Google Officially Discontinues Nexus 7 Tablet 160
An anonymous reader writes: Google's 7-inch tablet has disappeared from the Google Store, where a note in red type simply states that the device is no longer available for purchase. "The Nexus 7 was first released back in 2013, so it's fair to say it had a good run. The Android-based tablet received great reviews, but what really made it a long-term success was the fact that it was affordable and continually received updates from Google. Manufactured by Asus, the Nexus 7 was even treated to Android Lollipop, the latest version of the operating system, although not with bug-free results. The discontinuation shouldn't come as a big surprise, however, as Google pulled a similar move back in March with the Nexus 5 smartphone, not to mention the Nexus 9 tablet's release last fall."
"although not with bug-free results" (Score:5, Insightful)
If Google can't even make Lollipop work on its own hardware, how much of an endorsement is that for other manufacturers to put their efforts into Android? Clearly it's not because Google is underfunded.
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It's working just fine on mine, though YMMV as they say.
In other words...motherfucking Google! Must you kill everything I love!
Re:"although not with bug-free results" (Score:5, Informative)
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Here's a trick to getting it somewhat useable. Disable auto-rotation. Then go to the Google keyboard settings. Change the theme and in gesture typing, disable dynamic floating preview.
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I thought LagFix just executed an SSD TRIM.
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I know that it helps though, at least for a couple of weeks or more.
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Lag Fix says, when you run it, that "Every memory chip require trimming in one way or another, it's like defragmentation for hard drives." So I guess more similar in results than actual execution.
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Came here to say the same thing.
It's slow/unusable on the original Nexus 7, but on the 2013 version, it's fine.
Somewhat confused here. The summary says the Nexus 7 was first released in 2013, but you're implying the 2013 he a new edition and there was an earlier Nexus 7 tablet?
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Nevermind. I see someone else explained it in a lower post.
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ASUS built it, but unlike cowards with nothing but wishy-washy negative language, I know it is quality hardware.
One of the great things, this was true of the original, is the balance; I dropped this thing out of my shirt pocket over 30 times. It landed flat every... single... time. No damage.
Also, since it is not locked down I don't have play games to get control, or worry I'll lose control later. GPS performance is great, I've used hundreds of hours in the forest, often in wet weather. (mushroom foraging)
T
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If some anonymous person claims a rare, unlikely hardware fault, my thinking is, that is possible but not a real concern since others don't report the same problem.
When that coward claims to have had a rare problem twice, I'm assuming either they used some sort of third party battery over-charger, or else they're just full of shit.
And really, if all we know is that it "stopped charging," you probably torqued the plug until it was loose, and could just bend the housing back and get it working again.
I did hav
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I'm sorry, but Nexus 7 slow charging is anything but a rare problem. Run a search maybe? Google doesn't care. It's not charger problem and it's not a cable problem. The problem is either software or charger circuit. I just don't have time to hack this POS hardware, software to get it working.
I also have the charging problem on my original Nexus 7 as well as other headaches -- no TRIM support with encrypted partitions, super slow. Not really using that Google garbage anymore. Bought iPad Mini with retina and
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It's working just fine on mine, though YMMV as they say.
In other words...motherfucking Google! Must you kill everything I love!
Agreed. I love my Nexus 7... I don't have a smart phone, my tablet is my portal. Google has ADD.
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I'm sticking with 4.4. Upgrades are optional.
Just bought a new Nexus 7 last month. It may be an old model at this point, but it is still the best tablet under $200. Nothing else was even good enough to get serious consideration.
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It was a little rocky start but now, after a few updates, it works flawlessly on mine.
To bad about being discontinued but all things come to an end. It's a damn good tablet, I expect to get a few more years of use out of mine.
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Which means it's now on the long slow slide into obsolescence. I figure it's good for software updates for maybe another 12 months, after that it's just a matter of time until some software I need / want requires an OS version the tablet can't support.
The tablet has an earlier version in 2012, and a refresh in 2013 which was a major update in terms of the hardware. It's basically being retired after only 2-3 years, which is a shame, since it's quite a decent little tablet - the 2013 refresh at least is.
