The Nexus line has so far only focused on the Phone market. That is about to change, as Eric Schmidt confirmed last December the release of a Nexus 7 – an all-purpose tablet, aimed to beat the popularity of the Kindle fire by competing in prices. This tablet is rumored to arrive this week!
The Nexus 7 is believed to be developed mainly by ASUS. This would come as no surprise because of ASUS’ success in providing cheap, yet high quality tablets that really sell. Yes, we are talking about the original ASUS Transformer. This would make them a logical partner in creating a powerful low price tablet.
Specs and features were eventually ‘leaked’ and discovered by the community. What we knowm so far is that will be a 7-inch tablet, a direct competitor to the cheap e-book readers by Amazon (Kindle Fire) and Barnes and Noble (Nook). It will have the standard 1GB of RAM, and would feature 8 GB or 16 GB models. There is also much faith put in that it will also sport a higher resolution, hopefully around 1280 x 800. This would be better than the Kindle Fire, which only sports 1024 x 600. The kicker is of course, for a Nexus device, the Operating System. Rumors and leaks suggest that the release of the Nexus 7 will be the dawn of the release of Android 4.1 codenamed: Jelly Bean. This will be a huge bonus, as the Kindle Fire only sports a restricted version of Android.
Since this is made by ASUS, and focuses on the tablet experience, it is expected that the tablet would run with the Tegra 3 or something better. This would effectively make this tablet a powerful all-in-one e-reader, productivity tool and gaming console package, which will be hopefully cheap,too. We hope ASUS will not let us down.
To further bolster the campaign for NFC adaptation, Google is bound to make sure that it will sport an NFC chip and allow it to use Google wallet. Google will also make sure that they will be directly responsible with the management and update of the Nexus 7’s software – something we wish they would do for all phones.
The Kindle fire currently retails at around $199. If the Nexus 7 is to beat that, it has to be the same price, or slightly lower. With the expected specs of the Nexus 7, there shouldn’t even be a problem if the device is just the same price as the Kindle Fire. With that kind of price to beat, it would be rather foolish to hope that the Nexus 7 will have phone features just like the 7 inch Galaxy Tabs. That being said, I would like to be foolish as I wish for this ability to be included in the tablet. What can I say? A 7 inch phone is attractive to me.
The fact of the matter is, the Nexus 7 is going to arrive sooner or later. It has already been confirmed by Schmidt himself. We are not sure how big a wave it will make, but it will be a tough challenge for Amazon to top that with the next Kindle. This begs the question who bought a whole bunch of Kindle Fires during the holidays. Will you be willing to switch over to the Nexus 7? Or will you be rooting and waiting for Amazon’s next move in the tablet market?
Image sources: gsmarena.com, android.com, netbooknews.com, redmondpie.com, wired.com
