
oh finally el reg remembers google i/o is on today!
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 …
One company gives a live demo involving a complex chain of events and teams of people, starting with skydivers above the conf hall, streaming the audio/video live from their view to everyone, actually risking life and death, or at the least major embarrassment if any one of those links in the chain breaks whilst delivering the kit to the presenter on stage, the other company has their top man standing alone showing off kit which freezes the instant their own software they have been writing for 15 years hits it, and has to awkwardly shuffle backstage for a replacement.
Your starter for ten is to work out which of those extorts $5 per handset from the other for absolutely no other reason then them playing a corrupt patent system.
Oh please. Have you even given up the pretense of looking for excuses to shoe-horn some MS-bashing into the comments section. This is about the Google tablet. The Surface isn't remotely the same sort of thing. The Surface is a higher-end hybrid device. The Google tablet is a about half the price of the lower-end Surface and clearly set up as an attack on the iPad. Which it looks like it might do well at. Surface and Nexus 7 is not a like for like comparison. Nexus 7 and iPad... well they're both designed for sofa-consumption, really. Exactly how high-end do you need for that? I don't have much experience on Android. I get the general impression that it's not nearly as slick an experience as iOS. But will people really want to pay a premium of over a hundred dollars or substantially more for an iPad when this will do the job just as well?
Oh and as to the Surface, the Netfilx app froze on pre-release hardware on pre-release software the presenter tried for a moment to work it and just picked up a back up from a lecturn on stage. But yes, let's make a great big deal about "awkward shuffling backstage". If you are making your purchasing decision by weighing that against the pure theatrics of skydivers, etc. which you seem to consider so great, then I wouldn't want you in charge of company purchases. Since when did IT professionals start considering the slickness of a company's marketing as something to brag about? Marketing is about manipulation and image, not performance. Your own Nexus 7 will not, I am sad to inform you, be delivered by skydivers.
"and clearly set up as an attack on the iPad"
I think it's aimed more at the Kindle Fire than the iPad - otherwise it'd be more expensive with higher storage capacity, larger screen and a 3G option, hopefully that'll be a Nexus 10 model! :)
ICS is every bit as slick as iOS 5, if not slicker - I've used both, iOS feels very 2009 now. The ICS UI team recently won design awards for their hard work.
I wouldn't mind a Surface to be honest - looks like a nice bit of kit, but at the price they're asking I'll probably just buy an AIO desktop from Dell and a Nexus 7.
Plenty of other reasons not to get a fire.
1/ It doesn't run proper Android
2/ It doesn't have Google Market
3/ It's locked down to a single content stream
4/ It's forever stuck on old Android 2.3 with no update path
5/ It's Amazon, and they want you to only ever buy from Amazon and nobody else.
Any of these is a great reason NOT to buy a Fire. The reason it's not been released outside the US, is only Americans are stupid enough to see past those rather important points, and all they see is "shiny cheap tablet".
The Nexus7 is also a Shiny cheap tablet, but without any of those problems.
"The reason it's not been released outside the US, is only Americans are stupid enough to see past those rather important points, and all they see is "shiny cheap tablet"."
Well American's managed to produce this Nexus 7 which looks alright to me. So they can't all be as stupid as you think unless you hate this device as well. Troll.
G1 was also HTC. fyi.
So.. First two nexus phones were from HTC (for Android 1.5 and 2.1)
the second pair were from Samsung (for Android 2.3 and 4.0)
On tablets the first was from Motorola (Android 3.0), the second will be from Asus (Android 4.1).
Essentially Nexus devices are reference devices for major OS releases, unburdened with extra manufacturer skinning/extras.
Pre means "before" so Pre-order is what you do before you order
Agreed, and certainly "pre-order" in the sense commonly used today - ordering a product that is not yet available - does little or nothing that "order" would not do.
That said, there are cases where consumers do take pre-ordering actions. Some years ago, when it was common to watch audio-visual entertainments stored on an archaic medium known as "videotape", a US distributor of anime wanted to purchase the rights to the Japanese series Kimagure Orange Road. Given the capital costs of acquiring those rights, translating the dialog, subtitling, and other production requirements, they solicited early partial pre-payments from likely buyers. Once enough customers contributed the requested amount, they went ahead with the project. That could certainly be considered a "pre-order", since when the product was ready, the pre-ordering customers still had to order it and pay the balance if they wanted a copy.