I ex
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I've never seen a lollipop device that didn't have bad memory management (app restart) issues. They really dropped the ball with lollipop.
Not to mention the new broken notifications system.
Like a vapid valley girl, all Lollipop has going for it is its looks.
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I have a 2013 Nexus 7 and a Nexus 5 both on Lollipop and I don't have any issues on either. I've read other loud people who have issues but thankfully so far I've been fine, and I use my phone every day and my tablet most evenings.
Re:"although not with bug-free results" (Score:5, Informative)
The article was pretty poor.
There were two Nexus 7 devices:
1) The 2012 Nexus 7 (often referred to by its internal codename, grouper), using an NVidia Tegra3 chipset. This did get Lollipop, although it was kind of "meh", mostly with performance issues, showing that the hardware was getting a little on the old side. Google may have been trying to make up for the Galaxy Nexus getting dropped prematurely due to TI by keeping a different Nexus device supported for as long as absolutely possible. This device was discontinued in Summer 2013 when its successor was announced.
2) The 2013 Nexus 7 (often referred to by its internal codename, flo), using a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro (APQ8064), pretty much the same as the Snapdragon 600 at a slightly lower clock speed. This runs Lollipop well due to newer hardware. This is the device that was just discontinued.
grouper was always a bit "meh" - I don't know if it was the fault of Asus or NVidia, but Tegra3 tablets from Asus were always notorious for poor storage performance. I think other Tegra3 tablets had similar issues, but honestly - Asus was the largest Tegra3 customer by far thanks to grouper and the Transformer series of tablets, so it's hard to tell who was at fault.
The fact that flo didn't have grouper's storage performance issues (same device manufacturer, different chip inside) indicates it was probably the Tegra3.
Re:"although not with bug-free results" (Score:4, Insightful)
2) The 2013 Nexus 7 (often referred to by its internal codename, flo), using a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro (APQ8064), pretty much the same as the Snapdragon 600 at a slightly lower clock speed. This runs Lollipop well due to newer hardware. This is the device that was just discontinued.
Well, it runs 5.1 well. Many users, including myself, had problems with 5.0 on the Nexus 7 2nd. I had it murder the battery for no reason, and it was generally chunky and unresponsive. 5.1 seems to have solved that, though.
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Whereas 5.0 was fine for me, but 5.1 seems to be a clunker. The Kindle app, for example, now likes to hang up so I have to kill it.
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The Kindle app, for example, now likes to hang up so I have to kill it.
Amazon is probably doing something bad and stupid as usual. I had to remove their store app from my devices because it made them unusable. All of them. Locks, hangs, FCs, even in other apps. Amazon can't code their way out of a nutsack. You can see this in their site, too. They break it every few months.
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It does work just fine, you have to do a full wipe on it. Many users whined and refused to. they suffer bugs.
Wipe it, then go along re installing apps. DO NOT restore it, just let things come back from the holy google cloud.
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Since when did Android do automatic backups of all your app data? Not just the apps -- the actual data.
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If Google can't even make Lollipop work on its own hardware, how much of an endorsement is that for other manufacturers to put their efforts into Android? Clearly it's not because Google is underfunded.
I don't buy Google stuff (Android, and other). My view is that Google is just testing the market for products, and that their view is "your purchase is disposable, even if it cost you a couple of hundred dollars. You can expect your tablet hardware to last 5 years, but not our support.
No mention of iPad in the summary? (Score:3)
As I remember it, the Nexus 7 was part of a strategic campaign by Google to ensure that "tablet" didn't mean "iPad" by introducing a high-quality Android device supported by Google itself to the masses. Now that that mission's largely been accomplished (e.g., if you're just looking for a tablet to browse the Internet and run a couple of simple apps, would you really shell out the extra money buy an iPod?) and there are many high-quality Android tablet alternatives in every form factor imaginable, the Nexus 7 isn't needed so much.
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I just wish more manufacturers would not try to customize everything to the point where we have a Samsung Android and Moto Android and LG Android and... My last two Android phones one of the first things I did was find the Google Play Edition rom on XDA-Developers to remove all the bloat and crap, not to mention forced lock in to some apps.
