Last week, Microsoft unveiled their new Microsoft Surface Tablets hoping that the tablets will be able take a bite out of Apple’s iPad 3 sales (Pun intended). Now Google is also hoping to make a splash in the tablet market. Yesterday, Hugo Barra, Director of Android Product Development unveiled the Google Nexus 7 Tablet at Google IO 2012 in San Francisco. However most of the information about the Nexus 7 was already leaked before Google unveiled it.
The Google Nexus 7 is very portable: super light and thin. The Nexus 7 features a 7- inch 1280×800 HD display (scratch resistant Corning glass) and only weighs only .75 pounds with a .41-inch thickness. The Nexus tablet will be equipped with Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset with a quadcore CPU and a 12 core GPU. Google’s tablet will run on their latest operating system, Android 4.1 (also known as Jelly Bean). The Jelly Bean OS adds a few minor updates, including better voice recognition. The tablet will be available in either 8 or 16 GB internal storage options with 1 GB of RAM.
However, the Google Nexus 7 will not feature a micro SD card slot, to the disappointment of many people. The Nexus 7 will only feature a 1.2 megapixel front camera with no back camera. There is also integrated Wi-Fi but no 3G or 4G, and a 4,325mAh battery that will last for up to 8 hours, according to Google. The tablet will include features such as a microphone, NFC (Android Beam), Accelerometer, GPS, Magnetometer, and a Gyroscope.
The Google Nexus 7 will launch shortly in the U.S., U.K, and Australia starting in July. The tablet will start at a very reasonable price, only $199. Google is currently taking pre-orders for the tablet in the Google Play store and the orders are expected to start shipping in the middle of July.
