Google Tablet Announced: Welcome the Nexus 7

The rumors that Google was in the works on a Nexus Tablet have been circulating for quite a while. Not surprising, since people were really expecting Google to take the tablet battle for dominance straight to Apple’s front door. Of course, while a Nexus Tablet is indeed being announced at the moment of writing, it’s not an iPad competitor at all. It’s actually geared to compete against Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

If you don’t know what the Kindle Fire is, it’s a budget 7 inch tablet that runs a heavily customized version of Android and only costs $199. The reason a lot of you probably didn’t hear about it is because it’s restricted to Amazon’s Appstore, which can only be accessed in the US. I believe a bunch of gray market sellers tried to import the Kindle Fire, but it never really caught on here because the only way to get apps and content on it was to sideload everything since the Appstore won’t work here.

Fast forward to the present, and it looks like rather than compete with the iPad, Google has chosen to try and take the crown for bestselling Android tablet away from the Fire. Personally, I don’t even consider the Kindle Fire to be a true Android tablet since it doesn’t offer all the customization and personalization that I have come to expect from the Android OS. So by all means Google, put the crown where it rightfully belongs.

Update

The Nexus 7 is here folks, made in partnership with ASUS. It’s a monster in a small package, packing a quad core 1.3 Ghz processor behind a 7 inch, 1280×800 screen. It’s going to come in two flavors: 8Gb ($200) and 16Gb(250). With that pricing, it’s most certainly competing with the Kindle Fire in the States.

It’s also launching with a brand new version of Android: Jelly Bean (presumably 4.1). I find this perplexing since ICS (4.0) has barely broken into double digits in terms of percentage of Android devices that run it, and most are either running Gingerbread (2.3) on phones or Honeycomb (3.0) on tablets. But what the heck, it’s new, it’s cheap, and I want it! Until it reaches here, I’m sure you’ll all be eager to find out what the price will be like on local shores. For now, here are the confirmed hardware specs so far.

Specifications

• 7” 1280×800 HD display (216 ppi)
• Back-lit IPS display
• Scratch-resistant Corning glass
• 1.2MP front-facing camera
• 198.5 x 120 x 10.45mm
• 340g
• WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
• Bluetooth
• 8/16 GB internal storage
• 1 GB RAM
• Micro USB
• 4325 mAh (Up to 8 hours of active use)
• Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean)
• 1.3 Ghz Quad-core Tegra 3 processor
• Microphone
• NFC (Android Beam)
• Accelerometer
• GPS
• Magnetometer
• Gyroscope
• US SRP: $199 for 8Gb, $249 for 16Gb

Sources: Gizmodo, Modaco, and Engadget