Nexus 7 review

Recently with the announcement of new Google Nexus 7, prices slashed for the older version. I decided to go for the older version since the new version would not be available for at least another 3 months and my requirements and budget was not too high. My primary motive for owning a tablet was to read books, research papers and watching videos. Nexus 7 fulfills all these requirements diligently.

Nexus 7 (2012) has a 7” screen with a resolution of 1280x800. Weighted at 340 grams and with high resolution it is a pleasure to read books on or even write this blog post. Nexus 7 has a powerful battery of 4325 mAH. In my case it runs for over 8 hours, on a single charge, with wifi on and medium usage like reading books,twitter and browsing the web.

A nvidia tegra 3 quad core processor combined with 1 GB DDR3 RAM makes the tab real fast. Most of the applications open on touch. I am yet to face any kind of lag or freeze. Google has already provided a 4.3 update for nexus 7.

There are a few limitations though, the internal memory is 16 GB but there is no slot for memory card. There is no back camera and the front camera is not decent.

Overall, the hardware is really decent for the bucks(12K Rs) but I have some issues with android per se. I have been an android user for over 2 years now and have used nearly all versions from 2.1 onwards. I feel that with every new version Google is limiting the power that the user commands over the environment. For e.g, the 4.3 version which nexus 7 is currently running on does not allow to add or delete home screens. Android has also removed USB mass storage option and replaced it with MTP and PTP which is a real pain to get working on Linux systems.

To conclude, Nexus 7 is a beautiful piece of hardware that compares to iPad without burning a hole in your pocket. I would recommend you to buy the new Nexus 7(2013) which has even greater specs if you are looking for a tablet.

Originally published at siddharthm.tumblr.com.