Nice Design, Strong Configuration, Cheap
Price
At Conference for Programmers Google I/O
2012, Google introduced a tablet about which had been rumored for a long time.
It is Nexus 7. It is said that besides Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, Nexus 7 is in
the second place of drawing much attention. This is a small tablet, light,
accompanied by the latest Android OS with lots of improvements. At a cheap
price, only 199USD for such a high configuration, Nexus 7 is impossible to avoid
weaknesses in appearances and comprehensive quality. Android 4.1 is not really
convenient for this 7-inch tablet though. Let’s look through a detailed review
about this tablet.
Google
Nexus 7 Tablet Review
Hardware and design
When holding this tablet, it delivers a
feeling of lightness (340 g). You can hold it completely in one palm without
any troubles. Nexus 7’s Hardware quality is good, slightly better than Kindle
Fire but a little bit worse than Galaxy Tab 7.7. Nexus has the thickness of
14.45 mm, not too thick but not as thin as other competitors’ products. Despite
this, the thickness does not affect much. It does give us a feeling of solidity
instead.
The front side is covered by glossy black
layer. When the phone is off, it looks so nice. The screen is sunk into all
paths. A glossy layer covers the whole front side; it looks desirable; but it
is easy for the fingerprint to stick. There is a camera on the top short side
for video calls. A light sensor is located next to the camera to automatically
adjust the brightness based on light conditions. The paths are quite thick, so
they do not look cool but it is really useful for holding this equipment. You
can hold it horizontally or vertically, and these thick paths will prevent our
finger from touching the screen, especially when browsing the webs, reading or
gaming. Although thin paths improve beauty of the tablet, but it also
sacrifices the convenience while using the product. It is not a good idea at
all.
The backside is made from a textured
soft-touch material that is easy to grip and pleasant to touch. However, it is
easy to be dirty. My version is in white so it is much easier to be dirty. The
big Nexus logo is highlighted on the short top; then you find Asus’ logo (the
company that cooperates with Google to produce this tablet) and the speaker
which is designed to be a long black stick. Please note that the backside cover
is not removable, so you cannot replace the battery for Nexus 7 by yourself.
All solid buttons of Nexus 7 are located on
the left side, including unlock keys and 2 volume keys knitting to each other.
Those buttons are not too big which are soft and easy to press, partly thanks
to the position so that the fingers can embrace the Nexus 7’s body before
pressing. On the left side, Google locates a microphone and 4 contacting points
so that users can connect Nexus 7 to accessories.
All connections, including microUSB and
headset jack, are brought to the bottom side. Locating 3.5mm jack on the bottom
side is convenient for using Nexus’ headset because the wires will not cause
irritation like tablets that have this jack on the top side. There is no
separated charging port because Nexus 7 uses microUSB port to transmit signals
and energy. The upper side has another microphone so there are 2 microphones in
totals. Integrating microUSB with charging port helps you to make full use of
smartphone accessories although the time to charge the battery will be
prolonged much more.
In general, I was impressed by the fact
that Google and Asus together made this Nexus 7. Despite cheap price, it is
invested and taken care of remedial details. Although it is not the most
nice-designed, thinnest or lightest tablet, it is obviously a good product at a
price of $200.
It
is obviously a good product at a price of $200
Internal configuration
Nexus 7 is equipped with a configuration
that can be considered “the best” in cheap tablet segments. You will find it
difficult to get a tablet that is lower than $200 with quad-core processor,
NVIDIA Tegra 3, RAM 1GB, IPS display at 1280 x 800 resolution. It is known that
CPU Tegra 3 on Nexus 7 will run at 1.15 GHz clocking frequencies when 4 cores
run at the same time and increase to 1.3 GHz when 1 core runs. Internal memory
storage is 8GB and 16GN optional with additional $50. It is a pity because this
tablet does not support the external memory storage (micro SD or SD). In terms
of connections, Google and Asus equip most of popular standard on their tablet,
including Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth, GPS, NFC (Android Beam) and other sensors
such as Accelerometer, Magnetometer and Gyroscope. A lack of 3G and 4G is the
weakness of Nexus 7 because it reduces the flexibility, especially to ones who
travel a lot to Wi-Fi-less places.