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In some cases it's almost needed though. There is still no native support for displaying 2 apps at the same time on Android devices. That may not be such a big issue for phones and 7 inch tablets, but once you get into 10 inch tablets, the ability to continue watching your movie while you look something up on the web is a very nice feature to have. iPad suffers from the same problem. I have a Surface 2, and I love the fact that I can do 2 things at the same time makes it so much more useful. And there are
What 4 to 5 inch Android tablet? (Score:2)
if you're just looking for a tablet to browse the Internet and run a couple of simple apps, would you really shell out the extra money buy an iPod?
Because an iPod touch is small enough to put in an armband so you can listen while you jog. Android tablets typically don't run smaller than 7 inches without being designed (and priced) for use with a cellular network. Or should people just buy an entry-level Android phone and use it without a SIM?
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Or should people just buy an entry-level Android phone and use it without a SIM?
Obviously. It has the additional feature of being able to make 911 calls. That ought to be handy for joggers, since they seem to be the ones who find all the bodies.
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if you're just looking for a tablet to browse the Internet and run a couple of simple apps, would you really shell out the extra money buy an iPod?
Because an iPod touch is small enough to put in an armband so you can listen while you jog. Android tablets typically don't run smaller than 7 inches without being designed (and priced) for use with a cellular network. Or should people just buy an entry-level Android phone and use it without a SIM?
The OP was talking about iPads, I think the iPod was a typo. As for your jogging comment, you could just use the phone you currently have to listen to music. Or do you always carry around two overlapping devices?
Would require a more expensive plan (Score:2)
As for your jogging comment, you could just use the phone you currently have to listen to music. Or do you always carry around two overlapping devices?
The phone I already have doesn't support music. If I switched to a smartphone, the carrier would refuse to activate it on my present plan, instead putting me on a plan that costs $300 more per year than what I'm currently paying. Even in the GSM ecosystem, where a SIM is mandatory, carriers can and do automatically add a data plan [slashdot.org] to a voice-only SIM when it is inserted into a smartphone.
Mandatory Data (Score:2)
They sure do then argue with you that the phone won't work without a supporting data plan. If I buy an unlocked smartphone and only want to use it with wifi data only then I damn well better be able to. Fuck you Cingular oops ATT.
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Why not?
The Moto E is $120 without a contract and I'm sure it runs better than an iPod Touch that has the same internals as the 2011 iPhone 4s.
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Android tablets typically don't run smaller than 7 inches without being designed (and priced) for use with a cellular network. Or should people just buy an entry-level Android phone and use it without a SIM?
...Haven't we covered this already? Is there some downside to using a phone? You talk about it like it's a bad idea. As for the iPod Touch, it's been about 5 years since one was released that could be used without iTunes. If I didn't have a smartphone, I'd use my $20 MP3 player. Smaller+lighter than even a small touchscreen device, cheaper to replace, takes microSD for memory expansion (and thus has more space than my 1st gen iPod Touch, anyhow), and it's too small to break if dropped.
Unless you've bought
Re:No mention of iPad in the summary? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll tell you why that's patently untrue.
A Nexus 7 was essentially guaranteed to get the Google branded Android, with no customizations and other crap by the manufacturer.
I don't care what Samsung or any other vendor has created in terms of their own stuff, their own store, and crap which is going to be unsupported or prevent me from getting updates.
With Google dropping a Nexus 7, everything is now likely to be a version of Android in which someone has decided to add their own crap -- primarily with the intent of collecting ad revenue or their own store.
I want none of this crap. I want a vanilla Android. Not the shit Samsung or any other vendor has foisted on it.
A Nexus device means you will have proper support from Google. Not be stuck with whatever shit the marketing department somewhere else came up with.
So now the question becomes when I want to replace my Nexus 7 if I buy a Nexus 9, or I buy a low end iPad.
Because I have no interest whatsoever in a non-standard Android.
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A Nexus device means you will have proper support from Google.
