Hasta La Gadget!

Darrell: Google recently updated its Nexus 7 tablet, with a new design and brand new specs including a more powerful processor and much better screen. The device also has the distinction of being among the first in line for new Android updates, so it’s an early-adopter’s delight. But despite all the new, the Nexus 7 doesn’t really dramatically change the tablet space; it slots in more or less where the original version did, as a tablet that’s good for the price but unlikely to provoke any passion.

Chris: Well, maybe it doesn’t for you. But for a market teeming with people who are itching to buy tablets over more traditional computers, the new Nexus 7 represents a major step forward over the original without a corresponding increase in price. I suspect that a considerable chunk of people are going to look at this thing, mull their options, and take the plunge. And, you know what? They could do a lot worse.

Darrell: If anyone gets this instead of a computer, they’re in for a rough surprise.

Darrell: The Nexus 7 has a lot going for it on paper, not least of which is the super high resolution display. The 7-inch screen has 1980×1200 resolution, making it officially the sharpest knife in the drawer, if the drawer is filled with tablets and sharpest knife here refers to sharpest screen.

That’s not all that the Nexus 7 brings to the table; its other big selling point is price. In the U.S., the 16GB version retails for $229, which is $30 more than its predecessor, but still $100 cheaper than the iPad mini with the same amount of onboard storage and wireless connectivity. So that’s double the screen resolution, for a third less money.

Chris: Yeah, that’s fine, get on with it.

Darrell: It’s also smaller and lighter than the iPad mini (and has a smaller display, too). You’d think that would give it portability/usability benefits, but oddly it doesn’t. I can’t help but shake the feeling that the Nexus 7 is larger than the iPad mini, even though objective measures prove that isn’t the case. Is it the gargantuan top and bottom bezels? The slightly thicker case? Hard to tell exactly, but ergonomically it’s just not up to scratch with the Apple tablet.

Chris: Anyone ever tell you you’re sort of a tablet snob? Sure, it’s no iPad mini, but are you shelling out iPad mini money for this thing? No, you’re not. I agree that those bezels are huge and they make the Nexus 7 feel strangely long when you hold it vertically, but I certainly wouldn’t call them dealbreakers. Holding this thing is like holding a slightly heavier Paperwhite Kindle, which is most definitely a good thing — there’s definitely some heft there but I find it more reassuring than anything. The soft touch finish on the 7′s rear is a welcome addition too, as it helps you get a better grip on things if you’re playing games or furiously swiping through one of Darrell’s many Apple patent articles.

Darrell: Pricing arguments start to feel hollow when the difference is $100, and it’s only $50 if you go with Apple Certified Refurbished products. The Nexus 7 was a pricing bomb when it first hit and the full-sized iPad starting at $399 was the alternative from Apple, but no one’s going hungry over the difference now, so you can stop with the cries of class bias.

Darrell: It feels cheaper, too, but that’s because it is cheaper. And it doesn’t feel as cheap as some other third-party Android tablets I’ve held, so the build quality is actually a net plus for the new Nexus 7. Also top and bottom speakers make for better sound orientation when watching movies, but they don’t beat the sound quality on the iPad mini’s two bottom-edge stereo speakers.

Chris: I’ve got to give it you on that one. The stereo speakers that Asus loaded this thing up with produce reasonably loud, crisp sound, but they do fall flat when compared to the sort of sound that the iPad mini’s downward-facing pair can pump out. That’s honestly quite a shame considering that 7-inch 1920×1200 display is pretty great for taking in a mobile movie or two.

Darrell: This Nexus 7 comes with Android 4.3 (though you might need to update out of the box to get it up to speed), which brings a few new features for users including restricted access for multiple user profiles! Exciting! … sort of. If you have lots of mischievous children who share your device. Or if you want to keep your tablet porn habit hidden from your loved ones. It’s a nice addition, but Google certainly is not going to sell any tablets on the strength of Android 4.3 alone, unless dev shops are looking for new testing devices to cover their bases.

We’re not going to talk about cameras because if you’re buying a tablet based on its picture- or video-taking abilities you’re doing it wrong.

Chris: I’ll expound a bit since Darrell’s being sort of a grump — neither the 5-megapixel camera nor its 2-megapixel front-facing brother managed to produce anything worth writing home about. They’ll certainly do in a pinch if you’ve got absolutely nothing else on hand that could do the job, but you’ll definitely want to whip out your phone instead when the urge to snap selfies becomes too much to resist.

Darrell: Don’t listen to Chris: If it’s a choice between taking a pic with your tablet and missing the moment, you’ll always have your memories.

As for the other aspects of the Nexus 7′s performance, it’s absolutely fine in most cases, with some slowdown in Chrome when scrolling that’s a little disconcerting. Overall, nothing to write home about, but no problems that would annoy the average user to the point of making them want to return the device, either. Adequate, in other words.

