Hasta La Gadget!

ASUS CEO Jonney Shih has given a blunt summary of the development process for the Nexus 7 tablet launched at Google IO today, saying that Google “demand a lot” from their hardware partners. Building to a strict target price without cutting corners led to no small number of headaches on the R&D team, apparently; “our engineers said it is like torture” Shih told AllThingsD. To meet those demands, ASUS had to assign at least forty extra team members to the project.

Those staff were spread across the world, taking advantages of the time zone differences to achieve a 24hr development cycle. In total, the Nexus 7 project took four months from start to finish. “I don’t think there would have been any other partner that could move that fast” Google’s Andy Rubin said of ASUS’ involvement.

Meanwhile, Google was working on the ecosystem to go with the Nexus 7, something which Rubin says he had identified was missing from the Android tablet segment beforehand. So, the company now has a new, tablet-centric version of Currents as well as movie, TV and magazine options in the Play Market.

Nexus 7 hands-on:

Still, it seems neither Google nor ASUS expect to be getting rich off the back of the Nexus 7. “When it gets sold through the Play store, there’s no margin,” Rubin admitted, “it just basically gets [sold] through.” Nonetheless, there are apparently signs that the tablet could be headed to retail shelves as well as being sold direct.

More on the Google Nexus 7 in our hands-on.

ASUS CEO: Building Nexus 7 “is like torture” is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week at Google I/0 2012 we’ve gotten the opportunity to take a bit of time to get some hands-on time with the brand new ASUS Nexus 7 tablet by Google. This device has been given out as a part of the free Developer Pack delivered to all attendees at the I/O 2012 conference, and it’s quite the powerhouse. This device is made to be handheld, has a soft back so you’ve got fully comfortable experience, and the whole shebang is made to show off not only the newest bits of Google Play, but Android 4.1 Jelly Bean as well.

This device you’ll see working on its own with Jelly Bean as well as with the brand new Nexus Q as well, that being a bit of streaming action for your HDTV and home audio system. This device works with an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor with a 12 GPU cores for ultimate gaming action, and has access to the TegraZone for games. The Nexus 7 is a vanilla device, this meaning that you’ve got the most naked version of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean that you’re going to see on the market.

The tablet experience here takes you to a new level of home entertainment – or that’s what it’s mean to do from what we’ve heard and seen thus far. Have a peek at this Nexus Q demonstration working with the Nexus 7 from this week as well:

The display you’ve got on this device is a massively dense 7” 1280×800 HD display (216 ppi), it’s back-lit IPS that seems here to be more than generous enough for daily use, and up top you’ve got a modest 1.2megapixel camera. This device weighs in at a light 340g, and feels fabulous to hold. We’ll be reviewing this device in full soon – stay tuned to both our Google I/O 2012 portal and our Android portal, not to mention our brand new Nexus 7 portal just opened this week for more!

Google Nexus 7 hands-on is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google’s IO Keynote wasn’t all about Jelly Bean: the company also had some slick new hardware to demonstrate in the shape of the Nexus 7 tablet and Nexus Q media computer. The ASUS-made Nexus 7 came as little surprise, a 7-inch 1280 x 800 tablet running Jelly Bean on a Tegra 3 processor. As for the Nexus Q, that takes a little more explaining.

The orb-like gadget is part headless-phone – running Android, of course – and part Apple TV alternative, hooking up with HDMI to your TV and throwing in speaker connections too. It can be used as a media streamer, pulling in content from YouTube and other cloud stores such as Google’s new movie purchase system, as well as a communal jukebox of sorts, with a shared playlist accessible from Android devices. It’s priced at a hefty $299 and will ship in 2-3 weeks time in the US.

One such Android device that could control the Nexus Q is the Google Nexus 7. The tablet ticks all the spec-sheet boxes – it has a 1.2-megapixel front camera, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth, 8GB/16GB of internal storage and 1GB of RAM, all in a 198.5 x 120 x 10.45mm form factor weighing 340g – but comes in at $199 for the entry-level model.

The 4325 mAh battery is good for up to 8hrs of use, Google claims, and there’s a microphone, NFC, accelerometer, magnetometer, GPS and a gyroscope. Interestingly, it runs Chrome for Android as the default browser, and comes with a specially updated version of Currents.

Standby for hands-on content with both new Nexus devices!

Google IO 2012: Nexus 7 and Nexus Q hardware wrap-up is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Yeah, two hours can be a lot of press conference to sit through, but if you took a bathroom break, got a drink or just blinked, you might have missed some of the action-packed spectacle that was today’s I/O keynote. We got Jelly Bean, the Nexus 7, the Nexus Q and some extreme Project Glass action. Check out the full video after the break.

Update: And just like that, it’s gone again. Google has apparently made the video private. We’ll add it back in when it goes live again.

Google’s I/O 2012 keynote is up in video form, in case you missed the skydivers the first time originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google didn’t stint on Android news at the IO keynote this morning, and Jelly Bean is shaping up to be a significant improvement to the platform despite the .1 version change. The most important detail is probably the release date, with select devices getting Jelly Bean 4.1 in July and the SDK arriving today for developers, but that’s nowhere near the only interesting tidbit. Read on for the full wrap-up.

We’d been expecting Jelly Bean, so it came as no surprise when Google officially unveiled it. It brings an updated homescreen system, with dynamically adjusting apps and widgets, along with support for offline voice typing. Performance overall should be smoother, too, as the slickly-named Project Butter attempts to speed up the interface and reduce lag.

Jelly Bean also refreshes the notifications system, with more insight into exactly what apps are telling you from the pull-down notification drawer, and there’re also new NFC abilities onboard too. Google Voice Search takes on Apple’s Siri, with natural speech query support that looks significantly faster than what Apple’s system can deliver.

Google now introduces a huge dollop of context into the Android experience, allowing Jelly Bean to make inferences based on location, calendar appointment and other data to better deliver information to the user.

In “behind the scenes” news, meanwhile, Google has challenged Android fragmentation with the promise to get access to new software versions to manufacturers 2-3 months before release, while developers get app encryption to play with.

Google IO 2012: Android Jelly Bean wrap-up is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.