Google Android discussion - Page 10

Professional, understated, and awesome come to mind. The new nexus 7 is a bit different from the old one in terms of just looks to start with. It's replaced the rubbery texture of the old nexus 7 with a matte black that feels (in my opinion) a little more premium, and in my opinion, better than the old version, along with most plastics you find on other devices. If you tend to have sweaty or greasy fingers, matte is a great option as you will still slide more smoothly and it won't look as dirty as if you had the kind of plastic on the galaxy range or even aluminum devices.

It's a bit thinner than the old version, and noticeably lighter as well. Build quality is top notch, up there with every other high quality device you can think of.

You can look at more in depth reviews easily for more information, but some basic thoughts on the hardware from a subjective POV. First, the display is *amazing.* It's noticeably better than my girlfriend's iPad2, and another friend's iPad mini, as well as my friend's old Nexus 7. You absolutely will not find a nicer one for less than $400 right now, and I believe Anandtech matched the display to the iPad 4, or just behind it, even though it costs half as much.

The speakers are stereo back facing. I believe the original had mono back facing speakers. The stereo sounds pretty good when the sound is angled towards you. If they aren't, it's not as good. It's not usually that hard when you're watching videos because you can angle the sound with your hands.

Buttons aren't as crisp as something like the iPhone or probably iPad, but they aren't mushy, and I like them. The camera is nothing special, but pretty good for a 5MP tablet model with no flash. Same with the FFC - it does what it needs to.

Android 4.3 is pretty nice. With a Snapdragon 600 chip (albeit underclocked a bit, although this doesn't actually give it much worse performance since it has the thermal room to run at 1.5ghz on all four cores) and 2GB of RAM, it can fly around Android pretty nicely. I don't really notice any lag whenever I'm switching apps, and I'm a much bigger fan of Android itself than I was a year or two ago (although this is purely subjective). While probably not new (I haven't been on android for a while, I use a windows phone), the way the notifications bar and settings bar are set up is nice, and lets me reach pretty much everything I need instantly.

Battery life is pretty much amazing as well. Web Browsing gives you *long* battery life. Anandtech can give you more specific usage numbers rivaling or beating various iPads, but in my experience, my general use case includes lots of chrome, maybe reading a book for a bit, and playing some games (lots of N64 emulator, some other stuff), and I can make 2 or 3 days on it. Idle power usage is fantastic... it will use hardly any power over night. The auto brightness setting is pretty accurate, if a tad too bright, but even with auto on battery life is still fantastic. There is no power saver battery mode, but I suspect that something like that will be available if you root the device.

Definitely worth it. Go buy it now