N4 and N7 updates lagged hard behind other devices. If you wanted quick updates you had to go to the community. Which brings us to our next point:
So now the question becomes when I want to replace my Nexus 7 if I buy a Nexus 9, or I buy a low end iPad.
Because I have no interest whatsoever in a non-standard Android.
...and are apparently unaware of third-party Android distributions for common devices. So long as you get something vaguely popular, someone will be rolling CyanogenMod and/or AOSP for your device, and you won't have to run whatever came from Google, which you don't want to run anyway. You want something with fixes applied.
Re:No mention of iPad in the summary? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not unaware of them. I'm completely fucking uninterested. There is a huge difference.
I don't want some device I have to build in a kit every couple of months. I'm beyond the point where I want to endlessly fiddle with technology. It's a waste of my time, and not something I do for fun.
I want something supported out of the box by the manufacturer, with as long of a shelf life as possible, and I don't want to enrich some corporation who feels they should give me a separate store or otherwise annoy me with non-standard stuff.
I have no interest in tracking my own CyanogemMod version, building it from a kit, hand bombing my install.
I like vanilla Android out of the box. I've seen the junk Samsung and others put on, and I have no interest in it.
But what I don't want is a device which is going to make more work for me.
Maybe the nerdy kids or the people with no lives feel some fulfillment out of endlessly fucking with their devices. But I sure as hell don't.
But I'll go back to Apple if the price points become similar. Only I'll go with a lower end device and treat it like it will only have a short lifespan. Especially if it means I know I'll have a device which isn't a pain in the ass to use.
For me technology is tools, not something to derive endless pleasure from tweaking it.
So, as usual, the open source solution of "yarg, just download this stuff, build this stuff, twiddle with this stuff" is advice that nobody else is interested in. I just want something which "just works" .. my original iPad did up to a point, and my Nexus 7 has so far.
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> I don't want some device I have to build in a kit every couple of months. I'm beyond the point where I want to endlessly fiddle with technology. It's a waste of my time, and not something I do for fun.
But you realize that Google is pretty incompetent as a consumer support vendor? They're putting out changes to their "stock" android OS at least twice a year. For lollipop, they upgraded the phones months ago; but didn't even bother to upgrade the N7 (2013, razor/razorg) until a week or two ago. And al
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But you realize that Google is pretty incompetent as a consumer support vendor?
They are more competent and scrupulous than Apple. That's not a very high bar, but it's good enough to drive a purchasing decision in this case. Obviously, Microsoft is not even in the running.
Re:No mention of iPad in the summary? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, all you did is miss my point about how I'm uninterested in building my device from a kit.
I don't want to buy it, root it download a new OS for it .... because I simply don't have any interest in it.
Will this magical thing perform its own updates and provide a mechanism to keep it up to date?
Sorry, the only "ignorance" I see here is you consistently suggesting I do exactly what I've already said I'm not interested in doing.
Fucking open source people always think people are willing to jump through hoops to install this shit.
What part of I don't want to fucking install a different OS on a device I've bought is beyond your comprehension here?
By the time we're talking about rooting it, putting on a boot loader, and installing another OS ... we're well and truly into the "I don't want to play this stupid fucking game". And yet you keep saying it.
I want a piece of consumer electronics, not some fucking make work hobby project.
So why don't you get it through your head that my idea of fun is not having to manually be involved in maintaining my tablet at this level? Because it's a waste of my damned time.
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I would probably allow for a couple weeks because this guy is so good he's getting lots of requests like this (I may have
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Going to the post office, mailing it to your brother, and waiting to get it back, is still hassle and expense that it is unreasonable to expect a user to do. Also, it doesn't scale well, so it's not an answer to the fact that users in general don't want to do such things.
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Your thread with drinkypoo is exactly what I've been pointing out for at least a decade: many vocal proponents of the "Linux on the Desktop!" community, while seemingly well intentioned, have no interest in hearing any feedback that isn't glowing. They have no interest in hearing what actual users want from their tools.
Bullshit, coward. My response is "you don't get a better experience from Apple, at least with Android you can fix it, with Apple you're just fucked". But hey, let him go to Apple, let him see how much fun it is to be trapped in a walled garden. What Google is doing is harder than what Apple is doing, yet they're still doing at least as good a job without having to step on your neck in the process.
