I plugged in my iPad and looked at the allocations:
18Gb for Videos
9Gb for Photos & home videos
27Gb for Apps
2Gb for “Others” (not sure what that is)
I don’t have music on it, which I keep only on my iPhone.
I might be an edge case, but I’m definitely one of those who needs a 64Gb tablet
Oh yikes! lol In that case, I can definitely understand the need for additional space (and a SD card). We certainly use tablets in a different manner. Looking at my tablet (Galaxy Tab 10.1 32GB), my breakdown is:
28.01GB Free
523 MB used by Apps
Like I said, I watch movies online and such and upload all of my documents/pictures to online accounts.
I just did a wipe yesterday before I grabbed the ICS update (4.0.4) and haven’t installed everything back onto it, but I tend to not install much stuff on it (I don’t play any games on it or anything).
16gb builtin is definitely not enough. That’s the reason I bought an archos g9 for my dad. 80gb builtin storage, gives plenty of room to manage his picture collection when on holiday (he can shoot 16gb in a couple of days).
While I do travel with a laptop and sometimes external hdd, he does not. And not having to take a laptop along was the main selling point for buying the thing.
Only complaint: the device should have come with a builtin sd card reader, or plain-size usb adapter. Transferring data over is still a bit too complex for the luddite-user, non-wirelss scenario
Edited 2012-08-13 08:09 UTC
You need more than 16GB? Why?
I’ve got 23GB of music files, but I don’t care to listen to most of it.
I’ve got 38GB of images, but I don’t care to look at most of them.
Video, especially movie files, can eat 16GB in no time at all. But how many movies do you need to store locally? Surely you can reconnect with your laptop or desktop after watching six hours of video.
Do you travel with a folder full of SDcards with your entire movie collection just in case you want to watch Babe: Pig in the City?
For God’s sake, YOU are not HIM. I trust him to know his own needs better than you.
“I’ve got 23GB of music files, but I don’t care to listen to most of it.”
I need 64Gb but I don’t even put my music on my iPad (I use my phone for that).
“I’ve got 38GB of images, but I don’t care to look at most of them.”
I try to keep my photo album and home videos VERY tidy, but it’s still 9Gb. And there’s no such thing as putting on my iPad only a selection of them as if I can say “hum this week I’m gonna look at this photo but not this one”. My iPad is my defacto personal photo album and it makes no sense not having everything on it.
“Video, especially movie files, can eat 16GB in no time at all. But how many movies do you need to store locally? Surely you can reconnect with your laptop or desktop after watching six hours of video.”
I fly many times a year, often time outside the country where WiFi is not always available, and when it is, where most streaming services are blocking access from outside the US. And if on a trip I think I’m gonna watch 4 movies, I don’t want to put only 4 movies on it and being restricted on what I can watch. I want a little bit of everything so I have options on what I feel like watching at the moment.
I’m also mostly gaming on my iPad, which takes almost half my 64Gb iPad. Like my photos I try to keep it low, but I still want a selection to pick from depending on my mood, not having to limit myself to 3-4 games.
Also I got a whole lot of comic books I want to read.
I guess the common thing is: I *could* only bring the bare minimum in everything and make do with it, but I much rather have a selection in everything so I’m not stuck with something I’m not in the mood for. And having that option is absolutely worth the extra $ for me.
Yes. My father goes on holiday with a pocket full of sd cards.
His dislike of “computers” is enough to make him prefer that to taking around a laptop, or laptop+hdd. He’s traveling today with around 120GB of pics, so 2 x 64GB cards would do. But he’s got a lot of cards ranging from 4 to 16 GB he bought over time, so why not use them.
Google Video content was moved to YT… it’s actually more a kind of positive example, along the lines of “once uploaded to the cloud, always in the cloud” (and Plays for Sure – failing of a service with locally stored data, so also could be used by some as an argument for “the cloud” I guess)
I bought an Astro+ 7″ tablet for less than £80; don’t understand why I should pay more than double for Google’s offering.
I don’t need the bigger resolution, nor the better GPU. This is a tablet, not a gaming station; nor a multimedia centre: this is for crap like facebook, emails and the like.
Hum, you do know you’re not the center of the universe, right? That other peoples exists other than yourself, and that they have different needs?
Good review, pretty much matches my thoughts †Chrome is still needing work. I don’t have such a large issue with the swipe to different screens and the ‘drawer’ mode for apps like YouTube, but YMMV.
Minor nit, you say ‘lack of a front-facing camera’ when clearly you meant rearâ€facing camera
I highly recommend the mobile Firefox browser. If you used a previous version (as I did), you probably cringe when you think of Firefox on Android. Well, the latest version is totally redone, and it’s lightening fast! It still uses a lot of memory, but it is worth it. I’ve switch from Opera mobile to Firefox – give it a shot.
p.s. – I’m posting this from my Libretto 110CT with 32MB ram, Windows 98 and K-Meleon browser. It seems ironic to post about the latest high-end mobile device from the REAL first netbook!
