Asus pledges Android 4.2 update for Google Nexus 7 Asus has confirmed that the Google Nexus 7 tablet will be getting Android 4.2 “in the very near future”. It’s no great surprise, the 7 being a Google-branded gadget an’ all, but the new will reassure Nexus 7 owners who noted that while the new Nexus 4 smartphone from LG and the Samsung-made Nexus 10 tablet, both announced a …
Of course it's getting 4.2, that's why people buy Nexus devices. Nexus devices always get the latest Android versions, as soon as they are released (4.2 isn't released yet - only announced - Nov 13th is when things start rolling).
Nexus devices continue to get the latest Android versions as soon as they are released, for as long as the device is capable of running them.
So it's a pretty safe bet that the Nexus 7 will also be rocking Android 5 next year, and a reasonable bet it will be rocking Android 6 the year after,
Hahahahahahaha!! It took them until August to get 4.0 onto UK Xooms, even though it had been out in the US for about 6 months by then.
I'll probably look at rooting mine once it's out, the multi-profiles would mean I could share it with the other half if she wants to borrow it. Worth noting that the multi-profile support is a key benefit on Android, iPads don't do it yet, wouldn't surpise me if that's deliberate to ensure households have to buy multiple devices...
It might have been out for several weeks, but it took its sweet time getting to some of us. It took a week from first reports to reaching my N7 in the UK despite me pressing the check button at least twice a day.
I know seven days is a hell of a lot better than you get for the non-Nexus devices, but it was frustrating not knowing when it was going to be my turn, others in the UK got it within days.
Worth the short wait though. It might not have had many headline features (home screen rotation was about it), but it seems to have fixed the right hand side of touch screen becomes unresponsive issue I had seen (a quick off/on used to clear it, so I was 99% sure if was a software issue).
"I know seven days is a hell of a lot better than you get for the non-Nexus devices, but it was frustrating not knowing when it was going to be my turn, others in the UK got it within days."
If you want an even shorter wait when 4.2 comes out and 'Check Now' is saying 'no updates' , go into Settings > Applications > All > Google Services Framework and clear it's data. Then check for updates again.
I'm not sure why this works but it does. When I got my 4.2 update, I accidentally tried to install it with CWM installed, naturally it failed and when attempting to get the update again, 'No updates available'. Doing the above got me the update straight away.
I grew impatient waiting for 4.1.2, but the upshot was I learned a thing or two about how to install updates manually.
Google could really do with making the process simple and packaged, instead of making Windows users (at least) hunt around for an obscure driver that comes with another vendor's software package. That particular driver doesn't even come with the SDK mamager, which is ridiculous.
Still, worth doing just to know how.
Did Asus inform the world of their plans when the Nexus 7 went from Android 4.1.1 to Android 4.1.2 too?
It's an odd thing to announce - a relatively new tablet that people are still buying (according to Asus - a lot!), which Google sell direct from their play store, which has already seen one addition to the spec sheet (more storage) and which has had confirmed that a 3G version is due for release this month - is still being supported by it's manufacturer and Google......
Do we think this might have anything to do with the fact the iPad mini is in the news today?
IIRC, Google announced the N7 would get the 4.1.2.
It's not really an odd thing for Asus to announce, someone probably ask them about it, so they answered.
Doubt it has much, if anything, to do with the iPad mini news (which from what I have seen is "Smaller queues than usual for Apple device"). The N7 already kicks it about with the existing facts and figures. Hardly need multiuser support to do that. Although having said that, getting some Android coverage from El Reg is quite something - This site pretty much slept through the Google announcement last Monday with one single, very short, copy/paste article.
I was curious about this so I did a little test. Opened up an incognito tab to point at el Reg, then hit home, then recent applications. The result? The list shows a thumbnail screenshot of the "incognito" page.
I didn't really expect any other behaviour--apps can't tell the OS they don't want the snapshot when they leave the main activity, but they could blank the screen first in response to the task switch/leave activity message (or whatever they call it). I know it's a very minor oversight, but beware of not closing the incognito tab before going back to the home screen!
@AC Quite Tempted - Rooting Nexus 7
The toolkits do root it quickly. However, if you are like me, and waited to root until after the 4.1.2 update, you'll have to load the 4.1.1 bootloaders for it to work. It will be interesting to see what happens when 4.2 comes out. I'll be holding off until the root issues are sorted again. I like my Titanium backup, et. all. :)
Although I'm really curious if they just add a load of features or finally fix some very annoying bugs that very nearly caused me to trash my Nexus 7 into very little pieces more than once. Like the numerous editing bugs in text fields in Chrome.
Would also be nice if Android would finally support other layouts than just US English on external keyboards (USB or BT).
Thumbs up on the keyboard layout bit. Got quite peeved when I discovered that. If you're rooted and happy to have a bit of a fiddle then there are ways around it (not that you should need to). Posted up the way I did it here: http://floor4.co.uk/2012/08/07/nexus-7-bluetooth-keyboard-and-uk-layout/
"Like the numerous editing bugs in text fields in Chrome."
That has been bugging the hell out of me too, it's massively obvious here on the desktop El'Reg comments. Chrome does seem semi-half-baked and it makes me wonder why they were so hurried to replace the stock browser with it.
The only reason I can think is that if they do it post-release, they could face an Apple Maps scenario with users complaining about losing the default browser/having Chrome forced on them.
I want to keep my gmail widget on the home screen, but I don't really want my daughter looking at my emails. (If only so that she doesn't know what I'm ordering for her for Christmas...)
So multiple accounts is an excellent idea.
Of course, Apple won't ever do this. If two people in your house want to use the iPad, you should be buying TWO iPads.
Would be interesting to see how they're handling multiple profiles... it seems LOTS of apps make use of /sdcard as their little playground for stuffing config data and temp files etc rather than ~/.appname
Is /sdcard going to be remounted as a per-user rather than per-device mountpoint? If so, how they gonna swing that with devices that have physically removable sd cards? Seems like Google have fallen into exactly the same pitfalls Windows did decades ago, with it's single-user-per-device mentality that means Android app makers have now got into really bad practices (assuming they can crap their data anywhere they like on the filesystem).
If does (sorta). The current situation is that Google/Asus doesn't enable mounting of usb storage using a adapter. However there are apps that enable it. For read only you don't need root, for read write you need root and a app called stick mount.
Hopefully Google will enable this in the future and remove the need for apps to do this.
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