Google is said to be launching a revised Nexus 7 tablet by July, according to a report. The new tablet will apparently replace the Nvidia Tegra 3 inside the current generation with a Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, citing a reduction in power consumption, as well as having a higher resolution screen and thinner bezel, and may also cut the price down to $150.
So you see a great deal on some Nexus hardware on Google Play, what could possibly go wrong? Well, quite a lot it seems, if my recent Google customer experience is one by which its customer support can be judged. I have been trying to return my second faulty Google Nexus 7 and I still haven't managed to get it back to Google since first initiating the returns process in January…
Google has opened up the Nexus 7 to pre-order in India, ahead of the April 5th release date. The Google Play store lists the tablet at 16,000 rupees ($295) for 16GB of storage and Wi-Fi connectivity, reports ZDnet, and will have the same 32GB option seen in other territories available to purchase. A version with mobile data access is not currently listed in the store.
Google has started rolling out the latest version of Android to Galaxy Nexus (GSM), Nexus 7 (GSM) and Nexus 10 users, reports Android Police. The ‘Jelly Bean’ update carries the build number JDQ39, although little is known about what the latest build brings with it. One likely fix included in the latest patch is expected to rectify a glitch reported by users when streaming audio over Bluetooth A2DP.
Google has started to sell the 3G-enabled version of the Nexus 7 in Japan, alongside the existing Wi-Fi models. The Wi-Fi + 3G Android tablet, with 32GB of storage and support for W-CDMA and HSPA+, has gone on sale a few days after it's 10-inch counterpart, the Nexus 10, reached the same regional Google Play store.
Although the iPad remains the best-selling tablet, Apple's share of the tablet market dropped 8.1 points year-over-year during the last quarter -- albeit based on shipments rather than actual sales to end users, according to new iDC numbers. Shipments rose from 15.1 million to 22.9 million, but the company's marketshare dipped from 51.7 percent to 43.6 percent. Much of the lost ground was claimed by Samsung, which saw share rise from 7.3 percent to 15.1 percent, and shipments rise from 2.2 million to 7.9 million. ASUS also made large strides, advancing from a two percent share and just 600,000 shipments to a 5.8 percent share and 3.1 million tablets shipped.
The Google Nexus 7 beat the iPad at Japanese retail stores during the holiday season, says research firm BCN. The group surveyed 2,400 electronics stores around the country in December, and found that the Nexus 7 accounted for 44.4 percent of the tablet market, while the iPad took home 40.1 percent. Tablets made by local companies, such as Sony, only accounted for 2 to 3 percent of sales.
ASUS has rolled out its new 7-inch MeMO Pad for just $150. The device undercuts its own co-branded Google Nexus 7 by around $50, but it comes at a cost, including a reduction in storage to 8GB. However unlike the Nexus 7, which only comes with built-in storage, the MeMO comes with a micro-SD slot and support for up to 32GB of additonal storage space.
The dock for the Google Nexus 7 will be shipping in the US in the next two weeks according to reports. If true, the Asus-manufactured official accessory for the tablet will finally go on sale six months after the Android-based slate went on sale, but is overshadowed by reports it will also cost far more than anticipated in the United Kingdom compared to the United States, something the company denies.
Apple's iPad and iPad mini may have been a top-selling item over the holiday period, but entries from competitors sold strongly enough to slightly loosen Cupertino's stranglehold on the tablet sector. This according to new figures out from Chitika Insights, which looked at hundreds of millions of smartphone and tablet ad impressions from December 1 to December 27, 2012 in Canada and the United States. Chitika found that tablets from Amazon, Samsung, Google, and Microsoft gained a combined total of 5.5 percent market share over that period, while Apple's iPad lost 7.14 percent share.
The dock for the Google Nexus 7 is going on sale later this month in both Europe and the United States, according to reports. Originally leaked during the summer alongside a travel cover, the Asus Dock for Nexus 7 is said to be priced at $40 in the US and 30 euros ($40) in Europe, and is open for pre-orders through various online retailers.
A developer working over winter break from his college has managed to get Open webOS -- the descendant of the operating system that powered Palm and HP's ill-fated mobile devices -- to work on the Asus-produced Nexus 7 tablet from Google. The port is still in alpha stages, showing some lag and freezing while running on the Nexus 7, but the developer was able to get Wi-Fi and Internet browsing working on the device. Thanks to prior work done porting Open webOS to Samsung's Galaxy Nexus, the device even supports a "virtual gesture area," allowing it to retain the gesture-driven interface that was a signature of Palm's defunct operating system.