Yup, I’ve been helping test Firefox Beta on this beauty, and along with performing slightly better and doing sync to Firefox desktop, it also supports such web technologies as WebGL and decent native HTML5 webm support
+1 for Firefox Beta. I’m using it on my ICS-powered Asus Transformer and it’s the best Android browser, period. Opera and Webkit based browsers really don’t hold a candle to it in terms of snappiness and rendering quality (it’s almost as good as on the desktop version). Also it has Flash support and Adblock Plus.
+1 Firefox, it’s refreshing to see they improved a lot.
The new Firefox Beta (v 15) seems okay. Current stable (v 14) doesn’t support basic stuff like fixed position in CSS, which makes it impossible to create good web apps with a native look & feel. The more people that uses browsers that doesn’t support basic stuff like this (Opera Mobile for instance), the harder it is to be a web app/web site developer. You have use the user agent and browse-specific code, which shouldn’t be necessary in 2012. Please don’t use Firefox 14 for Android & Opera Mobile for Android.
DROOL!!! I kick myself to this day for ever selling mine. I ditched it when I got my first smartphone, a Palm Treo 650 back in 2006. By the time I realized the smartphone is not a portable computer replacement (and still isn’t today, for me at least) it was too late.
I have to say too, the Libretto was a better computer by far than the Atom-based HP netbook I had for a couple of years. Speed isn’t everything…
Now I just need the 32MB RAM upgrade – it’s hard to find. 64MB would rock!
Here’s one from Amazon for $8.99, grab it while you can!
http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-32MB-144-Pin-60ns-SODIMM/dp/B002LY8EH…
If only! Here is the proprietary chip it uses.
http://www.memoryx.net/nw2059u.html
Ahh, my bad, I had forgotten about the proprietary connector. All I remembered was speed and that it was EDO.
EDIT: And I see what you mean about the price. It’s about half what you would pay for a beat-up, used to death Libretto on eBay. I did put in a quote request at one wholesaler just for kicks, we’ll see what happens.
Edited 2012-08-12 22:25 UTC
I ordered a 16GB one the moment it became available at the Australian Play Store (I live in Singapore, and Oz is closest). Arrived late July, and I’ve been using it a heck of a lot more than I thought I would.
I disagree with you on the Home button though. The sooner all Android devices get rid of it, the better, in my opinion. Trying out a Galaxy S3 felt so cumbersome compared to my Galaxy Nexus, though half of that might have been a fault of Samsung’s TurdPiss Skin as well, I suppose.
Also not experiencing any of the slowness you’re getting with Chrome. Sure, there is some jerkiness here and there on heavy sites, but it’s the same on my partner’s iPad2. I wonder why our experiences are so different in that regard. Is there some other online caching element at work here? I’m not a fan of that “fuzzy zooming” you get whenever you re-flow/zoom a page, though.
Also, the new (supposedly improved) Roboto typeface looks a tad “off” against bright backdrops on the Nexus 7. Can’t really put my finger on it, but I don’t seem to have that dislike on my 4.6″ Galaxy Nexus running the same version OS, so maybe it’s a scaling or ppi issue. Dunno. What I am sure of is that I still dislike Roboto’s numerals, especially the number 9. Ugh.
Edited 2012-08-11 19:18 UTC
You’re a useless Gnome 3 fanboi fop aren’t ya? You might enjoy poking at random spots on a touchscreen in hopes of getting it to do what you want, but give me a bunch of labled buttons to press, you jackass.
Nice review, thanks! Now I’ve read an article today ( http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/10/3226295/news-flash-surface-pro-ha… ) about all this PPI “cold war” thing and I’d consider that N7 217PPI should be more than enough to be “equal” to iPad3 264PPI. Nevertheless it would be interesting to see both devices side by side to compare them live.
If the top/bottom confusion gets too annoying, put a sticker on it
I’ve been using mine for a week.
* I disagree on the home button — it’s not needed. But the power button indeed could be more apparent and the volume button should definitely go on the other side. I’ve already pressed “power” instead of “volume up” a couple of times.
* Have the same experience with Chrome — it sucks. Looking for a replacement browser. Luckily there’s plenty of choice.
* Many google apps need polishing and minor bug fixes. My calendar didn’t sync (looks like a common problem) and still doesn’t allow adding event by tapping except in week view. Had some glitches with maps and play store. Many standard google apps were not pre-installed. “Play Movies & TV” label is truncated if you place the app on a home screen.
* Google Now (both on my phone and tablet) has it’s share of bugs too, but that’s understandable for such a complex product.
* 3rd party apps obviously need updating but that seems to progress really well. One specific thing is if an app uses upward swipe for anything it needs to block Google Now popping up.
Since JB comes with Chrome instead of “Browser”, I would highly suggest trying Firefox (yep) for loading sites like theverge.com
The reason is that Firefox (and “Browser” on older devices…) use different rendering tricks than Chrome does.
And it’s *much* faster.
On my 720p Tegra2 device, theverge is annoying slow in Chrome, dolphin, etc.. even opera mobile.
