
Divine intervention: Google's Nexus 7 is a fantastic $200 tablet - Yoms
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/07/divine-intervention-googles-nexus-7-is-a-fantastic-200-tablet/
======
phaus
Google seems to be getting all of the credit, yet the device's manufacturer,
Asus, has consistently made the best Android tablets all along.

The Transformer tablets have all enjoyed an excellent build quality, great
design aesthetics, and cutting edge hardware. They aren't perfect, but what
tablet is?

~~~
binarycrusader
As Doug Fisher said at JavaOne, "hardware without software just generates
heat".

Asus can make great hardware all day; but without the right marketing and the
right software, it will never be successful.

Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) is the first arrival of a real competitor to iOS in
my opinion.

Google floundered about quite a bit trying to get the UI right (honestly, it
seemed like they were ignoring it completely for a while); and 4.0 and 4.1 are
the first versions I've used that feel "right". I'm actually pretty torn
between iOS and Android at this point from a user / developer standpoint.

Although Apple still has the better developer tools for now.

~~~
cageface
_Although Apple still has the better developer tools for now._

I agree that the supporting tools like Instruments are much better and Android
doesn't have anything to compare to Interface Builder but the better Java IDEs
like IntelliJ are so far ahead of XCode that it's not even funny.

Things are going to get interesting if Apple really does release a 7" tablet.
I don't think they're going to get away with just scaling down iPad apps.
Maybe that's why they were emphasizing the new dynamic layout stuff at WWDC
this year? Manually positioning three completely different UI layouts for each
app isn't going to be much fun.

~~~
pooriaazimi
I dislike Xcode 4 as much as anyone else, but I was watching WWDC sessions
today (and yesterday) and it seems that they've fortunately improved Xcode,
LLVM and LLDB _a lot_.

The new LLDB is almost 20 times better than anything GDB could hope to be.
Xcode 4 is pretty, but gets a zero mark on usability (you have to do a lot of
things by mouse). Xcode 4.5 has been vastly improved usability-wise. If they
keep up their work, I'm sure Xcode could _finally_ be a decent and usable IDE,
rather than just being pretty.

~~~
megablast
I love XCode, much prefer it to Visual Studio and especially Eclipse, which is
just awful.

~~~
pjmlp
Just for curiosity is XCode able to support C and C++ as good as Eclipse CDT
does, and without crashing every few hours?

~~~
cageface
Xcode 4's C++ support is actually pretty good. It supports most of the C++11
features. It still crashes on me pretty often but it's much better than it
was.

In fact, C++ is just about the only reason I still use Xcode for actually
writing code. My apps that don't need C++ are all written in AppCode.

However, AppCode's C++ support is also improving so it may not be that way for
long.

~~~
dman
I am surprised you put up with an IDE that crashes.

------
crag
Google's biggest fail point is support. What happens if the device needs
service?

Google did a terrible job at servicing (customer service) their phone. Trust
me, an email address isn't enough. People want to call someone. And people
want to take it someplace to get it fix or swapped out. The same day. A
tablet/phone isn't the same as a PC. No one wants to overnight their phone for
a replacement next week. ;)

~~~
jonknee
It's an ASUS branded device, so I assume you would call ASUS...

~~~
Someone
I would hope not. Before you know it all they would say is "It's Google's
software, so call them".

Also, consumerlaws in the EU make it clear that the company you buy from is
responsible for quality, guarantees and support.

