Feb 03, 2016 12:45 PM
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"A competition to ipad?", I doubted Verge's claims as many 10 inch tablets had come and gone without making a serious impact on the ipad sales. Samsung tried its best with the Note series but couldn't really make it. But a partnership with Google can be fruitful in this case. Along with the Nexus 7 and 4 google also launched a 10 inch called the Nexus 10 which will probably make a difference in the market currently monopolized by apple.
Google has also launched the Nexus 4 and the new Nexus 7 with this device .
Disclaimer - This is a specs review and not a user review. This device will be released in India in the 3rd week of november.
Screen – The Nexus 10 has a dazzling 2560-by-1600 display with a pixel density of 300 ppi which is coupled with an ultra-powerful graphics processor. The screen measures around 10.1 inches diagonally and has wonderful viewing angles. This exceeded my expectations as I didn’t except anyone to beat apple Retina this soon. Also note that the Nexus 10 has a PLS display – that meaning plane-to-line switching. It’s both absolutely bright and with sharp text and excellent color fidelity, .
Size, Weight and dimensions - It has a height of 10.39 inch, a width of 6.99 inches and a thickness of 8.9 mm and weighs around 609 gms.
OS - The device ships with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean(officially called the jelly bean+) where Google has introduced new features like a new gesture typing keyboard similar to Swype which is available on Samsung devices, as well as panorama photo support similar to that available on the iPhone 5. No Key-Lime Pie yet for Android fans, though this was expected. This device is what Google calls the “first truly sharable tablet” as its using Android 4.2 which works with multiple users that can be switched from the lockscreen. Each user has his or her own email, apps, bookmarks, and settings. Your own home screens, music, and gaming scores, too!
Memory – The Nexus 10 comes in 16 GB and 32 GB wifi only options. With no expansion capabilities(again!) .A micro or even a nano sim card slot may have worked wonders for this device. This tablet also sports 2gb of RAM which could have been bettered.
Chipset – The device sports a Samsung Exynos 5 ARM Cortex-A15 Dual core Processor clocking at 1700 MHz, and an ARM Mali-T604 grapics processor. The processor is better than ipad4's a6x in terms of clock cycles . But only a performance benchmarking test will reveal which one’s better. But at its price the chipset is truly extra ordinary.
Camera – The device comes with a 5 MP front facing camera and a 1.9 MP rear camera with LED Flash and 1080 p HD recoding capability . This is a wonderful step considering that the original Nexus 7 did not have a front camera and hence 3G capability.
Design - It features dual, front-facing speakers for audio, microUSB, Micro HDMI and not one but two NFC chips, one on the front and one on the back. First impressions:it’s actually pretty ho-hum in terms of industrial design. The biggest plus is that The device supports NFC which none of the tablets supports as of now and has a micro-HDMI port. In terms of hardware, you could say it's a distant cousin to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, but that would be underserving the level of build-quality here. The rear of the tablet is a soft-touch plastic that's remarkably grippy, allowing us to hold the tablet horizontally with one hand even though it has a 16:10 aspect ratio. True to the leaks we'd seen before, the tablet has rounded corners and the edges are also not exactly straight, with gentle curves that make the whole thing feel less squarish than most tablets.
Battery - I did not see the battery capacity anywhere but It claims to provide 9 hours of continuous playback time with almost 500 hours of stand by.(That's huge . no its humongous)
Price and Availability- Google is selling the tablet for$399 for the 16GB version and$499 for the 32GB version, which makes it$100 less expensive than a comparable iPad with Retina display. That price differential may help juice sales, but buyers will still have to contend with the anaemic options in the Android tablet app ecosystem. It will be available on November 13th in the Google Play Store in the US, UK, Australia, France, Germany, Spain and Canada. India Release is expected a week later.
Not content with the 7-inch space, Google has finally entered the large-screen space with the Nexus 10, albeit with Samsungs help ."A Nexus device is much more than simply a phone or tablet. It's your connection to the best of Google - all of your stuff and entertainment, everywhere you go with no hassle, " Google's Andy Rubin wrote in a blog post. One major weakness for Android thus far has been a lack of tablet-optimized apps. To remedy this, Google is making a major push to get more of these apps from developers. But just how much the development community is listening remains to be seen. Much will depend on it if the tablet has to succeed.
Excerpts from the Verge, Slashgear, Endgadget and techcrunch.
photo courtesy - zeenews.india.com
Available within a range of 50 - 60K.
Additions and corrections to this review is more than welcome
Regards,
Yash Dhawan.