It’s “just fine” with browser.. and just as good on Firefox (they really came a long way on Android recently..).
Jelly Bean does not come with Chrome. It’s only the Nexus 7. On my Galaxy Nexus, “Browser” is default, and Chrome must be installed manually.
As a web-app developer, I can for sure say that “Browser” is better than Chrome in many ways. It supports things that Chrome either doesn’t support or they are buggy.
JavaScript performance is MUCH better in “Browser”, and is actually worse in Chrome than in any other:
http://img.gfx.no/1059/1059678/Screenshot%20from%202012-07-…
The purple, “Innebygd nettleser”, is “Browser”. It is best.
Also, it is not Chrome’s engine that is used when creating an app that shows a web page (WebView), but “Browser”‘s engine.
I don’t understand why Google doesn’t use “Browser”‘s engine and just make Chrome a nice frame around it, like on iOS. On iOS, you know that if your web app works in Safari, it works just as good in Chrome (except for touch gestures like swipe in from left or right, where Chrome uses it to switch tabs).
I wonder how the nexus 7 stacks up against the galaxy tab 7.7. I just installed ICS on my gt 7.7 and its a HUGE improvement over honeycomb.
Cm10 includes the default ‘browser’ but I have to say that I’ve only used chrome since I got it.
I wanted to stick with a pure nexus build but that only lasted a couple of weeks. The preview builds of cm on nexus hardware are instantly stable.
I use Ampache owncloud and minidlna so I actually probably only needed 8gb.
But as Tom said this is purely a want and I just spent out of desire.
Worth every dollar.
…and I’ll say it again.
This is coming from a Apple guy!
I’ve never liked Android and made fun of the tablets (and phones).
However…
The Nexus 7 is a great tablet. I love it. Android 4.1 is great which is what makes the device what it is (I think). Full points to Google for finally getting the OS to where it needs to be (sorry if some of you liked 2.n (or even 3.n) but they were just not up to scratch as far as I was concerned.
Great speed, low price, great software…
Only Wifi, so that will be a sticking point for some (not me), and no way to expand the memory (just like the iPad).
Get the model with the most memory (I didn’t) and have a lot of fun!
The only problem I have with touch in general is accidentally touching elements on the screen by accident. I might be half way through typing in a search to find I’m not back at the main menu or I’ve opened another tab in Chrome or what have you. I did this in iOS too, but less. Not sure if that is an Android thing, a screen sensitivity thing or just me being retarded.
I’m still hanging out for an iPhone 5 (maybe to be sorely disappointed, in which case I’ll look for an Android 4.1+ phone).
I’m from the same boat. Never liked anything Android after my first experience.
But this tablet is pretty freakin awesome!
I already use it to diagnose problems on my car using bluetooth OBD2. (Something Apple does not allow)
I’ve already found very useful SMB and NFS clients. Also something Apple doesn’t do well.
There’s also different keyboard apps, Google’s Navigation, etc.
I am very surprised with the tablet catalog. I am not missing anything from iOS. I’ve actually gained more.
Apple does allow ODB stuff. I used Rev and a PLX wifi all the time (until the truck was stolen). Worked amazingly well, and an iPad on the dash with the truck stats was amazing. There are a few other apps out there as well, which I can’t remember right now, but they are out there.
“Chrome on the desktop is – by a huge margin – my favourite browser. …. and has a superior tabbed browsing implementation.”
Say what? Superior to what? Lynx?
I am researching 5 separate topics at the moment and have 50 different tabs open.
My tab bar isn’t crowded because they are grouped together in stacks.
I have a history of 100 tabs that I can open – all with full browser history and I can reopen any one at any time.
I can drag the tab bar down to see a preview of all of the tabs at once.
I get page previews of tabs as I roll over them.
I can mix private tabs with normal tabs.
I can tile or cascade my tabs.
I can place my tab bar at the top, bottom, left or right.
I can open my new tabs in the foreground or the background.
Tell me again that Chrome has a superior tabbed browsing implementation, because from here it looks pretty inferior to me……
Dude, Chrome is obviously the hipster browser in this case and like the sub-culture it IS better in someways that what’s mainstream, think IE or Firefox, but laughable when compared to some of the better yet more underground sub-cultures, like Opera which I am posting this from =P
Valid point about Opera you have there and I’d like to add to your point about Chrome not having a superior tabbed browsing implementation. I’m writing this in Firefox which has the wonderful Panorama feature (aka Tab Groups) and a shitload of extensions (like Tab Mix Plus and the like) with insane amount of features and customizations.
I’m really getting sick of the Chrome fanboys … Firefox is fast enough – I’m using it on low end computers with zero problems, it actually uses less memory, it has far better add-ons, better privacy, better developer tools and renders the real web better (the one that’s flawed and not always standards compliant).
Opera and IE9 are also pretty good browsers, certainly on par with Chrome.
Very happy with my Nexus 7 but disagree about the front facing camera.