~~~
jonknee
That's silly. If you buy a phone from Media Markt you aren't going to Media
Markt for support, you're going to HTC, Apple, Samsung or whoever made the
phone.

~~~
Someone
Personally, I first go online to see whether I can find a solution or more
info about a problem, but I think that is an approach typical for the more
technically inclined types. 'run of the mill' consumers, I think, will
directly call the shop where tey bought stuff. I do not think they will call
whoever made the phone, if only because they often do not know how to do that.

Yes, there are cases where one can register a product with the producer and
get a guarantee that way, but even then, EU law is clear: the buck stops at
whoever sold you the device.

So, even then, I would be inclined to contact the seller earlier than the
producer because, in the end, if you buy form Q, Q is the only one who has an
obligation to help you. In this case, If I were to buy from Google, and things
didn't work as expected, I would contact Google. They cannot hide behind "but
we bought it from X". If they could, consumers would typically get no support
at all. For example, X would say "it looks like the battery is the problem.
That is not ours; we bought it from Y"; Y would say "I don't know. Maybe it's
the controller chip? Z made that"; Z would say "we outsourced the software for
that chip" or "no, it's not the chip, it must be the chemicals in the
battery/the device getting too hot due to incorrect firmware in some other
CPU", etc.

------
monkeyfacebag
"Paired with a keyboard, the Nexus 7 could easily serve as a mobile work
solution just as the iPad can."

I'd really like to believe this (and thus justify getting one), but I can't
picture it. How would one prop up the screen? What keyboards are available and
are they any good?

I feel like Apple has reached a local maximum with the iPad as a consumption-
oriented device and I'm just waiting to see who delivers the first tablet
geared towards getting things done. MS appears to be promising this with
Surface, but it remains to be seen how successful they are.

To anyone on HN who has used an Android tablet for productivity purposes
(writing, coding, etc), how has it gone?

~~~
vibrunazo
I'm writing this with my 10.1 Android tablet and a bluetooth keyboard. As I do
with most of my HN posts. I would code with these if there were a good IDE for
Android. That's one of my dreams. I'm not sure what you mean with "prop up the
screen"? You just pair the keyboard via bluetooth once, then it automatically
works if you turn it on. You just touch on a text input and start typing. I
have a Motorola laptop sized android specific keyboard that has android
specific keys (home, search, back etc). But any PC bluetooth keyboard works.
There's literally thousands of them, any regular desktop keyboard works. Most
of the limitation comes from apps, there aren't enough productivity apps for
most people's need. (I guess a blogger wouldn't mind, but as a developer, I
need more than just android. But the keyboard is great vs having just the
touch screen. I can't seriously write a whole paragraph with just touch.

A keyboard is a must have for anyone with a tablet imho. But maybe it's just
me, I can't take touch keyboards seriously. How the hell do you guys live
without arrow keys?

~~~
monkeyfacebag
Thanks for the reply. By "prop up the screen" I actually meant angling the
device itself like a laptop. I understand the iPad's case allows this and the
upcoming Surface provides a kickstand.

With regard to IDEs, I'm not really familiar with Android and I naively
assumed that one would readily be able to install native Linux apps like vim,
but Googling around I discovered this is not trivial. That's a shame.

~~~
CrazedGeek
Terminal IDE
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spartacusr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spartacusrex.spartacuside&hl=en))
goes a long way towards making Android a good dev environment, although I
personally prefer using Complete Linux Installer to automate a chrooted Ubuntu
install (needs root though, obviously)
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zpwebsites...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zpwebsites.linuxonandroid)).

------
thechut
Can anybody comment on when us regular folk will be getting our hands on the
Nexus 7 if we pre-ordered it? (Other than 2-3 weeks)

Bloggers get to have all the fun...

~~~
davidw
I'm curious when us regular folk in Italy will be able to get our hands on
them. I'm debating having it shipped to the US and then bounced over here...

------
mitjak
Just wanted to say, in case the author hangs out here, that I very much
enjoyed her writing style. Very funny and informative.

~~~
javajosh
I thought she was really cute, too.

------
mtgx
The author says that Chrome won't come pre-installed to JB devices if the
manufacturers don't want. If that's so, that's pretty dumb. Google should
force manufacturers to get Chrome together with the Play Store and Gmail. This
will actually improve the situation of the web browsers on Android because
Google plans on updating Chrome every 6 weeks on Android as well.

On the other hand, the developers at Google I/O said it will come pre-
installed on JB, so I'm confused:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGJbPPjANKA#start=0:00;end=62...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGJbPPjANKA#start=0:00;end=62:01;autoreplay=false;showoptions=false)

~~~
josteink
I didn't know clicking the Google Play icon and typing "Chrome" and clicking
"Install" was that hard to do on a tablet.

Also, stock browser on Jelly Bean is stupidly fast. In fact so fast that I
have ditched Chrome for it. Only thing I miss is the Chrome-sync against my
desktop, but I can live without that.

~~~
andybak
From a web dev's point of view, what matters is the defaults as that's what
most people will be running. It would be great if we could target a large
audience using the most capable rendering engine.