For their investment, pre-ordering customers got their names in the credits - and, of course, got the opportunity to get a legal, well-made translation of the show.
Strangely enough the vast majority of this country is outside the range of a wireless network. Sure if you spend your entire life inside your home, office or café then the lack of an sd card slot isn't a problem.
For everyone else it cripples the device - e.g. there's no point taking it on holiday to that cottage in the Lake District because there's not enough storage for even two broadcast quality HD films (on the 8GB).
For a few pence extra they could have added micro SD and I'd have almost certainly purchased it, but without one there's just no chance.
"How much portable porn would one man possibly require?"
Are you seriously asking that question on an IT website? About a device designed to be held in one hand...
Seriously though, I've got 20GB of music. I would like to have that all with me at all times. Depending on the mood I'm in, I might want to listen to different stuff. Yes, I could cut that down easily to a more manageable amount, or change what's on my device according to mood. I just don't want to.
Also, my iPad currently has about 10GB worth of Apps (and their data). That's just going to carry on growing
Even assuming I could always find a signal to stream my music from the cloud (something that wouldn't work for the above apps), I may not want to pay the enormous data charges in order to do so. Given how cheap 32GB Micro SD cards are, there's no excuse not to have one.
We've not even mentioned TV and films. If I wanted to take a decent collection of stuff on a trip, 16GB is going to run out pretty damned quickly.
This size of tablet is perfect for catchup TV and movies on the train every morning, so much so that I bought a Galaxy Tab to do just that. Biggest problem? Constantly deleting videos off the SD card and hard disk to accommodate new stuff. You're right, 16GB isn't enough, and the Cloud isn't ready to take up the slack (not over a 3G connection anyway)
There is if you want to be able to download from cameras/audio recorders etc. onto an external HDD, as I do with my netbook and laptop. I was very tempted by the Transformer, until I realised that they'd done something stupid like putting a SD slot on the base but a MicroSD on the tablet. Duh! And not to manufacturers: FFS stop using MicroSD on these types of devices - keep them for phones and other small devices. It's difficult enough not to lose SD cards let alone MicroSD cards when you have a collection of them for use on stills cameras, video cameras and audio recording devices!!!
MicroSD cards are too small... it wouldn't be so bad if they were made from a bright day-glo plastic so they were easier to spot on the ground.
However, I tend to use them in SD card adaptors, just to give me flexibility. Camera, Laptop and Car Stereo: SD. Phone, MP3 player and Keyring Card Reader: MicroSD.
That 'Q' is bizarre. It does less than an Apple TV*, yet it costs three times the price? Also, the "hackability" thing is just manufacturer shorthand for "We can't be bothered to do all the work, so we'll let our customers do it for us! For free! And we'll make money off their development efforts!" Nicely done, but then, we're talking about a company that makes its living selling you to advertisers, so hardly a surprise.
The tablet's pricing is the only genuinely interesting bit of news. As another poster said: this is going to hurt Amazon's Kindle Fire sales badly. Especially as Amazon still haven't managed to ship any outside the US.
The "Made in the USA" thing doesn't mean much outside of the USA, and, of course, increasing automation means factories aren't going to be employing all that many people, regardless of the country they're in, so I don't see the point of the jingoism.
* (Yes, they can be trivially jailbroken too, so they're no less "hackable". The only difference is that here, Google is making a virtue of releasing unfinished software and expecting others to finish the job for them. Without pay.)
"Google Now learns the user's interests from their search terms as well as their location, and suggests real-time data on things like the daily sports scores and commuting times."
Sounds like an ad-man's dream data miner. Wonder just how much is being tagged and stored?
Anonymous, because that's how I'd prefer my searches and interests to stay for no other reason than basic privacy.