Rumors that Samsung is preparing to roll out a 7.x-inch version of its line of Galaxy Note devices received a boost today, as a device with those specifications showed up in the logs of GLBenchmark. The benchmarking site's logs show a Samsung device with the codename GT-N5100. That device appears to run on a 1.6GHz Exynos 4412 processor, with a screen resolution of 1280x800.
UK newspaper The Times is offering a discounted Google Nexus 7 as part of a subscription deal. The digital-only subscription would offer access to content hidden behind the paywall for 18 months as well as the 32GB variant of the tablet as a bundle deal. This is seen as an attempt to coerce British readers to pay for its online content, something that newspapers are finding tricky to do.
The rumored $99 version of the ASUS-built and Google-branded Nexus 7 tablet may be nearing release as some alleged performance benchmark scores for the device have been released online. The GLBenchmark results show a device called ME172V that runs on Android 4.1.1. Hardware specs include a 1GHz CPU and 400MHz Mali GPU.
Adobe has released Photoshop Touch 1.4, an update to its illustration and photo-editing app for tablets. The most important upgrade may be support for three pressure-sensitive styli in the iPad app: the Pogo Connect, the Jot Touch, and the JaJa Stylus. Although the Android version of the app doesn't support the styli, Adobe says it has improved its overall brushing engine to allow smoother strokes.
The Nexus 7, a joint venture between Google and Asus, debuted to favorable reviews and solid initial sales, and now it appears that Google is ordering even more units of the 7-inch tablet than it had previously anticipated. Strong demand for the Nexus 7 reportedly has Google going back to Asus to produce more units. According to estimates, Google may wind up shipping twice the units it had expected to move in 2012.
Google and Asus are distributing vouchers and refunds to Nexus 7 owners burned by the recent price drop. Buyers in the US that ordered the 16GB version of the tablet after the 14th of October are eligible to request Price Protection from the search giant, with affected customers receiving a refund within two weeks.
Owners of Google's Nexus 7 tablet will have to wait until the middle of November in order to receive an update to the latest version of Android, version 4.2 Jelly Bean. The Search giant initially promised the update for the 29th of October, but Asus tells CNet that they are still waiting on Google to deliver the code for the update. Version 4.2 will make its official debut next week with the release of the Nexus 4 from LG and the Samsung manufactured Nexus 10 tablet.
Asus has revealed that it is now shipping upwards of 1 million Nexus 7 tablets a month, reports the Wall Street Journal. It is the first insight into just how well the Nexus 7 tablet is faring, although Google has yet to reveal its official sales figures for the device. On launch the Nexus 7 quickly sold out of its initial product run, with its $199 starting price being one of its main attractions.
Asus released its earnings figures for the third quarter today, surprising investors by posting its largest quarterly profit in more than four years. Buoyed in part by solid sales of the Nexus 7 tablet it built with Google and continuing growth in its PC and convertible tablet sales, Asus saw its profits rise 43 percent year-over-year to $229.1 million. The Taiwanese electronics manufacturer forecast continuing growth for the next quarter, raising its estimates of shipments for both tablets and PCs.
Even though its official unveiling event was canceled, Google has pressed ahead and revealed the devices it meant to reveal today, including the rumored 10-inch tablet meant to take on Apple's iPad. The search giant revealed in its Google Play Store today the Samsung-built Nexus 10, a Wi-Fi only tablet that will run the latest version of Google's Android operating system, version 4.2 Jelly Bean. The company also refreshed its quick-selling line of Nexus 7 tablets, introducing a higher storage capacity as well as a cellular-enabled model.
Google will be releasing the 32-gigabyte version of its Nexus 7 tablet either today or tomorrow. The 7-inch tablet will be launched despite the cancellation of the press event in New York, caused by Hurricane Sandy, and has been confirmed to take place in both the UK and the US, as well as a price-drop for the 16GB version. The same cannot be said for the expected 10-inch version, which is more likely to be a future release.
Users of the Google Nexus 7 can now install Ubuntu onto the tablet. The Linux distribution maintained by Canonical can be made to run as the operating system instead of the factory-installed Jelly Bean version of Android, though the exercise is meant to help in developing a future iteration of Ubuntu for mobile devices, and not for general use.
Google has sent out an email to press participants informing them that the Nexus event scheduled for Monday, October 29, has been canceled. The cancellation comes as New York prepares to take the brunt of a "perfect storm," in which Hurricane Sandy is predicted to strike the city as a hybrid of hurricane and nor'easter. The search giant has not given any information on when a rescheduled event might be held.
