As I read the confirmation of earlier rumours of the Google-branded 7" Android tablet, I first wondered if I had jumped the gun by buying a cheap 8" Android tablet from China only a month earlier. But as I read the details, I realized that Google's design suffers from two significant problems: pricing and ports.
The Pricing Problem
Nexus 7 offers customers a pricing anomaly in that the 8GB model is $200, but the 16GB is $250. You pay $50 for a mere 8GB of added flash RAM. These days, $7 is the retail price for an 8GB microSD card sold in Canada. Factory built-in flash RAM should be be cheaper, not more expensive.
While Google talks up how it makes no profit on this tablet, I assume it speaks of the 8GB model. And I am guessing the company is depending on people splurging on the larger capacity model, on which it will make a $43 profit.
The pricing problem is exacerbated by...
The Port Problem
Nexus 7 suffers from a iPad-like dereliction of ports: just a headphone and a single triple-duty USB port for charging, data transfer, and peripherals. This means you cannot add (up to) 64GB RAM through the non-existent microSD slot, as with other Android tablets.
From my experience (two Android smartphones, two Android tablets, and an Android tv box), 16GB is barely sufficient should you be an avid music lover and/or movie fanatic. 8GB is fail, and I suggest Google is counting on that.
In contrast, my $158 Chinese-sourced 8" Android 4.03 tablet has headphones, mic, power, triple-duty USB, microSD, miniHDMI, and reset. On the downside, its camera is too junky to use, the plastic screen is getting scratch (mildly), and its 1.5GHz AllWinner CPU doesn't handle multi-tasking well (and so I have forced single-tasking through Settings | Developer Options | Background Process Limit | No Background Processes). I like the larger 8" screen, and I figure overall it's a better deal than the $239/$284 model from Google (Canadian price incl. local taxes).
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