Yes, you can hook it up to a mobile network. Just use your portable WiFi. You do have one of those, don't you? You don't? I guess then you like paying extra for the ability to connect to a mobile network every time you upgrade your tablet/laptop, instead of just once. Your choice, I guess.
"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...
M Gale,
Thanks for the link.
As you say, use of 4.x is steadily increasing, but not very quickly. That graph seems to confirm what I've thought for a while. Android gets updates very very slowly, if at all. It's almost not worth developing for the new version for 6 months to a year after it comes out. Of course, that's probably not true, as I expect early adopters spend more on apps. But I think Google really need to do something about that.
"The not-so-subtle dig at Apple's outsourcing went down well with developers, some of who are happy to spend more for hardware that employs American workers."
It's companies that employ workers, not hardware (unless we should be hailing our new robotic overlords), so that sentence really needs to be fixed.
For quite some time now, people have been complaining about the lack of decent audio latency in Android, people who might want to hack together some musical application for instance. According to this: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4971761 - they have still not addressed the audio latency issues. for shame Google for shame! When and if I buy a tablet (or my next smartphone) it won't be one with audio latency issues.
Oh look at that, fandroids trying to justify an expensive under-powered/under-spec'd device and get naff all direct support for it. Keep squabbling guys, might keep you out of the Apple articles for a change. 7" tablets are still too useless for anything IMHO.
These sorts of devices will appear dusty in cupboards/draws abandoned across the country in a years time.
Took long enough for an Apple troll to show up...
Under-powered/under-spec'd? You mean the processor and GPU that are faster and have more cores than your beloved iPad?
Expensive? 1/3 the cost of the iPad?
Sorry, trolling attempt fails. Score: 2 out of a possible 10 for trying.
"Under-powered/under-spec'd? You mean the processor and GPU that are faster and have more cores than your beloved iPad?" - It's not always the top numbers that get the best results. anyway, tegra 3 is based off the same iPad 3 CPU anyway. the only major difference is the GPU. again, better spec's dont always give you a better experience. jelly bean will be as a good as it's been developed. i'm sure to have a play with it somewhere and be disappointed again.
"Expensive? 1/3 the cost of the iPad?" - For what the Nexus 7 has, there's nothing on there to justify that price.
Sorry, but this is another sideway step for 7" tablets. And keep squabbling :).
.....is the lack of an SD card in "Google Controlled" hardware devices (i.e. Nexus range) due to the fact they don't want to supply a device that utilises FAT storage?
With the Apple/Samsung row it probably makes sense to be cautious when it comes to using other companies technology to avoid further patent battles.
Bit dissapointed about the lack of card slot, my phone has a £13 class 6 32GB Micro SDHC card in it, I'm not about to spend about £40 to bring the tablet to half of that so I'll probably give this a miss as I don't /need/ a tablet.
It's dangerously close to impulse purchase but a tablet doesn't do anything I really need and I'm a stickler for storage space.
If this tablet does get widespread takeup, it will also begin to change one other aspect of the Android "ecosystem". A lot of Android users don't buy apps, because they don't have any form of payment registered with their Google Play account. If you have to register a card with Google Play just to order the Nexus 7, and you get $25 worth of "credit" in your Google Play account, then a lot of Android users might get in the habit of buying apps, rather than using the free "ad supported" apps (and some of the ads are getting a lot more aggressive and annoying than they were at first).
In the long term, that might be a far more important aspect of the Nexus 7 release than anything else.
'The not-so-subtle dig at Apple's outsourcing went down well with developers, some of who are happy to spend more for hardware that employs American workers.'
So the least useful most half arsed product Google have ever put their name on is made domestically but all the ones people are actually likely to hand money over for are, without exception, made in the far east and the people at Google I/O lapped the whole 'made in the US' shpiel up? I thought these guys were supposed to be the smart ones?
I'm really missing an infra-red output: something like this would be brilliant as an all-in one remote and since it only has micro-usb output I can't even attach a dongle to it. Ho-hum, I'll keep looking.
I'd agree the inclusion of an SD slot would have been useful - even if only to download pictures off my camera.
I'm not missing the rear camera (or likely to use the front facing one) - but I suppose it might have been useful for QR codes?