A newly-spotted FCC listing is hinting that a version of the Nexus 7 tablet with a 3G radio onboard will soon hit the market. With this, it's expected that the Google event scheduled for Monday, October 29 will see this tablet officially introduced.
Apple marketing executive Phil Schiller has defended criticism over the iPad mini's $329 price tag, which exceeded earlier estimates from many analysts. The company was not expected to match the $199 price of Google's Nexus 7 or Amazon's Kindle Fire HD, but the $129 premium has led some analysts to question the Mini's ability to have a significant impact on sales from its Android-based rivals.
British retailer Argos has published its 2012 Gift Guide, revealing that Google will indeed be releasing a 32GB version of its Nexus 7 tablet. The higher-capacity model of the 7-inch tablet has been rumored for some time, but the Argos listing seems to confirm those rumors. The pricing Argos reveals would also seem to lend credence to another rumor: that Google will be releasing an impulse buy-priced version of the Nexus 7 this holiday season.
Google is preparing to release an incremental upgrade to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, version 4.1.2. The new version will bring stability improvements as well as a few tweaks to the user interface. Chief among these improvements: owners of Google's Nexus 7 tablet will now have their home screens rotate into landscape mode when the device is turned on its side. Android Police reports that Google has already released the update to the Android Open Source Project, and it is said to be rolling out to Nexus 7 devices already, though Electronista's attempts to verify this have been unsuccessful.
Google may be preparing to release a 32GB variant of its Nexus 7 tablet, as images of just such a device appear to have emerged online. A Twitter user in Japan posted evidence of a 32GB model of the Nexus 7 to his account today, The new model, should it exist, would have double the storage capacity of the largest current Nexus 7.
It's been only a few months since Google unveiled Android 4.1, but the search giant appears to be readying the next version of its Android operating system for release. This according to tech blog Android Police, which claims to have seen devices running Android 4.2 popping up in its server traffic logs. According to a post on the site, at least four devices have shown up in the logs running version 4.2: the Samsung-built Galaxy Nexus, the Asus-built Nexus 7, a phone currently codenamed "Occam," and an as yet unknown device that could be a new tablet from Google-owned Motorola.
Just a day after rumors surfaced that Asus was planning a $99 Nexus tablet with Google, the company has reportedly come out to deny those claims. DigiTimes, the source that initially broke the $99 rumor, now claims that Asus has refuted the claim. Asus' current Nexus tablet, the Nexus 7, appears to have been selling solidly since its release, and reports of Asus' expected tablet shipments for the quarter would seem to indicate that it continues to sell apace.
Rumors suggest Google is going to launch a $99 Nexus 7 by the end of this year. According to industry sources of DigiTimes, both Google and Asus will make two new versions of the tablet, both of which will be thinner and use TN panels from HannStar Display in Taiwan. The rumor also suggest HannStar has entered the supply chain for the iPad, although this has yet to be confirmed.
Just a week and a half after it began shipping to customers, Amazon's Kindle Fire HD accounts for 11 percent of all Kindle web traffic. This according to Chitika Insights, which conducted a traffic study for the older Kindle Fire, the Kindle Fire HD, and Google's Nexus 7. While the new Kindle Fire appears to be off to a fast start, Google's 7-inch tablet seems to have outpaced both of Amazon's offerings.
While not confirmed as being legitimate, an iPhone 5 with the proper specification credentials has been benchmarked on the indie site Geekbench. The results show it to be the fastest smartphone on the market, with Apple's dual-core A6 (running at roughly 1GHz) beating both the Asus Nexus 7 and Samsung's Galaxy S III overall with a final score of 1,601, the highest total seen in the smartphone wars thus far. If genuine, the rating more than doubles both the iPhone 4S' score of 631 and even the 2012 iPad's 794.
Seven-inch tablets like Amazon's Kindle Fire HD and Google's Nexus 7 are expected to see significant shipment increases this year, which if translated into actual sales could see non-Apple slates taking almost a third of the overall tablet market. This according to IHS iSuppli, which announced its estimates for the 2012 tablet market today. Apple's iPad is still expected to dominate the market on the whole, but iSuppli's estimates indicate that the Cupertino company is likely to face mounting competition as the sector expands.
Device modders have hacked the firmware powering Google's Nexus 7 tablet, allowing the device to record 720p video on its front-facing camera. The hack, revealed in a post on the XDA Developers forum, apparently does little more than add several lines of code to the Nexus 7's media profiles, telling the device how to record in 720p. The post provides both tethered and untethered methodologies for improving the recording quality on the 7-inch tablet.