I don't think that the Android experience is ideal, I just think it's better than sucking on Apple.
I haven't rooted the ECS on my car, either. Fortunately, it seems to be delivering an air-fuel mixture to the engine and igniting said mixture per requirements which allows me to get from point A to point B without having to mess with it - exactly what I want from it.
Except actual
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If you have to go to a third party community that may or may not have updates then your mode is broken. Xda is nice if you are modding it, etc. however if you want it to work without spending an hour doing so then it isn't the right place. And yes the last time I tried and failed to install an xda android rom my device was trashed. It was my fault I missed one of the 50 perquisite steps required.
Hell there are days when I think it would be faster to compile android from source on the device than use those r
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And yes the last time I tried and failed to install an xda android rom my device was trashed. It was my fault I missed one of the 50 perquisite steps required.
Again, you do have to exercise some care when buying a device. Look it up on XDA-Developers before buying, and never buy a device which hasn't already been subjected to some scrutiny. You don't just get a free pass, you have responsibilities.
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Finding the information you need to do it takes less time the more you understand. You have successfully taken an hour to find enough information to install it with your level of knowledge, but not with everyone's level of knowledge. Furthermore, even an hour really sucks when we're talking about a consumer product.
Locked Bootloaders (Score:2)
Unless you buy a nice tablets because they look like something that you might like, then they abandon you for upgrades and refuse to unlock the bootloader so you cannot put a third party ROM onto it. Thank you Toshiba, my Excite is a nice piece of hardware but no way to upgrade.
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Thank you Toshiba, my Excite is a nice piece of hardware but no way to upgrade.
An educated person would not have purchased a Toshiba tablet to begin with. It's true that Apple users don't have to educate themselves, but that's only because there's nothing to learn. They can buy in and take their chances and deal with whatever problems crop up and however Apple chooses to deal with them, or they can fuck off. An Android user has the option to become educated so that they can make a better decision. Before buying a Moto G I looked into how Motorola treated modders (voiding their warrant
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Exactly. Discontinuing the 5 and 7 wouldn't be a problem if there were Nexus-branded replacements in the same price range, but the Nexus 6 and 9 are ridiculously expensive compared to the 5 and 7 respectively.
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I'll soon be in the market for a new tab, as my old 1st gen Nexus 7 is just annoying anymore (and I've rooted it and frozen a lot of the supposed bloatware). but now I don't know what to even look for. I really didn't want an iPad. I already have an iPhone, which I like, but I wanted one foot in both worlds.
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I had an iPad (first gen) until they "retired it" by upgrading it until it was useless, and then updating it no more.
Then I had a vanilla Android Nexus 7 tablet, which I still use -- because it was a good price point to get with 32GB of storage.
But if when this Android is due to be replaced I have to spend as much for a Nexus 9 as I would an iPad .. or if I have to buy a non-vanilla Android ... I might just go back to an iPad.
I do not want something which isn't capable of running the latest Android or whic
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The sad thing is that there still are not many Android tablets out there with the build quality of an iPad Air 2. The Android tablet manufacturers like Asus, Dell, and Samsung seem to focus more on lower price tablets than higher quality.
I'd dare to say that Microsoft did a better job of making a competitive premium product to the iPad Air with their Surface and Surface Pro products. That might sound odd coming from someone who actually has an Nexus 7 and likes it. It's a nice tablet, but it's no iPad kille
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RIP (Score:3)
I own a first gen Nexus 7. IMO, it's the ideal size for a personal video-watching device--not large enough to be cumbersome but with a big enough screen to make TV show watching thoroughly enjoyable. It's also ideal for reading articles and great at viewing "full web" (non-mobile) pages. The price (under $200) was the main selling point to me, and I really did feel like it was amazing bang for the buck (especially compared to my wife's similarly-priced Kindle Fire).
