Kevin Bostic
Google is reportedly working on a successor to the Nexus 7, one aimed at taking the fight back to both Apple's iPad mini and Amazon's Kindle Fire by shrinking the bezel to accommodate a larger and higher-resolution display.
The follow-up to the Nexus 7 will launch in July of this year, Reuters reported Monday. That would see the new tablet hitting the market almost exactly a year after the unveiling of the first Nexus 7.
According to sources familiar with Google's plans, the revamped Nexus 7 will feature a larger screen, achieved by shrinking the thick bezel featured on the current model. The new model's display will also see resolution bump beyond the current one's 1280x800, 164ppi HD display.
The report also has Google switching chip providers for the next model. Instead of Nvidia, which provided the Tegra 3 chip that powers the current Nexus 7, Google will reportedly adopt a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor .
One thing that will remain the same is the tablet's low-margin pricing. Google — which makes most of its money in online advertising — will apparently subsidize the price of partner Asus' manufacturing process for the new Nexus 7, as it did with the first model. The low price point for that model, along with the respectable internal tech, was a major selling point for the device.
Google is setting its sights a bit higher in terms of sales for the Nexus 7 follow-up. Reportedly, the search giant is looking to ship as many as eight million of the Asus-made tablets in the second half of the year. The previous Google tablet sold about 4.6 million units in the same span of time, and Asus' Chief Financial Officer David Chang revealed in October that the company was shipping around one million units per month at that time.
The new Nexus 7 will enter a small tablet segment much changed from the one that existed last summer. Apple's iPad mini is thought to have sold a significant portion of the Nexus 7's four-month total in the weekend after its release. Apple is also widely thought to be planning a mini follow-up that would pack a high-resolution screen.
In addition to Apple, Google must contend with Amazon, whose Kindle Fire devices — running a forked version of Google's Android mobile operating system — are among the best-selling tablets outside of Apple's iPad. Samsung, too, has re-entered the fray, rolling out the Galaxy Note 8.0, a stylus-enabled 8-inch tablet meant to reclaim share in the mini tablet sector that Samsung helped pioneer years ago.
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37 Comments
I have the current Nexus 7. It's not bad, but there's just something about it that doesn't compel me to use it the way I used my iPad for hours a day. As for shrinking the bevel, I think that's a mistake. When the iPad was originally introduced I laughed at the huge bevel but it makes sense. When I hold the Nexus my palms sometimes tough the screen which registers as touches...
I have the current Nexus 7. It's not bad, but there's just something about it that doesn't compel me to use it the way I used my iPad for hours a day.
Of course, it's called quality tablet apps, for which Android is atrocious.
Nexus 8 = innovation. It's a well known fact most people want bigger screens. Could it be that the pioneers of the small tablets and the big phones are now playing catch up? Why would they change their design when they got it so right?
I have the current Nexus 7. It's not bad, but there's just something about it that doesn't compel me to use it the way I used my iPad for hours a day.
As for shrinking the bevel, I think that's a mistake. When the iPad was originally introduced I laughed at the huge bevel but it makes sense. When I hold the Nexus my palms sometimes tough the screen which registers as touches...
When the iPad was "originally introduced" is quite a while ago, now.
I'm pretty sure all tablets going forward from today with have increasingly minimized "bezels". The iPad Mini showed the technology is there to make this happen with virtually no problem with unintentional touch registers. It's one of my favorite things about the Mini.
I just want a small tablet with a card reader. To me that is the only thing missing from the Nexus 7. I like the screen size. Having a higher resolution would be good but not necessary for me.