Chris: Some people maybe nonplussed by the Nexus 7′s spec sheet since it isn’t loaded up with the absolute latest and greatest chipsets, but its 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro and 2GB of RAM kept things chugging along with a minimum of headaches. I’m not much of a mobile gamer, but I didn’t notice any lag or performance issues while putzing around in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City or losing at Riptide GP. And loading up and playing several high-definition films (that I, uh, own) didn’t present many issues for the 7 either. There was the occasional visual stutter, but that’s at least partially because most of the video player apps I use haven’t been optimized for Android 4.3 yet.

And there’s the battery, which has actually shrunk a bit since the last Nexus 7. I’ve been able browse web pages, fire up non-graphics intensive apps, answer emails, and basically mess around for about a day and a half before having to recharge. Loading up those videos definitely takes a toll on things though (especially if you’ve got that screen brightness cranked up) — I generally managed to get between six and seven hours of non-stop video going before everything went dark.

Darrell: The Nexus 7 is good for a few, very specific things: it makes an excellent e-reader; if you like digital comics they look amazing on this screen; and if you’re into acts of piracy such as torrenting it’s much easier to accomplish on Android than on iOS without getting a proper computer involved. But ultimately the Nexus 7’s screen isn’t enough to lure me away from the iPad mini permanently; if anything, it has only whetted my appetite for a Retina iPad mini, which indications suggest we’ll probably see before the end of the year.

Chris: I’d characterize it a little differently — the new Nexus 7 is a great generalist tablet. It’s reasonably handsome (those bezels aside), it can hold its own when it comes to pure horsepower, and that price tag can be awfully hard to resist. Is it a perfect tablet? Obviously not, but it’s definitely a worthy purchase for first-time tablet owners or people who want a hardy companion to throw in a bag every day.

Here comes the Moto X, the fanciest phone out of Motorola in a long time and here already came the Nexus 7, a device that may beat out the iPad Mini. We talk about both of them. Then we move on to how 3D printing is killing us all and how that’s pretty terrible.

We discuss all this and more on this week’s TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast. The show features John Biggs, Matt Burns, Natasha Lomas, Chris Velazco, and Darrell Etherington as Uncle Jesse.

So sit back, relax, and listen to us make fun of each other while discussing this week’s developments in gadgetry.

Enjoy!

We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3pm Eastern and noon Pacific.

Click here to download an MP3 of this show.
You can subscribe to the show via RSS.
Subscribe in iTunes

Intro Music by Rick Barr.

The original Nexus 7 arguably marked a turning point in Android tablets, Google finally doing what critics had long been demanding, and wading into the slate market with an own-brand option. With a screen size that undercut the iPad by several inches – and pre-empted the iPad mini by several months – the Nexus 7 also fought hard on price, with razer-thin margins and ruthless specification trimming on the ASUS-made tablet keeping the starting point at under $200. Time – and tablets – wait for no one, though, and with the iPad mini on the scene it was high time for Google and ASUS to rework the Nexus 7. The second-generation, 2013 version promises to be more powerful, more grown-up, and just as affordable, but has Google done enough? Read on for the full SlashGear review.

Hardware and Design

The original Nexus 7 was cheap, and it largely felt that way. More generous observers described the rubberized back cover as “grippy” and the overall feel as lightweight, but physically it was clearly built to a price and, when the iPad mini debuted some months later, began to look more than a little chunky.

Price of entry to the Nexus 7 2013 club has gone up a little – $229 versus $199 for the cheapest first-gen model – but you’re getting 16GB of storage as a minimum rather than 8GB. In fact, comparing like-for-like, the new tablet is actually more affordable than before, since Google launched the 16GB original model at $249. There’s a 32GB version for $269, again WiFi-only, and a 32GB WiFi + LTE model that will cost $349 and be sold on AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

If you’re keeping count, that makes the cheapest new Nexus 7 a full hundred dollars less than the cheapest iPad mini. At first glance, it looks like Google has followed Apple’s lead and gone for a matte-finish metal casing, too, but in fact the Nexus 7 2013 sticks with plastic for its back panel. The dimpled texture of the original has been dropped, but you still get the easily-held soft touch coating, and while it’s not quite as premium in the hand as Apple’s option, neither is it embarrassingly behind.

The new Nexus 7 has lost some of its bulk, along with the dimples, and is now 7.9 x 4.5 x 0.34 inches and 10.24 ounces (compared to 7.8 x 4.7 x 0.41 inches and 12 ounces before) making it narrower and lighter – though not thinner – than the iPad mini, and leaving it feeling somewhat stretched-out in its form-factor. It’s also easier to hold one-handed, with the slimmer casing more amenable to being gripped with your fingers either side.