The second camera would be useful in video calls and for taking pictures of receipts with an app like Lemon (which is not yet compatible with the N7 perhaps because of the missing front camera issue).
I’d pay another $35 for the second camera. But subtract $40 if the manufacturer pre-loads a non-default UI.
Maybe it’s an issue with those not in the USA, but I have a front facing camera on mine. If you guys don’t have one, I can’t imagine why you don’t.
I agree with the rear camera thing, about how intrusive it is in larger audiences on tablets. Keep your phone around for that one.
The tablet doesn’t contain an optional G3(UMTS)-module like the iPad and other tab’s. For me that’s a no-go coz I wanna be online on nearly every place and not only in my house or by paying wlan-access @ some places.
Don’t know what was the intension of Google to left it out… :/
what a crap!
You are really start to be worst than Apple fanboys…
You’re right. What the world needs is even more Instagram’d pictures of people pointing their tablets into the mirror.
Just the normal reaction of Thom. If it’s Android, it’s “a feature” or “you don’t need it”. If it’s from Apple, you’re in “danger of losing your freedom”, “it’s bad”, “you’re being patronized”, …
I call that a hypocrite. E. g.
“Save for the lower PPI screen and lack of a front-facing camera, the Nexus 7 holds its own against the iPad 3”
Of course he omits the possibility to have an iPad with more than a meager 16GB of RAM. Without an option to expand memory with the Nexus (hey, hasn’t that been a constant point of critic when talking about Apple products so far?), mobile usage is limited especially since there is also no UMTS option. And he also omits the screen size difference (its not just the resolution), the vast amount of tablet size optimized software, etc. etc. .. a typical Thom piece ..
Dude, anyone *STUPID* enough to take a picture with a tablet *DESERVES* to get mugged.
Watching the men’s 200m final in the Olympics, I couldn’t help but cringe when I saw someone near the front of the crowd taking photos of Usain Bolt’s celebrations with an iPad. Waving it around in front of everyone else like a big plank of wood, precariously holding it with one hand to as to reach the shutter button with their other. I mean, really, how was that any more convenient than bringing a small, compact camera? And that’s not even considering the fact that any compact camera will run rings around any tablet or phone camera with respect to image quality.
In the mood for another gadget and finding the $200 price well within my toy budget, I was ready to push the button on the 8GB model. Already added to the store’s “shopping cart” in fact. Then I realized there was no card slot. Deal breaker.
I’d happily trade the silly camera, bluetooth, and some of the other features for an SD card slot or other user-upgradeable memory option. Of course I could buy the 16GB model, but $50 extra for 8GB of additional storage, and still no way to upgrade? Somewhere between $199 and $250 is a price point that caused me to start thinking twice about buying something I didn’t really need.
I was in a UK retailer today. I played with both a Nexus 7 16GB (£199) and. Playbook 16GB (£129) and with in five minutes, it became apparent the Nexus was the way to go. Issue now is that getting one s impossible t the moment. The store I was in had just the display unit, and no idea when more stock was going to be coming. I’m just have to buy online.
I have a Nexus 7 for work, and really don’t agree with much of this review at all.
It’s nice and light, and the home screen is very smooth. That’s about it.
The browser is sub par, and given that 90% of the use of a tablet is browsing the web, that pretty much kills it. In fact, the poor browser carries over to other apps like the play store, making scrolling very annoying and jerky.
Same goes for maps. Why is it that my 2 year old iPhone 4 with a single core and outdated GPU can scroll both a web page and maps so much smoother than a quad core brand new tablet? Project butter seems to have focused on the home screen (which is buttery), and nothing else.
The critical apps (maps and browser) on a tablet are sluggish and inconsistent.
I also wouldn’t spend $500 on an iPad. That’s too much money for a pure luxury item. But the nexus 7 isn’t worth $200 either. On the nexus, there really isn’t anything it does that my phone can’t do just as well.
Edited 2012-08-12 20:21 UTC
I agree. I got it as an impulse buy just to check it out. I like the size. But the browser is no better than Safari (something I never thought I’d say)
It’s always easy to whine – but Apple have set the bar pretty high in terms of an homogenous user experience and ease of use. I thought the one thing that would be easy, namely playing back various video formats without conversion is not esay either. I still have to use handbrake (or similar) to convert AVIs and whatnot to mp4 to playback. I still got VLC on my iPad and it plays back anything. VLC don’t work so good on the NEXUS. Google also doesn’t let me edit Google docs – which I find a bit odd
But on the whole – I like it for what it is. Cheap and cheerful. It surfs the web, checks my emails and runs FIFA 2012 and IMDB OK.
How about just installing a different browser? I personally quite like opera mobile, and firefox has gotten quite decent as well.
Keep in mind that there are two phone/tablet editions of opera:
* Opera mini is the light version that renders things on the server – it’s the only one available on weaker devices (and apple products, since they won’t allow a competing renderer/JS engine).
* Opera mobile is a normal browser, using roughly the same rendering engine as the desktop edition.
