Google’s answer to Kindle Fire is supposed to be unveiled next week at Google I/O.
The rumored specs seem good for the $199 price point, if the rumors actually turn out to be accurate:
Asus partnered build
nVidia Tegra 3 quad core cpu
1GB RAM
16GB storage
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
WiFi only, no 3g
Since it’s Google branded I think we can assume it will keep pace with new Android version releases as the hardware allows. At least I would hope that would be the case.
I would like a $200 tablet that actually has Google Play on it. B&N and Amazon stores don’t have Kairosoft games, the asshats.
root your fire and put Play and a decent home screen on it. Takes 20 minutes, tops. That said, this looks ok.
Tegra3 will smoke the SoC in the kindle fire/nook tablet. It has double the RAM of the kindle and 8GB nook tablet too (the 16GB nook has 1GB also). Unlike the kindle, it’s safe to assume it’ll have volume buttons.
True. Of course, it’s coming out at least 6 months later. That’s how tech moves. I was under the impression you actually had a Fire already, from the way you were talking. Yeah, if you don’t already have a Fire, this is a no-brainer.
Edit: oh, there were two different people responding here (Sharmers and Stusser). I conflated the two. Sorrry
No expandable storage, no sale. Leverage your advantage over apple’s closed system!
reference link?
Not sure if there’s been any leaks regarding the tablet, but the last two reference Google phones (Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus), they’ve lacked an SD slot.
All rumors seem to point to that spec. Is Google saying that to Android vendors that 7 inch is the way to go on Android? There are lot of complaints of lack of optimized software for tablets in Android, by making 7 inch the preferred sized it’s probably easier to optimize phone apps for that size but may make the 10 inches size app selection very limited.
I think the 7 inch size is interesting if I bought a tablet for consumption only, it’s probably better then the 10 inches ones for that, but seems to limit all the creation applications that are appearing on tablets, mainly the IPad, also is a different route that Microsoft is taking where they want to turn the Tablet in a full PC.
Any fans of the 7inches size out there? Do you see yourself owning two tablets 7 an 10 to use in different situations?
It’s 7 inches because they couldn’t hit the critical $200 pricepoint with a 10" screen.
Keep in mind that Android doesn’t work the way Apple does, in terms of “tablet-optimized” apps. They have the ability to define alternate screen layouts depending on orientation, dpi, and physical size, so if you’re thinking about your app running on multiple device types enough to optimize it for a 7" scenario, you’re probably going to do the 10" scenario at the same time.
That said, well, a modern phone is just under 5" and 1280x720, so a 7" 1280x800 device isn’t going to need a whole lot of special optimization to run well – regular phone apps will already look nice on it, because they’re designed for biggish-screen, high-dpi devices.
But the big advantage of a 7" tablet is, like Stusser says, price. Plus portability, and weight, and some people like it better in general, but mostly: price. That tablet as rumored is insanely well-specced – it has the same processor as today’s top-of-the-line Android tablets (much better than the iPad 3’s), a screen that is close to the MBP Retina’s pixel density, and runs an unfucked Android 4.1 – and hitting $199 makes it a total Kindle Fire killer, which is arguably more important to Google than being an iPad killer.
At $199 I’m buying one for each of my kids. Right now they just borrow my wife’s ipad.
There are rumblings about an updated Fire pretty soon as well, so it will be interesting to see how it shakes out for the fall.
Yeah, the question is, what would Amazon do to make a Fire 2 worth buying with the Nexus 7 out there? I mean, just being a $199 tablet isn’t good enough anymore; feature-wise, they can only really hope for parity with the Nexus 7 (there really isn’t anything that’s noticeably better than Tegra 3, and they’re not going to go higher-res than 1280x800 in 7"); and in terms of the tablet’s ecosystem, the Nexus’s Google Play + Amazon Appstore is obviously better than just the Amazon Appstore with no easy access to key Google apps.
So, they have to undercut the price, which I suspect means a Special Offers Fire for $149 with Nexus 7-like hardware.
Do they really need to undercut the price, though? Aren’t they positioned to sell almost as much content to a google tablet but with none of the hardware subsidy costs?
If the specs are close then they can probably pull it off, though. Only people who really do their research realize the limitations of the Amazon Appstore. Google Play doesn’t seem to have penetrated the general conciousness of most tablet buyers.
It’s my experience that most people who buy a tablet usually run it past one of their tech friends. And if the tech friend is all “for the same price, Google has a tablet – basically identical, but it’ll let you run GMail, Google Maps, and a bunch of other stuff that you can’t do on the Fire, and it can still do all the stuff the Fire can do, I’d get that instead,” well, they might not always listen, but they will a lot.
More people will buy the Kindle Fire, or eventual Fire 2, simply because its on the front page of Amazon, and they love Amazon. Google doesn’t have a platform to push products. Android phones made it big when Verizon turned on the marketing for Droid.
Don’t forget there’s the rumored smaller iPad on the way also. I think that will lead Amazon to cutting the price of the Fire a bit. Competition is good.
I also bet we’ll see refurbished Kindle Fire 1s with offers for $99 when the Fire 2 is out.
Don’t hold your breath.