That’s down to the smaller screen, of course, Google and ASUS sticking with a 7.02-inch panel versus Apple’s 7.9-inch display. The Nexus 7 2013 gets a surfeit of pixels to play with, however: it runs at a Retina-dense 1920 x 1200 resolution for a total pixel density of 323ppi. It’s a fantastic panel, using LCD IPS technology for broad viewing angles no matter how you’re holding the slate, with rich blacks and clean whites, not to mention bright and accurate colors.

As you might expect, that pays dividends when you’re using the Nexus 7 to watch video, and despite the slightly narrower display than the iPad mini, widescreen content fits the Google tablet’s screen for a final image that’s about the same size. A second speaker has been added for this second-gen model, and the stereo pair is considerably better than the mono cone of before, with a surprising amount of bass despite the limited dimensions. It’s helped by pushing them to the extremes of the slate, and Google credits Fraunhofer’s Cingo 5.1-surround virtualization system for boosting the audio abilities.

Google has obviously driven ASUS hard to fit a lot into the new Nexus 7. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 chipset is its beating heart, running a 1.5GHz quadcore Krait 300 CPU paired with Adreno 320 graphics, and there’s double the memory from before, now coming in at 2GB. Connectivity includes WiFi b/g/n (2.4/5GHz) and Bluetooth 4.0, along with NFC, a microUSB port, and the option of LTE (with HSPA+ 42Mbps support), along with the same cluster of sensors – accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity, digital compass, and GPS – we’d expect from a smartphone.

ASUS has also found space for a rear camera this time around, too, slotting in a 5-megapixel shooter along with the 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera. There’s also wireless charging, compatible with the same Qi standard as the Nexus 4 smartphone. What you still don’t get is a microSD card slot, Google expecting users to rely on the cloud for their storage needs.

Performance

We’ve seen the Snapdragon S4 Pro used to good effect in Sony’s Xperia Z and the LG Nexus 4, though the new Nexus 7′s implementation – at 1.5GHz – doesn’t quite stretch it to its maximum speed of 1.7GHz. Nevertheless, the second-gen tablet feels swift and smooth in just about every area.

Benchmarks are admittedly an artificial way of gaging performance, but with that caveat it’s fair to say the new Nexus 7 does particularly well. In the Quadrant test of overall processor power, 2013′s Nexus 7 scored 5475, almost 2,000 points ahead of the Tegra 3 powered original Nexus 7. In Geekbench 2, the tablet scored 2,670, while in Antutu it managed 20,011. In the Sunspider test of browser speed, where a lower time is better, the new Nexus 7 completed in 1,177.1ms.

Raw numbers don’t really explain the usability of the Nexus 7, however. It feels zippy and responsive, with apps loading quickly and multitasking avoiding the lag that can affect some lower-powered devices. One of the lingering complaints about the original Nexus 7 was that, over time, it would grow sluggish with continued use, something that was down to how Android handled cleaning its internal storage, but that’s been addressed in Android 4.3 which should mean the new Nexus 7 stays perky even as you throw new apps at it.

Android 4.3

You can’t escape Jelly Bean, even with a new version of Android making its debut on the 2013 Nexus 7. Android 4.3 is the third outing for the name, in fact, with a host of changes that – like the improved storage management – generally go on behind the scenes rather than in front of the user.

That’s not to say Android hasn’t matured into a capable tablet platform, especially on smaller slates like the Nexus 7. The UI hasn’t looked like an inflated phone OS for some time now, and the growing number of tablet-specific apps for Android means digging through the Play Market no longer leaves you with little more than inflated phone software to choose from.

It’s the under-the-hood alterations which, although not perhaps instantly noticeable, will arguably make the biggest difference in the longer term. OpenGL ES 3.0 support, for instance, brings accelerated 3D graphics to the new Nexus 7, supporting Google’s earlier work on “Project Butter” to keep the interface slick. There’s also Bluetooth LE (aka Bluetooth Smart) support, the low-power wireless profile that will become increasingly commonplace as wearables like smartwatches gain traction. It’ll perhaps make more sense when Android 4.3 starts reaching phones, however.

Great for tablets, however – which tend toward the communal – is the newly-added Restricted Profiles feature, which allows for several different accounts to be set up on the Nexus 7, optionally with limits on what, exactly, they can each do. Each profile has its own app and data space, as well as homescreen settings, widgets, and the like, and each can be restricted around accessing certain apps, Google Play downloads, or other digital content.

It’s something which mainstream tablets have lacked for some time, and it makes a big difference if you have a family slate that lives on the coffee table and gets used by more than one person. Alternatively, if you’re in the habit of passing back your Nexus 7 to the kids in the rear of the car to occupy them, it’s useful to know that they’re not going to max out your credit card with in-app purchases and other downloads.