Edited 2012-08-13 10:30 UTC
That’s fine as far as it goes, but that only takes care of half the problem. If the built-in Webkit rendering engine has issues like this in addition to the Chrome browser, then it’s not just the web that’s affected. It also affects any HTML widgets in any app and, on Android, that accounts for a good portion of many applications.
I don’t understand these rants about default browser, either. It’s like complaining your computer comes with WordPad (or whatever it comes with these days) while at work you have MS Office 2010. Or are tablet users too stupid to install an app?
I want it badly because it has Google’s stock software, but Google hasn’t launched it in India.
Well, generally I like the Nexus, but I can’t somehow agree with all conclusions Tom made, but that’s it, everyone of us thinks of different usage pattern for his/her device, so that’s perfectly OK.
Visiting the Metallica gig, I saw one guy holding iPAD over his head, filming one song. Well, it looked funny. But still – the lack of rear camera, is just a stupid ommission. I have 2x Canon DSLR, yet I don’t carry them with me, so I welcome my HTC Sensation phone has a camera too. Now why to miss it on a tablet? That, in my eyes, is completly stupid ommission. Look at Galaxy Tab 7.7 – does the rear camera ruin design or usability for you? I think not.
One other thing – why does it miss on GSM/3G? Once again – e.g. my mom has her eyes impact by diabetes. I was thinking to get her some tablet. Now how much more would it cost Google to add GSM/3G module? Once again – for few bucks they limit the usage. Galaxy Tab 7.7 has that module.
So, apart from price, for the usage pattern I need, Galaxy Tab wins, and only because Google decided to miss on some usable features. Well, I like Nexus 7 anyway, so I might get one anyway, as the 199 USD is a good price, but …
“…199 USD is a good price…”
The reason because it is so “cheap” is because it doesn’t have all these features.
It just has all the features 95% of the people need, so they can get enough volume to justify the price.
Maybe google want more quality in the low end in order to increase market share for Android before Apple comes with quality low end devices. Basically raising the bar for OEMs in the low end in order to improve the Android brand overall.
I got a case for mine… here is my first ever video review of anything…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_hDd12i7Bw&feature=plcp
I’m surprised you missed out on a few things that even the casual user would spot about the Nexus 7:
* I got 15 pounds Google Play credit with my Nexus 7 – I presume you did too, Thom, but you never mentioned it.
* No Flash shipped with the default Nexus 7, though you can side-load it.
* No Camera icon on the desktop as standard – you have to get “Camera Launcher for Nexus 7″ from Google Play to be able to run the app.
* Default launcher can’t rotate the home screens to landscape, which is utterly ludicrous.
Covering other points:
* First thing I did – which I do on all my Android devices – is install Firefox Beta, which on the Nexus 7 beats Chrome to a pulp (and supports Flash too!). I’m surprised you didn’t try another browser when you found Chrome wanting.
* Next thing was to root and unlock the Nexus 7, which was easy enough.
* Finally, I installed the Modaco JR6 ROM, which actually included Flash, the Camera app icon and a launcher that supports landscape rotation on the home screens amongst several other improvements over the stock ROM. I may look at CyanogenMod 10 soon, but the Modaco ROM is a good starting point if you just want some of the dumb decisions made by Asus/Google to be fixed.
* No mention of any games in the review – this is really where the Nexus 7 shines: Tegra 3, 1280×800, quad core CPU on a 7″ display means that games like Riptide GP and Dead Trigger look great on the tablet and where it has a clear edge on the sub-100 pounds tablets you can buy.
In the UK, if you want a good 7” tablet, the Nexus 7 is the only top-end spec machine available. We have no Kindle Fire, no Nook Color and whilst there’s a load of mostly Chinese sub-100 pounds tablets available, all of them are underspec’ed in one or more important ways.
I was lucky to get the 16GB model with a 20 pounds discount code from Tesco Direct, so I’m quite pleased with the 179 pounds it cost me.
Edited 2012-08-13 18:26 UTC
“I love high-density displays, and wanted to reward Apple for taking the plunge, especially since they managed to keep the price the same.”
Why? Apple wants nothing more than to control you and keep everything you do on their computers, and they are attempting to do this with their walled garden approach to software, locked-down operating systems and suing every Android cell phone manufacturer out there in hopes of downright killing (instead of competing, as it should be) their main competitor. You’ve wrote many excellent articles on the patents lawsuits yourself. And yet… you still want to get the latest Apple tablet to “reward” them for technical progress? Something just doesn’t add up here.
I say, reward Apple once they’ve completely stopped being assholes for at least a year and a half (have fun waiting!). Until then… avoid everything with their logo on it. But then, I guess I’m no longer fascinated by anything that the company does thanks to all their lawsuits and instead despise the company, and they’ve let it get to the point that technical marvels like high-res screens don’t change anything to me, so maybe that’s it.
Edited 2012-08-13 19:49 UTC
Reward Apple because they seem to be the only computer manufacturer that actually innovates and does risky things successfully.
First computer I ever saw with a USB keyboard and mouse: Apple.