Also - any numbers on stock vs Chrome on Jelly Bean? A score from here would
be cool too: <http://html5test.com/>

~~~
josteink
Stock JB: 281+3. Chrome: 369+11.

Chrome has too high startup time for me to use as a default browser though.

------
nollidge
> The keyboard is not quite as snappy as the rest of the Nexus 7 experience.
> It seems to occasionally miss letters, or have to catch up after a series of
> letters are typed, especially right after waking.

Sorry, that's unacceptable. Small UI hiccups are death by a thousand
pinpricks, in my view.

On a related note, I think people vastly underestimate how much UI
responsiveness is responsible for Apple's continued success.

~~~
w1ntermute
I get how important this is, but in my (admittedly limited) experience with an
iPad, it had its fair share of UI hiccups too. I used one at an airport lounge
to browse the internet for 20-30 minutes, and the Mobile Safari browser had
basic scrolling issues that I haven't experienced on my Transformer Prime.

------
lloeki
> At 216 pixels per inch, it's no The New iPad™, but the density is close to
> the recently-released retina MacBook Pro.

Okay Ars author, while the Nexus 7 screen looks fantastic, I don't know what
you were thinking as this sentence above doesn't make _any_ sense. There's no
point in comparing a tablet's DPI to a laptop's DPI†, especially in that way.
It makes it sound like one is really wanting the thing to be Retina when it is
not, and that actually detracts from the fact that it looks like a great
screen nonetheless.

†The closer I use my laptop is (give or take a few inches) the farther I use
my tablet.

~~~
spuz
To me, your sentences make no sense. What do you mean by "The closer I use my
laptop is (give or take a few inches) the farther I use my tablet"? Why
shouldn't we compare the DPI of a laptop to a tablet?

~~~
lloeki
The distance I use my tablet is not the same I use my laptop, and the first
one is always shorter than the second one: tablet is used _at most_ at arms
length, while laptop is _at least_ at arms length.

You can't compare DPI as is, because viewing distance has to be taken into
account before one can make sense of that value A proper, directly comparable
unit would be the size of a pixel in arcseconds (which would carry the
device's own typical viewing distance). Here's Phil Plait (of Hubble fame)
explaining the stuff [0].

[0]
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/re...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/resolving-
the-iphone-resolution/)

~~~
untog
I'm trying to imagine how you go about using a laptop from more than an arm's
length away, but all the mental images just make me giggle.

I agree that there is a minor difference in viewing distance between a laptop
and a tablet, but I think they're still comparable, in contrast to, say, a TV.

~~~
zevyoura
A lot of people use their laptops on a dock of some kind, with an external
keyboard.

~~~
untog
If "a lot" == "a tiny minority", then yes.

------
krsunny
"Selling hardware cheap—in hopes that more money can be made elsewhere—is not
a new game." This has been my thought all along regarding this tablet. I
wonder if it actually cost Google more than $200 to build.

~~~
binarycrusader
If you read the article, they point out that Google has stated they're
basically selling the unit at their cost. (That is, likely how much Asus
charges them.)

~~~
Zaim3
Technically Nexus devices have always been "at cost" to Google, since it's the
OEM who gets the profit off the hardware sales in exchange for Google
controlling the experience. So Rubin's statement about "selling through" the
Nexus 7 actually says very little since that's always been the case. The real
issue (and what the media is mostly missing) is whether ASUS is selling it at
a loss or not, and considering the Memo the Nexus 7 was refactored from was
originally going to be sold at $250, it seems unlikely.

~~~
abraham
ASUS has not incentive to sell at or below cost as they don't get a cut of the
Play sales.

~~~
krsunny
I was wondering about that too, you sure?

~~~
fpgeek
I think they might. Carriers get part of the 30% share of Play sales if you
have a cell phone, but I don't know who gets that for WiFi tablets. OEMs
getting it is certainly one possibility (Google keeping it is another, of
course). There's similar revenue sharing for some of the search traffic as
well, IIRC.