Google’s Nexus 7 manufacturing partner Asus is said to be prepping a 3G variant of the currently Wi-Fi-only device. The report comes courtesy of MoDaCo, which claims to have received the information from a “very well placed insider.” The launch is expected in “around six weeks,” with hardware remaining essentially unchanged barring the addition of the 3G radio – a GPS module is already included in the current model.
Google has given its Nexus 7 tablet one of the most prime ad placements available on the Internet, with the seven-inch tablet now featured on Google's homepage just below the search box. The tablet, the result of a Google-Asus partnership, now features prominently on the second most popular page on the Internet, Alexa. The placement is likely aimed at using the site to generate the sort of sales Amazon -- the 10th most popular site -- saw for its Kindle Fire tablet, which was also featured prominently on the Amazon homepage.
The Google Nexus 7's processor has been overclocked to run at 2GHz. Enthusiasts at the XDA-Developers forum have managed to make the tablet hit the speed after tinkering with the kernel, which pushes the quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor far higher than its factory-clocked 1.3GHz state. Android Community tested the kernal, and found the overclocked Nexus 7 manages to beat out the Asus Transformer Prime by a hefty margin in benchmarks.
We recently reviewed the Google Nexus 7, which is the flag-bearing device for Google's latest mobile operating system, Android 4.1 'Jelly Bean.' Powered by a quad-core Tegra 3 processor utilizing the ARM Cortex-A9 architecture and clocked at 1.2GHz with 1GB of RAM, the Nexus 7 runs Jelly Bean with aplomb. So how does the official Android 4.1.1 update for the Nexus S, loaded with much less firepower fare?
The Acer Iconia Tab A110 has popped up at an online retailer's website sporting Android 4.1 'Jelly Bean.' When the device first surfaced ahead of its launch, it was running Android 4.0. While that is good news for 7-inch Android buyers looking for a 'Jelly Bean' alternative to the Google Nexus 7, it also suggests that the transition from Android 4.0 to Android 4.1 is not as big a leap as it was for OEM's trying to upgrade devices from Android 2.3 (Gingerbread).
Asus, the company that manufactured the Nexus 7, appears to be preparing to release a line of dedicated accessories for the hot-selling tablet. Mobile Fun Blog has gotten ahold of several images showing off a range of covers and other accessories for the Nexus 7. Asus has yet to release details on when the accessories will become available.
Details of official accessories for the Google Nexus 7 have leaked online. Presentation files received by Nordic Hardware show two covers and one dock for the tablet, with availability expected in August. These will be the first official accessories for the device, which arrived alongside the quick-selling ">Nexus Q streaming media player that has already been released.
Popular app Instapaper has seen an increase in downloads since the release of Google's Nexus 7 tablet two weeks ago. The new tablet from Google and Asus has become the most popular device for the program, according to Instapaper's internal numbers.
No longer content to watch its hardware partners launch successively unsuccessful forays into the tablet market, Google has entered the fray in a very big fashion with the small form factor Nexus 7. Developed in partnership with Asus, the Nexus 7 is not only Google's first attempt at a tablet; it is also the flagship device for Android 4.1, codenamed "Jelly Bean." The Nexus 7 comes in at less than half the price of the 2012 iPad, and that fact seems to have sparked considerable interest in the device. So do we finally have a viable, long-term contender in the tablet wars? We go in-depth with our special edition dual-review of the Nexus 7 to see if Google's got a winner on its hands.
The 16GB version of the Nexus 7 tablet from Google and Asus appears to be in high demand, as Google's site no longer lists the device as available for order. Instead, visitors to the 16GB's versions product page on the Google Play Store are now presented with a notice saying the device is "Coming Soon" and given the option to sign up to be notified by email when the device becomes available. The development comes in the wake of previous reports that the Nexus 7 was seeing high sales across retail outlets.
Google's Nexus 7 tablet has sparked considerable interest since its unveiling late last month, and that interest appears to have turned into respectable initial sales. Over the past week, early pre-order units have been arriving in customers' hands, and ours just arrived recently. So Electronista's going to give you a first look at the Nexus 7 packaging, and of course the device that comes inside.
Today in the MacNN forums users debate which is better, the iPad 3 or the Nexus 7, in this thread started by Professional Poster freudling who believes there is no contest. PeterParker is concerned about compatibility issues with third party hardware if he updates to Mountain Lion, read more here.
ASUS, maker of the Nexus 7 tablet that recently received the Android 4.1 update, has now explained why it didn't include a rear-facing camera on the device. Basically, it boils down to price, and that a high-quality camera would be important for the device. This would have pushed the price too high for a feature that isn't used by many users.
