Reuters has some vague new information on the Nexus 7 successor from Google today. Rather than being available at Google I/O in May (which would have been my guess), Reuters thinks it won’t hit the mass market until July. Perhaps a limited run will be available to developers in May?
As far as specs…
Reuters expects a higher resolution display. This also doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. The current 1,280-by-800 display is plenty crisp at 254PPI on a 7-inch display. If the screen were enlarged, however, that might make a lot more pixels necessary.
Another improvement that will help it against the iPad mini is a forecasted thinner bezel that will make the device smaller (unless of course the screen gets bigger).
The other big change is inside with the switch from NVIDIA Tegra to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor (likely the 600 or 800). Reuters says this is for power reasons, but other manufacturers have gone to Qualcomm because of their integrated LTE capabilities— which would be welcome news for Nexus owners. Samsung, for instance, eschewed its own Exynos Octocore chips for Qualcomm for LTE capabilities in its high-profile Galaxy S4.
As for pricing, I’m fully on board with Reuter’s assertion that the current model will be discounted (they say $149, but it could be more or less). The new model will now occupy the $199 price point.
I still think this report is a little too vague on details, and there could be some surprises afoot. After all, Google has had a year to work on this product and it would be surprising if the only updates were spec improvements.
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