Lollipop rendered my N7 basically unusable (would randomly shut itself off--mine, luckily, wasn't one of those whose device got caught in the infinite reboot cycle), but Thank God there's Cyanogenmod, where my N7 is a big sluggish but still perfectly functional. The sluggishness would probably have been enough to make me consider buying a replacement, and I'm sad that there isn't one (I will never buy another Samsung mobile device, and I hate the Kindle Fire series).
Ah, well. I'm used to being part of an unpopular and unprofitable niche market--I'm still waiting for someone (anyone) to release a new full QWERTY keyboard phone.
Clip-on keyboard (Score:2)
I'm still waiting for someone (anyone) to release a new full QWERTY keyboard phone.
Did they stop making clip-on Bluetooth keyboards for phones [theregister.co.uk] or something? Amazon still appears to have slide-out keyboards in stock for iPhone 6 [amazon.com].
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clip-on Bluetooth keyboards for phones or something?
Only keyboard cases I've seen are for iPhones (I'm not a fan of iOS) or the Samsung Galaxy SIII. I would have bought an N4 or N5 if there'd been a keyboard case for it. Same with any of the new Moto or HTC offerings.
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I don't think the 7" Android tablet was unprofitable or niche - I think both the first-gen and next-gen Nexus 7s did very well.
Unfortunately the first-gen one was crippled by Tegra3.
I'm really hoping a replacement comes along this summer, because a 9" 4:3 tablet is something I have zero interest in.
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That must have been quite a task. Apparently, Google had no clue about how the the software they write, maintain and distribute, would work on a piece of hardware that they themselves chose.
At the time they released the original Nexus 7, Android was slow as molasses on any hardware I used. Performance has been one of the biggest steps forward in the last few Android releases, though they still seem to need significantly more CPU and RAM than an iPad.
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I don't know about unusable, but I've had a lot more problems with applications force quitting on their own because the tablet ran out of memory. The Lollipop build on the "new" 2013 Nexus 7 has a nasty memory leak that causes to OS to take over a Gig of memory at times.
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You are not alone. I have the BB Q10, before which I had the 9900 and am pining for a android with a comparable qwerty...
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You don't necessarily need Cyanogenmod, you could just roll back to the factory image for KitKat. [google.com]
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Older than you might think (Score:4, Funny)
The Nexus 7 was first released back in 2013
Which is why the first ones are known as Nexus 7 (2012)
That's annoying ... (Score:2)
I always thought he Nexus 7 was a good combination of specs, size, and being supported by Google.
I don't want a 9" Nexus.
One does wonder if they're not killing a popular product because they just want to focus on a more expensive version.
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This Asus MEMO Pad 7 is essentially the late 2014 Nexus - just not branded as such..
http://www.asus.com/us/Tablets... [asus.com]
I got one for $150 at Best Buy and have been very satisfied aside from my normal android complaint of the home/back buttons taking up a whole strip of the interface space at the bottom of the scren.
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Is it stock Android? Or has it been tweaked?
Because an Android which has had custom crap installed in it because the vendor felt the need to eithr brand it, divert me to their store, or achieve vendor lock-in, I'm not interested in.
A non-standard Android has zero interest for me, because I already have an Android device which the manufacturer has abandoned.
So vanilla Android (which is the point of the Nexus devices), or I'm simply going back to Apple. I guess I could look at a Windows tablet, but WTF woul
Short-sighted post (Score:5, Interesting)
They had to discontinue it (Score:5, Funny)
to free up the name name for the inevitable 7" smart phone.
Re: They had to discontinue it (Score:2)
Fits all my pockets, and I use mine with VoIP. People are awed by the size of my "phone". Still heartbroken that there won't be a 2015 version. For the price, the 2013 LTE version was the best piece of electronics I've ever owned. I know there are nicer Android tabs now, but not for the price.
We are left with no affordable options (Score:2)
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Yeah, when my Nexus 7 dies, I'll probably be getting an iPad, unless Google produce a sane-sized tablet with sane permission controls.The new ones are too big, too expensive, and too full of spyware.
Nexus 5 (Score:3)
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So what now (Score:2)
Nexus 6 to big for be useful as a phone, costs 2x as much as the 5 did. Nexus 9 again size sucks, to big to carry around in front pocket to small to be a useful laptop and again 2x the price of the 7 it replaced.