First computer I ever saw without a floppy drive: Apple.
First to use EFI on a consumer product: Apple.
First affordable and available really high resolution displays? Apple.
First to use Thunderbolt aka Lightpeak: Apple.
Every other PC manufacturer is so involved in shipping low priced product that nothing risky is done.
If they do manage something interesting, it is badly thought out and/or not marketed and/or abandoned after less than a year. Acer Iconia laptop with dual touchscreen anyone? How about those crazy-expensive 7 pound tablet computers running x86 Windows with an always-lost stylus and a mere 2 hour battery life?
I wouldn’t say all of those “innovations” you claimed were truly innovative, let alone very important changes. I mean, come on–they removed the floppy drive. Some truly groundbreaking, hi-tech moves there that would have never happened if it wasn’t for the amazing Apple. [Not.] And for every one of these so-called innovations, they erode more of your freedom and lock you further into their devices. Yeah! Go Apple!
And ironically, one of those innovations–EFI–was directly responsible for making typical, generic x86 “PCs” made by Apple incompatible with everything else out there, while also paving the way for the extremely locked down hardware that has been materializing in recent years through the use of “trusted” (yeah right) computing. Again… go Apple!
Maybe I need to go out, bend over and buy an overpriced Apple product myself now. Take “their” form of “gotcha by the balls” computing right up the ass.
Edited 2012-08-14 01:49 UTC
Funny that. Last time I checked, I’ve got my current generation Apple machine tripple booting OS X, Windows, and Linux. Yeah, that’s so locked down. If you’re pissed off about the direction EFI is going on generic X86 hardware and this secure boot nonsense (I know I am) then why don’t you point the finger where it belongs: Microsoft and the OEMs that don’t have the balls to stand up to them. Interestingly enough, I don’t have to deal with secure boot on my Apple machine, go figure. I can boot whatever the hell I want on this thing so long as it’s an X86 os (EFI support preferable but not required), and I didn’t even have to unlock anything. iDevices are locked down annoyances, but that hasn’t yet extended to Macs. If it does, I’ll have to go somewhere else though I don’t know where as Linux’s audio stack absolutely sucks and high quality audio support is an absolute necessity for what I do.
For one thing, I don’t recall Apple’s “Boot Camp” hack for Windows being available for a while after the original launch of the x86 Mac. But what I really meant was to associate the replacement of the BIOS with EFI (with its introduction of trusted computing) as *the* path destined to be used for tightly locking down systems from the deepest level. And Microsoft has taken this to the extreme with their announcement, what was it, late last year, about Windows 8.
Still EFI brought us “trusted computing” and that is enough for me to not be a fan. That was really the point I meant to make. For all its strengths, that’s one giant weakness in the form of a feature that was just waiting for someone to abuse anti-competitively. Fact is, though, Apple’s OSes are locked tight and their tablets are locked from the OS level all the way down to the hardware.
Reading what you quoted, I realized I did a pathetic job conveying my thoughts into words (honestly, I’m not even going to try to figure it out myself). But hopefully this clarifies the above quoted sentences. Honestly, I think I’ll just shut up now, because I doubt that really cleared things up either, and I’m running on no caffeine so apparently my mind is f–ked.
Edited 2012-08-14 06:37 UTC
Funny, I do… The early x86 Macs ran Tiger, which was out on PPC before x86 and so obviously didn’t include Bootcamp. However, as soon as the x86 Macs came out, Apple offered Bootcamp to download for Tiger directly from their website. What did happen was that they removed it again when Leopard came out, I guess to entice users to upgrade… But the very first x86 Mac I saw (probably early 2006) already had Windows XP installed by its owner.
I have a feeling Microsoft would’ve found a way to lock things down even without EFI, most likely via extensions to the BIOS that OEMs must add in order to ship Windows. They’ve had plans for “trusted computing” for a good long time now, ever since Windows XP was code named Whistler and possibly before that. At that time, they wished to require a module on all machines that would run what eventually became XP and would validate the operating system and drivers that load after it. In concept, it was secure boot without EFI. This flopped because this hardware module was expensive and, at that time, most home users weren’t upgrading their five-year-old machines as long as they still worked. EFI made it a little easier, but Microsoft has been quietly cooking up plans like this for well over ten years. I hate what they’re doing and what it represents and I can’t escape the irony that I’ll be able to run alternate operating systems more easily on my Mac than on an off-the-shelf Windows 8 machine.
Yes, and EFI is an absolute nightmare for all multiboot needs…
All of those things were not developed by Apple, but by the industry at large (which simply doesn’t rush the tech it developed, before it can be really useful, for some pointless PR). Apple “innovates and does risky things” only by piggybacking on advancements of the industry; also exploiting how Macs are just PCs now, they couldn’t compete on their own.