The front side has 1.2-MP camera and no
main camera at the backside at all. However, there is no available photo app in
the tablet and even Instagram does not appear in Google Play. You cannot use
webcam to make video calls on Yahoo Messenger because no plug-in is installed.
It works normally with Google+ Hangout and Skype. As far as I know, the camera
app does exist on Nexus 7; the users just cannot get access to it. A programmer
created a small app to activate the Camera.
Display
Nexus 7 is equipped with a 7-inch Back-lit
IPS screen, 1,280 x 800 HD (216 ppi) resolution and scratch-resistant Corning
Glass with Asus’s TruVivid Technology. Thanks to IPS, the viewing angle is wide
and clear. With a density of 216 ppi, the texts shown on screen look smooth and
nearly get rid of pock-marked pixels. Although it does not reach the Retina
level, it satisfies demands for reading and browsing webs on Nexus 7. The
brightness is good. Automatically adjusting is quick and reasonable, making me
feel comfortable when testing the tablet in different environments. Even when
you are out in sunlight, you can see all contents shown without encountering
any troubles with the glossy surfaces.
There is one weakness of the screen: it is
the color. In some cases, the color is more faded than usual. When compared
with a Galaxy Nexus, the color of Nexus 7 screen is much worse, mostly because
Galaxy Nexus’ AMOLED Technology has many prominent features which help to
increase the balance level. When compared with a new iPad, Nexus 7 is a little
worse. The contrast of this IPS display is not really out-standing.
Performance and battery life
Equipped with a strong quad-core processor
and Android 4.1 with Butter project, Nexus 7 works smoothly. It is likely to be
the smoothest Android-based tablet I ever used. Apps operating, menu switching,
dragging, quick browsing, etc. all are slippery and smooth as butter, identical
to what Google has advertised. However, during in use, there are some slight
lags when sliding quickly. It is unknown that this is the problem of hardware
or software but I do not have this problem when using Android 4.1 on Galaxy
Nexus. It is lucky that it only happens when you slide very quickly. For
others, they work well on Nexus 7. The actions are fully responsive. When the
tablet is in use, the tablet does not become hot, only when we use it to play
games for quite a long time, the backside is slightly hot but it does not cause
any irritations.
I have run some benchmarks on Nexus 7 with
4 softwares used for Android OS including Quadrant, Nenamark, RD 3D and
Vellamo. When running Quadrant, Nexus 7 got a score of 3763, not so high and
not so low. According to the comparison chart, Nexus 7 is ranked after HTC One
X and Asus Transformer Prime TF2012 although they share the similar
configurations: CPU NVIDIA Tegra 3, 12-core GPU, 1GB RAM, HD screen, etc. When
running Nenamark, Nexus 7 was ranked first with a score of 55.3. When tested
with RD 3D to check the image processing performance, it was ranked 106 after a
range of other smartphones and tablets. 108 is not a low score but indeed it
has troubles with building blocks hand handling the saw-tooth in comparison
with Transformer Prime TF201. For Vellamo, it reaches 1,674, after HTC One X
(the One X version for US market).
It is possible that these apps have not
been optimized for Android 4.1 because it is so new, but it partly reflects the
true performances of Nexus 7. Most benchmarks show that Nexus 7 is slightly
worse than some of other models but the distance is not so great. In general,
with a price of $199, Nexus 7’s performances are good.
About the battery life, it can be considered
a strong point of Nexus 7. 4235mAh battery helps the laptop to run within 2
days with these performances: Always Wi-Fi connection, pushing emails from 3
Gmail accounts, Facebook updating, automatic brightness, browsing webs for 5-6
hours, chatting for 2 hours, playing music for 1 hour, and other time in
stand-by mode. 7-inch and 10-inch tablets hardly compete with Nexus 7 on
battery life. According to Google advertisement, we can watch videos for
successive 9 hours and 300 hours for waiting mode.