Android’s on-screen keyboard now has a Swype-style mode, where you can drag your finger between letters rather than pecking at them individually. The other big change is Google Play Games, effectively Android’s equivalent of the Apple Game Center, and doing much the same thing in pulling together multiplayer titles, achievements, and leaderboards.

In many ways, Google’s alterations to Android are polishing rather than revolutionizing the platform. If anything, what’s really still half-baked is the support – for tablets specifically – of third-party developers. As we said, the Android tablet app situation has improved since the early days of Honeycomb, but Apple’s iPad still has the lion’s share of titles.

Camera

The original Nexus 7 wasn’t much of a photography device. In fact, it even lacked a camera app out of the box; the front camera was solely intended for video calls such as in Hangouts. Now, on this second-gen version, Google has relented and added a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus on the back of the tablet.

Our experience with tablet cameras has never been especially good, not helped by the questionable ergonomics of using a 7-inch or bigger device to take photos. The quality the 2013 Nexus 7 can deliver with its new camera is only average, but colors are at least accurate and well-lit scenes are generally free of grain. There’s also 1080p HD video recording, which again is serviceable if hardly inspiring.

Android 4.3 brings a new camera app, complete with changes to the interface and more intelligent stitching of Photosphere panoramic shots. It’s still not perfect in how it patches together 360-degree images, but it’s quicker at it, which cuts down on inter-shot delay. The tweaked interface, meanwhile, hides some more of the settings in sub-menus, making for a UI that’s cleaner though not necessarily any faster to use for those making frequent changes.

Battery

Whereas usually each new generation of a product brings with it a larger battery, the Nexus 7 2013 bucks convention and actually trims its power pack down. Inside there’s a non-removable 3,950 mAh Li-Ion battery, down from 4,325 mAh in the old version, but Google claims that some clever software optimization has not only matched the previous runtimes but allowed the updated tablet to exceed them.

Google quotes up to nine hours of HD video playback or up to ten hours of web-browsing from a full charge. Our own testing suggests these are pretty accurate estimates; with heavy use, including Netflix media streaming over WiFi, push email and social networking turned on, some photography, and browsing, we managed almost nine hours of use before the 2013 Nexus 7 ran out.

Although there’s Qi wireless charging support this time around, Google doesn’t include the necessary hardware out of the box. Instead, you get a regular microUSB charger as standard, and have to provide a Qi charger yourself; if you’ve got one for the Nexus 4, then it will also work with the Nexus 7 2013.

Wrap-Up

The original Nexus 7 saw Google take the reins in Android tablets, showing a confused market exactly where it wanted it to go. With the new Nexus 7 2013, the rough edges of the first-generation hardware have been buffed away for the most part: the wireless charging and rear camera address two common complaints, and though it’s not quite as premium in the hand as Apple’s iPad mini, it remains considerably cheaper.

That’s before you even get to the high-resolution display, which goes beyond affordable table-stakes as we might have expected from a tablet intended for the mass-market, but kicks the new Nexus 7 to the top of the heap when it comes to Android slates. It also ratchets up the pressure on Apple to deliver an equally impressive screen on the iPad mini, since side-by-side the extra detail and clarity on the Nexus 7 2013 is readily noticeable.

Google’s first Nexus 7 was cheap and cheerful. The second-generation version is just as keenly priced but doesn’t leave you feeling like you’ve made obvious compromises in return. That makes it our pick of the Android tablets, and sets an early – and impressive – challenge to the new iPad mini.

Nexus 7 2013 Review is written by Vincent Nguyen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The ace team at iFixit has given the ol’ teardown to the new Google Nexus 7 and they’ve discovered that the rear case is very easy to open, that it’s taller, narrower and thinner and that there’s an… inductive charging coil (the first iFixit has seen in a tablet). The battery inside the new Nexus 7 is slightly smaller too even though it’s gained an hour of battery life (3950mAh vs the old 4326mAh).

Read more…

Does the high-res Nexus 7 beat out the iPad mini? Why has Apple’s average selling price gone down? Is Google’s new Chromecast dongle an Apple TV/Airplay killer?

We discuss all this and more on this week’s TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast. The show features John Biggs, Matt Burns, Jordan Crook, Chris Velazco, Darrell Etherington, and Romain Dillet. Packed house, I know.

So sit back, relax, and listen to us make fun of each other while discussing this week’s developments in gadgetry.

Enjoy!

We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3pm Eastern and noon Pacific.

Click here to download an MP3 of this show.
You can subscribe to the show via RSS.
Subscribe in iTunes

Intro Music by Rick Barr.