Google unveils Nexus 7 tablet, Android 4.1 and Nexus Q Google has used its annual developer conference, Google I/0 2012 in San Francisco, to announce its long-expected tablet, the Nexus 7, along with a new 4.1 build of Android (codenamed Jelly Bean) and a hackable home streaming Android computer called the Nexus Q that is shaped like a ball. Built by Asus, the Nexus 7 packs a quad …
"Settings > Wireless & Networks > Tethering and Portable Hotspot."
Okay if you own the phone. Usually locked out if you don't (and haven't paid extortionate extra fees to use the same data).
I also use a portable hotspot these days, since the 3G-enabled tablet went missing. However, I do rather like having everything in one device. Have you ever seen how much juice that portable hotspot sucks out of a 1500mAH battery?
So basically, to get all-day usage from the hotspot, I need to have my phone, and £80 worth of 8AH/30WH Energizer XPAL battery attached to it. Hardly a fiddle-free solution. Nor cheap.
RE: Networks limiting personal hot-spot usage -
I got my galaxy nexus from the O2 shop, but they aren't branded anyway. My HTC desire was heavily O2 branded with all the O2 guff installed, and it still allowed me to use the personal hotspot (Android 2.2/2,3 i seem to recall). O2 just limit data usage nowadays anyway, "unlimited" no longer exists so you can't cane it 24/7 like you could previously. Just pick a bolt on that suits you (Mine is 1GB/month i seem to recall. I was on the 3GB one but now i work from home i don't use it anywhere near as much as i did)
Once you're on a bolt-on you can hammer it as much as you like, then once you hit the limit they throttle your speeds until your next billing period starts. Unless you're watching netflix over mobile data connection it shouldnt ever be a problem.
"Connect tablet to phone's wi-fi network, no need for seperate data contract/SIM"
Also works on suitable Nokia Symbian phones (eg E71) and has done for years with e.g. JoikuSpot.
But those old Nokia Eseries were just functional and value for money, and were not hiptrendy article material.
You own a mobile phone don't you?
You carry the mobile phone with its connection in you pocket 99.9% of the time don't you?
Well you set the phone to act as a wifi hotspot, and connect the tablet via that. Tada... One mobile contract, one sim, and it's kept the cost of the tablet down.
That's assuming you have a mobile which can act as a wifi hotspot - hint, Android phones can.
The BBC website said that Google Now would allow it to give you the menus of restaurants as you walked past them on the street.
I hope this was the usual Beeb getting over-excited about technology. Otherwise, yuck! Can just imagine the phone binging and vibrating madly as you walk down the street. It's the digital equivalent of those places that have a guy outside, trying to tempt you in...
I've lived in a city that does that, and it's dead annoying when you're just walking down the street trying to get somewhere. I guess it adds a bit of local colour when you're on holiday.
"The BBC website said that Google Now would allow it to give you the menus of restaurants as you walked past them on the street."
Randomly showing you menus as you walk down a street would be a bit irritating ... but I suspect it will be more like "I want to eat now ... show me the menus of the restaurants within 5 mins walk of here" - that could be useful
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No; my memory may be at fault but I think I'm right to say that Android 1.x and 2.x essentially rendered everything in software, including real-time interaction responses like scrolling. No GPU caching at all.
3.x introduced the first version of offloading to the GPU and 4.x has consolidated and updated that so that basically everything happens on the GPU — it's not just a cache for a compositing window manager, it's actually doing the drawing. So it's like QuartzGL or WPF on the desktop.
Based on released benchmarks, it's really good stuff.
They already have as they have made a lot of custom modifications. You could argue its not a Linux distribution at all.
The good news is they are heading in the correct direction - they are actively working on getting these changes approved for inclusion in Linux. This will benefit us all, especially the power management stuff they've been working on.
So, no they're not going from Linux to some other kernel. Quite the opposite.
Google Play: works.
Youtube: works.
Webmaster Tools: all fine.
Gmail: yup, that's there too.
I can see Picasa needing a profile for some retarded reason, but that's not a Google+ account and it's not like there aren't a bajillion and one other image upload sites available.
So what Google services (they're not really "products") require a Google+ account, asides Google+?
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"Having a Gmail / Play account has automatically created you a + profile."
No it has not.
The fact I had a Picasa account created a profile for me. I promptly deleted both, and now have neither. A "profile" isn't a + account anyway, as far as I'm aware. I would have still had the profile if they hadn't insisted on real names, as well.
Now if they start insisting on + accounts just to have a Play Store account, I might start getting more pissed off, especially considering the amount of real money splunked on apps. I imagine a lot of other people will too, and giving them all a channel to organise themselves through might be the last thing Google want. Well, unless they want to transform + from a ghost town into a trolltastic sewer.
"Technically when you add VAT and Import duty, the device is cheaper in the UK, than the US."