Here, in the words of the messiah ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&feature=player_detailpag… ):
Also, in the grand traditional of the faithful, you overlook history – the first computer without a floppy drive was probably Amiga CDTV. And, just like iMac, quite universally forcing people into a waste of buying an external floppy drive; in both cases it was simply way too early, without real alternative present yet – that is not innovation
(no pendrives, web access fledgling; if Apple threw into the box a few/dozen-MiB USB drive, that would be innovative; or at least CD writer as standard)
Plus, disconnected from the world at large in your Apple bubble, you have a weird meaning of “affordable”…
And let’s not forget how that “innovation” of using a new industry-standard bus (instead of the totally inadequate Mac-legacy ADB), for keyboard & mouse, was accompanied by a) the dreadful “hockey puck” b) building into the keyboard a full USB hub …only to give it just one port, occupied by a mouse.
Apple produces the devices I most enjoy using and owning. The “walled garden” you mention is actually something I *want* on my portable devices. To the point that if I had to get an Android device, I’d probably stick to Kindle Fire because it has a somewhat more walled garden than the rest of the Android devices.
And whether you like it or not, Apple has more often been at the forefront of advancements than any other portable device makers. You make fun of getting rid of the floppy disk, but it IS an important detail. Sometimes having the guts of getting rid of legacy tech is almost as important getting new tech.
I agree with you on one thing tho: “suing every Android cell phone manufacturer”. That little legal game is getting quite tiring and I just hope they’d stop already.
Well, have at it. Enjoy. In some cases a bit of sandboxing is alright, but IMO Apple just goes too far, and their reasons for doing it are not something I agree with or would support.
The floppy disk has traditionally also been *the* universally-working way of doing such things as upgrading the BIOS, flashing device firmware, and use hard drive maintenance utilities. Alright, the big two hard drive manufacturers now have tiny CD images (in case your computer boots from CD without problems), but I’m not sure about the others. As for the removal of the floppy drive, it would have eventually happened anyway, so the fact that Apple was the one to cut the cord isn’t exactly something to praise the dead Apple god for.
“As for the removal of the floppy drive, it would have eventually happened anyway, so the fact that Apple was the one to cut the cord isn’t exactly something to praise the dead Apple god for.”
Don’t you think that is flawed reasoning? You could say that to anything. Newton has no merit in discovering trigonometry, because someone would have figured out eventually
Being the first at doing something IS major, no matter how “trivial” you think it is many years after the fact. Apple have been trailblazing a lot of the modern tech world, and that’s absolutely admirable even if one hates their politics.
No–after some sleep and able to think somewhat better now, I really see absolutely nothing amazing about Apple removing the floppy drive. They may have done some some truly revolutionary, evolutionary, innovative, etc. things in their history as a company, but removing the floppy is not one of them.
Hell, I hated the floppy disk ever since I first used it, and if I really wanted to I could have removed the floppy drive from all of my computers and replaced them with something more useful, just to get rid of the damn things. Would that have somehow all of a sudden made my computers at the time “innovative” or an evolution beyond others at the time or something? No, I don’t think so–and just because Apple started selling machines without the drive by default (requiring people to get an external if they did still need/want it) doesn’t make them special. And as I said–it was destined to happen eventually, someone was bound to do it–whether Apple was the one or not.
Of course, I never did that–I just left the drives in there, just in case I ever did need them. And–big shock–on at least a few occasions the thing did come in handy.
Edited 2012-08-14 19:33 UTC
Oh I would agree it doesn’t have the same level of importance as many other things they have pushed forward. But I still think that any company being the first at throwing themselves at criticism for dropping an ubiquitous yet legacy technology is noteworthy.
Edited 2012-08-14 20:56 UTC
Apple is able to do that stuff in a heartbeat, because they never had the weight of DOS (specifically, MS-DOS) and the Win9x operating systems on their shoulders to hold them back. Mac is Mac… Apple has done a good job of separating their machines from “PCs.” They ditched DOS early, and replaced it with their own GUI and underlying OS way back in history. For them, such things as ditching the floppy is easy… but seriously, as I’ve said a few times now, it was bound to happen.
Edited 2012-08-15 06:39 UTC
The first Apple I can remember seeing without a floppy was the “Cube.” The problem, at the time floppy discs were still very much in use, especially among small alternative operating systems.
It was the iMac. The original Bondi Blue iMac had no floppy. The cube came a lot later than that.
Ah, yes. The iMac (I just looked it up) was released in 1998; the Cube not until 2000. In 1998, as memory serves, people still used floppy drives for everyday storage. I wonder how Apple expected people with those iMacs to save/store/duplicate their data? They didn’t have CD-RW drives (or did they?). USB flash drives may have been around but the iMac only had two USB slots, inaccessible on the rear, one for the keyboard and one for the mouse.
Have you ever attempted to repair an all-in-one iMac? What a load of proprietary, non-standard, hard to access junk. Grrrrr…
Mac USB keyboards typically have a pass-through USB port for the mouse. The other USB port on the original iMac would probably have been used for the printer or a USB hub.
I don’t understand the relation between an OS and the dropping of a legacy hardware tech… that’s two completely different things.