Cyogen (sp) seems to be the only option to keep things close to stock android anymore.
Why "shouldn't I be surprised"? (Score:2)
long run? (Score:2)
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2 years is a wonderfully long run for Android stuff... you're usually lucky to get ANY software update, and here it's brought to the latest and greatest. Especially since I think the 2013 N7 went from Jelly Bean to Kit Kat and now Lolipop. Which is remarkable in a Nexus device in general.
And who's fault is that? (Score:4, Funny)
The person who took the decision to terminate the Nexus 7 series is called Rick Deckard.
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Sounds like a replicant...
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Too bad the screens break easily (Score:2)
I have had 10 Nexus 7's given to me, every one with broken screens.
They needed to stop making the screen with potato chips. They need gorilla glass that is 2X as thick.
Nexus 7 (2013) Best All Around Tablet Ever(so far) (Score:5, Insightful)
I know that many will disagree with me, but I still think that the Nexus 7 (2013) was the best all around tablet ever made. I have owned 5 tablets (3 different 7", 2 different 10") and my Nexus 7 (2013) is the only one that I still use on a daily basis and I would recommend it to anyone to buy (if they still can). I just bought my mom one last month. It has been the perfect size for me, just small enough that I can easily throw it in a jacket pocket or palm it while walking down the hall to a meeting, and big enough that I can show a coworker some information on the screen during the meeting or a watch a movie on a plane. The price/performance ratio has been unmatched by any other tablet that I have ever encountered. Nice wide full HD high resolution screen and stereo speakers for movies, 2GB of RAM, plenty fast processor, and no unnecessary bloated custom software. My only complaint ever has been the lack of a MicroSD slot that 3 of my other tablets had. Due to the 4:3 resolution the Nexus 9 never interested me.
I really hope that Google will be announcing a suitable successor at I/O this year.
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I have a Motorola Xoom that's probably four years old. It's running KitKat now. I had to update the firmware myself, since the last official update it got was for 4.1, but I even have the option to move to 5.0 if I wanted to do so. I also have a Galaxy Tab 8.9 of similar vintage that's completely fine at its advanced age, though I did take the time to replace its battery a few weeks ago.
I'm not sure I understand what issues are preventing the Nexus 7 from being a decent Lollipop device, but my Nexus
Luck of the draw (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good bye ( and not good buy) (Score:5, Funny)
When I realized that my 2009 ipad2 was still being used daily (albeit with lack of updates not as secure and running slowly) I realized that you can't beat apple hardware longevity.
Your "2009" iPad 2 was released in March 2011, so it's not quite as old as you think. ;)
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And his 2011 iPad 2 runs the latest version of iOS....
http://9to5mac.com/2014/06/02/... [9to5mac.com]
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There's always someone that gets a lemon though, you can't judge an entire range with a single anecdote, you need a larger data set. To highlight the point that you can't judge the whole on one case I can simply counteract with my anecdote; I've knocked my Nexus 7 off a table directly onto a solid stone floor. I expected a smashed screen and broken innards, but it didn't even get a scratch and still works fine one year on.
My partner's iPad (also an iPad 2, though doesn't go back to 2009, I don't think they
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I dropped my N7-2012 an insane number of times. Whenever it fell out of a pocket, it did a backflip and landed flat, unharmed. Every single time. Knocking off tables was the same deal... tumble, tumble, *slap*! I did finally knock it out of a laundry basket onto a sidewalk, and it didn't have a chance to flip at that angle, because when it slides off a curved surface it can't do the backflip balance tricks. So then it finally hit direct and smashed the corner bad.
OTOH even then, since everything is accessib
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For a consumer electronics product? That's pretty damn good. Most tablets and smartphones seem to get updated yearly, and the old model disappears once the stock runs out.
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Although those are impressively scary looking pictures, I just thought it should be clarified that was the 2012 Nexus 7 and not the 2013 Nexus 7 the article is talking about. It looks like it had a catastrophic Lithium battery pack failure which has been documented with many different devices made back in that time frame.