LOL, but they don't in the US have VAT and import duty :) And if they do have state sales tax and import duty in the USD, the USD 200 still includes them. So... strip their tax and duty, strip ours - and then compare, which one is cheaper.
btw, conversion rate of USD to GBP makes this toy about £124.
StuartNZ just beat me to it.
"Sorry! Devices on Google Play is not available in your country yet.
We're working to bring devices to more countries as quickly as possible.
Please check back again soon".
I have a iPad (gen 3) but want a smaller tablet pretty much for a dedicated e-reader when the kids have swiped the iPad for gaming.
The Nexus7 hits the right price/performance spot, so went to see if I can order one. Oh dear.
Mind you we are used to lagging behind the rest of the world with products, but still just don't get why Google (and Apple etc) still enforce geographical restrictions. I can get one via a US re-shipper, so why stop us buying directly?. Stick up warnings about media content not being accessible and that it might have colour spelt wrong or not be 100% metric, but let us buy. Please?
Totally agree on the idiocy of geographical restrictions. My understanding is that the Google Play lockdown is not like Amazon's Fire, where all product on the device must be bought through the Kindle store. If you buy a Nxus 7 from the US, the apps should still be available, and even with shipping the price is going to be competitive.
It is almost never because they don't want to or they want to make other regions wait. It usually has to do with government laws with imports, US export restrictions, etc. If they just got this thing done and want to release it, they likely don't have the exportable one ready yet. If they waited a few months to announce it, they may have been able to ship them all over and spent the few months getting all that in place. It will make it's way to other countries fairly soon, but companies that do sell things world wide typically don't hold back on purpose. That's loss revenue for them.
The usual arguments don't apply in this specific instance. It's on sale in Aus, which means the hardware is compatible with NZ. Also, because Aus and NZ are treated as one market by most licence holders (Warner's has already shut down its NZ offices) it is not an issue of content permissions.
There is no rear facing camera either.
But these things had to go to make that pricepoint. I have no interest in them (well MicroSD would have been nice perhaps), On the upside of course you get a 17-core CPU/GPU that's going to be killer at gaming.
Mines already on order (went for the 16GB as there is no MicroSD slot). £10 2-day delivery ontop in the UK, but a £15 play store credit to compensate.
They really are coming on in leaps and bounds. I think the Nexus 7 is an attempt to kickstart the market for publishers on Android which has been very sluggish, especially for pads. Google, like Amazon, happy to be a loss-leader in the device market. It's small enough to leave room for other partners to release larger, added value versions and building it with Asus should put paid to the myth that Motorola Mobility is some kind of preferred partner.
Jelly Bean seems to be underlining on the software side what the hardware side has been showing for the last few months: technological superiority over IOS. The graphics rewrite is long overdue and the key area where IOS has been ahead of Android. Offline voice recognition is very impressive.
The Nexus Q looks like a vanity project, which is why they were also giving them away. Might be interesting to see what people come up with. I'm currently looking for some kind of home media system and have not yet seen anything that would really do. I can see a cut-down version of the Nexus Q being it.
I'm a big fan of Chrome, but for it to take off on Androids and especially tablets the version of Chrome needs to be on a par with the version that you can run on Windows / OS X and Linux. You need to be able to run all your plugins and sync all your apps across. The beta didn't have this in ICS, so has this changed for the version in Jellybean? Or is it still lightyears away from its bigger brother?
I'm assuming it'll pick up upnp sharing, so anything my server chucks out through Samsung Allshare should be available (When i'm at home anyway) - fingers crossed. If not, there's probably "an app for that" *cringe*
If it doesn't, i see no point in buying one. You can get a network ready BluRay player that does all that for about £150. Or god forbid....and apple tv (and put linux on it..obv)
Why oh why is there no micro SD??? To those of us that do use these for video, it IS important,
I find the 16gb on my phone too tiny, hence I added a 32gb card, and i fill that easily if I go away for a week somewhere...
Think I will wait for a rival to release a 7" at a similar price point...
really Google, why oh why did you forgo the microSD, it is not COOL to follow apple....
I think they did it to avoid the incompatibility / support problems they bring - Nexus devices are reference machines so the hardware has to be a mailed down known quantity.
Once you get to shove any old SD card in there this is no longer the case.
It is annoying though, and might stop me buying one of these - but no doubt one of the other systems builders will provide something with a similar spec plus the card slot we'd prefer.
"Google is also prepping a platform developer kit with future Android builds, to be released months before the next operating system build goes live, so manufacturers can tune their devices to the new code."
Perhaps it's just me, but I think this could be the biggest story of the conference.
According to the BBC's reporting of this, Google's own figures say that ICS is only installed on 7% of Android devices. Which given that it's free and has been out for 9 months, is amazingly piss-poor. There's still hardware coming out now running 2.3, which is 2 years old.
Alternatively the Nexus 7, being only $199 could also be huge. It could be the one that gets Android tablets selling big time, and screws over Amazon (stopping them from nicking all Google's customers). I've got an iPad 3, and I still want one...
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