Apple packages, piggybacks on the advancements of the industry at large (which just doesn’t rush its tech before it can be really useful, for some pointless PR). Before doing so, Macs had major problems competing…
As the messiah puts it ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&feature=player_detailpag… ):
Generally, what floppy-less iMac really did, was spawning a whole new popular category of USB floppy drives (waste of resources, money, and so on) – most people with iMacs needed one. FDD wasn’t yet legacy, the move was premature, erroneous – Apple removed floppy drive, but there was still no real alternative: pendrives non-existent yet, web access fledgling.
(NVM delusions of comparing those to the accomplishments of Newton…)
If Apple, say, threw into the box a few-MiB pendrive, that would be trailblazing (or at least shipping CD-RW drive as standard)
And, as is usual, you rewrite history in Apple’s favour – Amiga CDTV was probably the first consumer computer without a floppy drive, almost a decade earlier.
(and, in this case, most CDTVs naturally also had an external floppy drive…)
Overall, iMac was partly a re-purposing of the earlier (and not Apple exclusive) idea of “network computer” (and indeed, iMac G3 even reused elements of one such hw project, MacNC – that might be a major reason for its omissions, minimising R&D costs, while dressing them in nice PR). Additionally, exclusively using a new industry standard bus (USB…) was more about abandoning Mac-legacy, Mac-specific ports (ADB and such), inadequate for the realities of the market.
And WRT market forces & your…
…oh look, one of the earliest stories here http://www.osnews.com/story/18/The_iMac_and_the_Floppy_Drive_A_Cons… – in short, it was more likely a PR stunt and whoring for support of accessory manufacturers, nothing to do with the benefit of the end-users. And you fell for it.
But, let’s not forget what glorious things accompanied that move to USB: 1) the dreadful “hockey puck” mouse 2) building into the keyboard a full USB hub …only to give it just one port, occupied by a mouse (with the remaining hard-to-access port occupied by FDD)
PS. And about “Apple produces the devices I most enjoy using and owning” – do you ever keep in mind how enjoyment works with… human minds? (for example with positional, veblen goods, http://news-service.stanford.edu/pr/2008/pr-wine-011608.html – or go through a list of cognitive biases in general)
Edited 2012-08-19 00:15 UTC
Why is there any pissing around about how much storage space “is enough” for a user? Each person can decide for themselves what their needs are and it’s not something they need to validate or justify with others.
Some people will get a Nexus 7 hard-on, thinking it’s the best thing since sliced bread, some will think it’s crippled junk, and others will think it’s somewhere in between those two. All of that is true, it just matters what “you” think for “your own” use.
Well, if it had a card slot then each person ~could~ decide for themselves. As the basic Nexus stands now, you get <6GB, take it or leave it.
For my needs, no way, not even close. For my toddler that’s probably fine though.
Each person can decide for themselves but buying it or not.
So, I managed to bad a Nexus 7 16GB yesterday. I got lucky and the local PC World (a store in the UK, not the US publication) had them in stock the evening before, so I reserved one for collection.
I’m an iPad 2 owner and I’ve never owned an Android device before (save an N800 running a fairly crippled early Android build.) Here’s my mini review:
Pros:
o Comfortable to hold. I mean, really comfortable.
o Screen is nice and bright
o Battery seems to hold a good charge.
o Google services well integrated (though the 2 step verification is a kludge)
o The play store isn’t short of titles. I have all the usual susyemcs on my device (Netflix, Skype, Evernote, Trello etc.)
o £15 credit was a nice touch (see caveat below)
o The interface is pleasant to use, though the scrolling is not smooth in all apps – can seem very jerky and abrupt in some apps.
o Wifi works well (see caveat below)
Cons
o £15 credit was only given to me if I registered a credit card – I don’t want to do this, and will deregister after I’ve spent the £15.
o Wifi doesn’t support 5Ghz, so it’s restricted to my general purpose Wifi network on my Airport at home. (hint, G devices can connect and slow the speeds down…)
o why is the home screen stuck in portrait?
o why is the scrolling so jerky in some apps? It is less inertial, more “sack of potatoes”
o Google Now seems a little pointless, but was touted as a big feature in JB. Maybe it’ll improve over time?
o Far from being “plug and play” it turns out you need a special app to transfer files from a Mac to an Android device. I couldn’t see a way to put it in to USB Mass storage mode. (Am I missing something? does it need to be rooted or something?)
o I had real trouble finding an app that would play DivX files. Most barfed on my movie file. VLC (neon) works if you “open in”, but crashes on start otherwise. (I’m guessing this will be fixed…)
All in all, it’s a fun device. I’ve owned a few PDA’s over the years (Palm Pilot Pro, Handspring Visor Deluxe, HP iPaq ??5000 series (like the one Thom has), Zaurus sl5500, Nokia N800, Nokia N810, Apple Newton MP120, a few other Pocket PC’s, various iPhones, iPad 2.) This rates highly amongst them. It’s a really sweet little device. But it needs more use before I can draw any wider conclusions.
oops – BAG not BAD