------
Steko
Interesting to compare AnandTech's benchmarks:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/6054/google-nexus-7-mini-
revie...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6054/google-nexus-7-mini-review)

------
espeed
Unless Google has a magic PDF reader, reading PDFs on it is going to suck.
Other than that, I think the 7 pads work.

~~~
mikecane
I wonder about a 7.7" screen vs 7" screen for PDFs. Here is the same Google
Books PDF (they are image scans of books, so no reflow) on a 7.7" and 7"
screen:

Galaxy Tab 7.7 (1280x800):
[http://mikecanex.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/techfondle04121...](http://mikecanex.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/techfondle041212014.jpg)

NookColor 7" (1024x600):
<http://mikecanex.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/gbpdfs002.jpg>

I don't own either of those -- or any. I'm still undecided on which would be
best. [typo edit]

~~~
honestcoyote
I tried using my Nook Color as a PDF reader for textbooks and other technical
publications. In short, it didn't work very well. For an illustration &
diagram heavy text, the Nook Color was too slow (the Tab 7 would probably be
fine) in rendering pages, and the screen was too small to show much of a page.
So I upgraded to a 10" Transformer and had a much better experience.

So depends on what your PDF is like. For basic text, the 7 inch screen was
fine. For technical papers, you'll probably want something bigger.

------
ableal
Discretely tucked away near the end of page 4 (emphasis mine):

"Unlike iOS and previous versions of Android, Jelly Bean’s speech recognition
system doesn’t have to relay snapshots of the user’s recorded speech input to
a remote server for processing. _Speech recognition can now be done entirely
on the device._ "

------
tomhschmidt
Why are they running benchmarks on a tablet?

~~~
CrazedGeek
Why not? It's a decent way to ascertain how powerful a device is. (Although
maybe not Linpack -- it doesn't really correlate to real world performance, in
my experience. Vellamo or Quadrant would be better, but they don't have iOS
equivalents, IIRC.)

------
earl
The nexus 7 will be sabotaged by google's crappy customer service.

I bought one at 10:37 am the morning they were available. It's 11 days later
and there's no communication and no status on when it will ship. For status
you are instructed to click through to google wallet. That site also has no
status, no expected ship date, nothing. So that's strike one.

Second, I moved this weekend and need to update the billing address for the
credit card. The google "contact support" page displays their usual FOAD
customer service. You have to click through to yet another page to contact
customer support. Of course, they're too incompetent to forward your 37
character order number. So after you compose a message, you realize you have
to hit backspace to get the order number. And of course, they clear the
message you carefully composed. These people supposedly understand web
applications. How the hell does the link from inside google wallet to google
customer support not know who I am and my fucking order number?

I still haven't gotten through to customer support and I anticipate spending
at least 30 minutes on the phone tomorrow. I'll update, but I imagine that
there's another ipad in my future.

~~~
joshma
This seems like a lot of fuss over 1) an unannounced ship date and 2) a web
page that deleted your carefully composed message.

Personal anecdote: I wanted to change the credit card on the order. So I went
to the Nexus page[1], clicked "Customer support" in the sidebar, clicked
"Managing your order", and called the number they show, 1-855-83-NEXUS.
Someone picked up in maybe 30 seconds (and I expected really bad wait times
for Google customer support...).

I explained I wanted to change the credit card, and he asked me for my email
address + a piece of personal information. He told me he couldn't change the
credit card, but could instead issue an order cancellation and I could rebuy
the Nexus 7. Not ideal, but I said it was okay (after confirming that they
weren't out of stock or anything). He saw that I only had one order on my
account, cancelled it for me, and we ended the call. No order number needed;
took all of 4 minutes.

Granted, I'm a pretty big fan of Google so I'm definitely biased. And I do
agree that Google's customer support sucks. But it's a bit disheartening to
see the top comment be such a petty complaint.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=nexus_7_8gb...](https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=nexus_7_8gb&feature=banner)

~~~
guelo
These petty top comments seem to be the norm around here for any positive
Google story.

~~~
tpaine
When has Google or ASUS ever been known for their customer service? I was
excited about the Nexus 7 until I saw the giant ASUS logo on the back.

[http://thomaspainerants.com/nexus-7-a-customer-service-
disas...](http://thomaspainerants.com/nexus-7-a-customer-service-disaster-in-
the-making/955/)

------
WayneDB
Worst purchase experience ever.

First, they declined my card which I've been using with Google Wallet forever.
Then, they didn't tell me WHY they declined it. So, I go and update the info
(which didn't need updating) and place another order. Declined again.

Now I have 2 pending transactions showing in Google Wallet and there's NO WAY
of cancelling the order from Wallet or Play. So, I have to call their stupid
call center and get them to cancel both orders.

I'm not even sure that I want one of these things now.

