The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

The Nexus 7 (N7) is an intermediate-size tablet — larger than even the biggest phones, but smaller than, say, a Xoom or iPad device. It features a 7" 1280x800 display and weighs in at 340 grams. There's 1GB of RAM, and up to 16GB of storage; the CPU is a quad-core Tegra3 processor. The notion of a quad-core system that fits easily into a back pocket is amusing to us old-timers, but that's the age we live in now. The N7 features WiFi connectivity and Bluetooth, but there is no cellular connectivity; it has 802.11n support, but cannot access the 5GHz band where 802.11n networks often live. The only camera is a front-facing 1.2 megapixel device; the N7 does not even have the camera application installed by default.

The N7 runs Android 4.1.1, the "Jelly Bean" release. 4.1.1 offers a lot of enhancements over 4.0, but is, for the most part, similar in appearance and functionality. The first impression, once the setup formalities are done, can be a little disconcerting: the home screen is dominated by a large ad for Google's "Play Magazines" service. It makes one think that "pure Android" devices might be going the crapware route, but the ad widget is easily disposed of and never appears again.

As of this writing, there is no CyanogenMod build available for the N7. That is unsurprising, given the newness of the hardware and the fact that CyanogenMod has not yet moved to the Jelly Bean release. But the N7 is an unlocked (or, at least, easily unlockable) device, so one can expect that alternative distributions will become available for it in due time.

Using the N7

Android on tablets has matured considerably since the initial "Honeycomb" release featured on the Xoom. For the most part, things work nicely, at least as far as the standard Google applications are concerned. The ability of third-party applications to work well on larger screens is still highly variable. One bit of remaining confusion is the "menu" button, which appears in different places in different applications, or is absent altogether. Playing the "find the menu" game is a common part of learning any new application. One gets the sense that the Android developers would like to do away with menus altogether, but there are many practical difficulties in doing so.

Perhaps the most jarring change is the switch to Chrome as the built-in web browser. The standard Android browser wasn't perfect, but it had accumulated some nice features over the years. Chrome is capable and fully-featured, and it arguably makes sense for Google to focus on supporting a single browser. But your editor misses the "auto-fit pages" option and the "quick controls" provided by the Android browser. Getting around with Chrome just seems to be a slower process requiring more taps and gestures. Undoubtedly there is a way to get the Android browser onto the N7, but, so far, time has been short and a quick search came up empty.

The N7's front-facing camera is clearly not meant for any sort of photographic use, unless one is especially interested in self portraits. It is useful for the "face unlock" feature, naturally. It is also clearly meant for use with applications like Skype; the N7 should make a very nice video network phone. Unfortunately, video calls in Skype fail to work on your editor's device. Some searching indicates that it works for some people and fails for others; sometimes installing the camera application helps, but not in this case. At this time, the N7 does not appear to be ready for this kind of use.

One need not have an especially conspiracy-theoretical mindset to surmise that Skype's owner (a small company called "Microsoft") might just have an incentive to ensure that Skype works better on its own operating system than on Android. But the truth of the matter is probably more prosaic: by all accounts, the Skype application is just not an example of stellar software engineering. Unfortunately, it is an example of proprietary software, so there is no way for anybody but Skype to fix it. There should really be a place for a free-software video calling application that (1) actually works, and (2) can be verified to lack backdoors for government agencies and anybody else interested in listening in on conversations. But that application does not seem to exist at this time, alas.

Electronic books

Another obvious use case for a 7" tablet is as an electronic book reader. The N7 has some obvious disadvantages relative to the current crop of electronic-ink readers, though: it weighs about twice as much, has a fraction of the battery life, and has a backlit screen that is harder to stare at for hours. Still, it is worth considering for this role; its presence in the travel bag is more easily justified if it can displace another device.

The N7 hardware, in the end, puts in a credible, though not stellar, performance as a book reader. The extra weight is noticeable, but the tablet still weighs less than most books. The rated battery life for reading is about nine hours, possibly extendable by turning off the wireless interface. Nine hours will get one through an international travel experience of moderate length, but one misses the battery life of a proper reader device that can go for weeks at a time without a recharge. The lack of dedicated buttons for page-turning and the like (which are commonly present on dedicated readers) is not a huge problem. The backlit display can actually be advantageous in situations where turning on the lights is frowned upon — when the spouse is sleeping, or on some airplanes, for example.

On the software side, there are a number of reading applications available, ranging from the ultra-proprietary Google Books and Kindle applications to the (nice) GPL-licensed FBReader program. Experience shows that the rendering of text does not always work as well in applications like FBReader or Aldiko, though; white space used to separate sections within chapters can disappear, for example, and block quotes can be smashed into the surrounding paragraphs. Readers like Kindle do better in this regard. Another annoyance is that the tablet uses the MTP protocol over the USB connection, meaning that it does not work easily with Calibre. One can, of course, move book files manually or use Calibre's built-in web server to get books onto the device, but it would be a lot nicer if Calibre could just manage the on-device library directly.

In summary, while the experience for users of walled-garden book services is probably pretty good, it remains a bit rough for those wanting to take charge of the books that they so foolishly think they, by virtue of having paid for them, actually own. Beyond that, for content that goes beyond pure text — anything with pictures, for example — a tablet can provide a nicer experience. And, of course, the tablet offers the full Internet and all the other Android applications; whether that is considered to be an advantage in a book reader is almost certainly in the eye of the user.

In the long term, it seems clear that general-purpose tablets will displace dedicated reader devices, but the N7, arguably, is not quite there yet.

In general, though, the N7 works nicely as a media consumption device. It plays videos nicely and is a pleasant device for wandering around on the web. For people who are fully hooked into the Google machine it naturally provides a nicely integrated interface into all of the related services. For the rest of us the experience is a bit more uneven; your editor still yearns for a better email client, for example. But, even with its limitations, the N7 fills in nicely where one does not want to deal with a laptop, but where a phone screen is simply too limiting. This new tablet from Google is a nice device overall; it is likely to remain in active use for some time.