Software
As stated above, Nexus 7 is equipped with
latest Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Admittedly, any program that belongs to Nexus
owns the pure interface and features from Jelly Bean. If you have experienced
tablets running on 3.x Honeycomb or Android 4.0.x, you will see the tablet
interface of Jelly Bean on Nexus 7 is totally different. I doubt that these
differences will exist again on other brands’ tablets because at the moment, no
tablet except for Nexus 7 runs on Jelly Bean. It is only known that it can be changed
based on the pixel density. In my opinion, 10-inch tables which have lower
pixel density will use the old interface, and new interface for high pixel
density.
The first new point of that interface is
that the virtual keys are located on the bottom side, not in the right corner
like before. The advantage is that helps the general interface become nicer and
the disadvantage is that we are confused with Home button when pressing the
virtual keyboard, even when you use the tablet horizontally or vertically,
making it back to main screen. It takes time for you to get accustomed to that.
The second new point is that Notification
Area will not appear in the right corner anymore, now it is on the top path of
screen, like previous Android-based versions. You can pull the notification bar
like you do to the smartphone. Drop-down notification bar is favorable and more
convenient than the fact that you have to observe and act in the bottom corner.
The main screen of Jelly Bean will not
rotate automatically based on the way you hold your tablet so it is not very
convenient. For iPad and some other tablets, the home screen will automatically
rotate based on how you hold it. And it still works when you use a certain app.
If you feel the automatic rotation is irritating, Google will help you to turn
it off quickly just by pulling notification bar and touching Auto Rotate
symbol.
Font Roboto on Android 4.1 looks like 4.0
at first sight, but it has been slightly changed. You can see this font in the
Light format on the whole interface of OS. Calendar app is enhanced to be more
visible and easier to use. Switching from other apps to Calendar looks smooth
and more quickly than 4.0. Map on Jelly Bean is the newest version, supporting
data browsing even when there is no internet connection. In addition, there are
many other changes.
The prominent point of Android 4.1 on Nexus
7 in comparison with Galaxy Nexus is the Chrome browser. Although these two
devices have Chrome both, but Galaxy has Android’s traditional browser and Nexus
7 do not. At Google I/O, Google revealed that Nexus 7 was the first sold device
with installed Chrome. But indeed the experienced on Nexus 7 fell short of my
expectation. The scrolling is not as quick as the default browser of Galaxy
Nexus so it will take you much time to return to the top of a page. The
response time has latency. When using Chrome with many tabs vertically, the tab
sizes will be small. Therefore, ones who have big fingers like me will easily
press by mistake. The site download speed and navigations have nothing to
complain about.
Big apps mostly have compatible modes to
work well on Android-based laptop, although there are not so many. Most softwares
would run on smartphone modes with some inconvenient buttons, not making full
use of large screen. With the release of Android 4.1 SDL, it is hopeful that
the developers will release the updated version so that the apps are more
user-friendly when they are run on tablet.
Conclusion
Pros
Good general quality
Light, nicely-designed
Comfortable to use
Latest Android 4.1, performance is
extremely good
Android 4.1 interface with new convenient
notification bar
Long battery life
Cons
No 3G – 4G support
No expandable memory storage
Backside of the white version is easy to be
dirty
Chrome falls short of expectation
In some case, Android 4.1 on Nexus 7 is not
responding as quickly as that on Galaxy Nexus
No available photo apps, Voice and video
for Yahoo Messenger are not in use
Screen home does not rotate based on how
you hold the tablet
Google Play Store is not available in
Vietnam yet
Google
Nexus 7
Nexus 7 is good at software and hardware
both. With a price of $199, you have in your hands a mere Android-based tablet
with quick performance, stability, satisfying the demand for viewing contents.
It is not exaggerated to say that it is the best “under $200” tablet model in
the market up to now. Although it has some limits such as OS has some tiny
errors, low mobility because ò no 3G/4G, no automatic rotation, etc. Nexus 7
still satisfies the demand on expanding market shares of Android-based tablet
with low-budget customers. In general, if you want own an Android-based with a
cheap price, Nexus 7 is the first candidate you should think of.
