Google Launches its own Tablet : Espikes09

Yesterday at Google I/O ‘s opening note, the company announced its first tablet carrying the ‘Nexus’ branding. The tablet is the first 7-incher to house a 1.3GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core CPU, which includes a 12-core GPU. With all the kickass aspects and an added front camera, the good news is yet to be disclosed.

Its just $199! Yeah, so the ASUS manufactured device is basically a major competitor to the Amazon Kindle Fire. But both have their ups and downs. The Nexus 7 (Thats what the tablet is called) comes preloaded with the latest version of Android, named ‘Jelly Bean’. Though there haven’t been drastic changes from Ice Cream Sandwich in it, but it does incorporate smoother UI and other performance enhancements.

Compared to the Kindle Fire, the hardware and software of Nexus 7 are definitely something to drool for, but its not a leap ahead. Kindle Fire still leads as a Media Consumption device while the Nexus 7 is more of a mainstream tablet. Contrary to popular belief, Nexus 7 might not be a Kindle Fire killer, but can hurt the sales of the Galaxy Tab series by Samsung. I being a Kindle Fire owner, am not tempted even the slightest to buy it just for a Camera and Microphone upgrade (Kindle Fire doesn’t have both of them! :( )

Courtesy : SlashGear

While features such as Google now and other tablet optimizations do make it a good contender, but it has got its quirks too. The UI as termed by many who reviewed it, as ‘Claustrophobic’. But then, there’s also a SIRI like assisted built into it which responds very well.

So far, so good. Compared to the iPad, it’d still need to gather a universe-sized amount of app support as just its first step. The Nexus 7 isn’t an iPad-killer, but it but it could be the first step on the road to a much more competitive tablet market.

The Nexus 7 is available now from the Google Play store starting at $199 for the 8GB storage configuration and $249 for 16GB. Units will ship in mid-July.

TECH SPECS

More information can be found here.