Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/6054/google-nexus-7-mini-review
Google Nexus 7 and Android 4.1 - Mini Review
by Brian Klug on June 28, 2012 3:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- Tablets
- Nexus 7
- Android 4.1
The fact that Google launched a 7" tablet by ASUS isn't a particularly huge surprise, given that ASUS showed off the Eee Pad Memo back at CES. The story goes that Google liked that particular tablet so much, it became slotted in to become the first Nexus tablet, much to Samsung's chagrin. While there have been other "Google Experience" tablets before (for example the Motorola Xoom), there hasn't been a bona-fide Nexus tablet yet, and especially not one at an aggressive price point like this. For that, enter the Nexus 7.
The Nexus 7 comes with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean installed, which we're going over on the next page. It brings improvements to UI performance through Android
Most important is the Nexus 7's price point, which up until now has largely been one of the main issues with Android tablets - price. It's fair to say that the Kindle Fire has done a good job proving that there is indeed a market for lower cost, simplified tablets at an aggressive price point, and the Nexus 7 is Google's answer. Pricing for the Nexus 7 is $199 for the 8 GB model, and $249 for the 16 GB model. There aren't any other differences between the two, nor is there a model with cellular connectivity – this is strictly WiFi only, but again, this is a tablet for the masses without the carrier hurdle.
ASUS Tablet Specification Comparison | ||||||
ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity | ASUS Transformer Pad 300 Series | ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime | ASUS Nexus 7 | |||
Dimensions | 263 x 180.6 x 8.4mm | 263 x 180.8 x 9.9mm | 263 x 180.8 x 8.3mm | 198.5 x 120 x 10.45mm | ||
Chassis | Aluminum + Plastic RF Strip | Plastic | Aluminum | Plastic + Rubber back | ||
Display | 10.1-inch 1920 x 1200 Super IPS+ | 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 IPS | 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 Super IPS+ | 7" 1280 x 800 IPS | ||
Weight | 594g | 635g | 586g | 340 g | ||
Processor |
1.6GHz NVIDIA Tegra 3 (T33 - 4 x Cortex A9) |
NVIDIA Tegra 3 (T30L - 4 x Cortex A9) |
1.3GHz NVIDIA Tegra 3 (T30 - 4 x Cortex A9) | 1.3 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 3 (T30L - 4 x Cortex A9) | ||
Memory | 1GB DDR3-1600 | 1GB | 1GB | 1 GB | ||
Storage | 32/64GB + microSD slot | 16GB/32GB + microSD slot | 32GB/64GB + microSD slot | 8 GB / 16 GB | ||
Battery | 25Whr | 22Whr | 25Whr | 16 Whr | ||
Pricing | $499/$599 | $379/$399 | $499/$599 | $199/$249 |
When you look at the above specs, it seems puzzling that ASUS was able to get the price down to $199 so effectively. Getting to that lower price point is easier with a few things - physically smaller device and display, exclusion of full size USB or other ports (there's only microUSB), no rear facing camera, and good commodity component sourcing. The added plus is that if you run 1280 x 800 at a smaller size, out comes a pretty high DPI panel at the same time. Other than that though, you end up getting a device which is actually very impressive otherwise, with a quad core SoC and attractive form factor.
I like starting with physical impressions since it's the easy route, and so much of one's experience with a given device depends on that ever important in-hand feel. ASUS has taken an excellent direction here and made the back construction of the Nexus 7 a great textured rubber material. There's Nexus embossed in the top, and ASUS proudly at the bottom. Below that is a small notch for the speaker, which goes pretty loud.
The power / lock and standby buttons get placed on the top right corner, and both microUSB and the headphone jack are located at the very bottom. There are also some pogo pins on the bottom left, just like the Galaxy Nexus. No doubt these will work with some future unannounced accessories.
The Nexus 7's construction is downright impressive. While I haven't been doing regular tablet reviews (that has become Anand's domain largely), I have handled a number of recent tablets big and small, and some feel downright cheap to me thanks to the back plastic. I would not have guessed that the Nexus 7 is a $199 device based on how it feels. There's no flex or creaking at all, it feels absolutely rigid. The tradeoff is that the Nexus 7 is slightly thicker than some other devices, at almost 10.5 mm (compared to 8.5 or 9), but that larger thickness also permits a bigger edge bevel radius. I feel that 7" is an ideal tablet form factor for me personally.
So the next logical question is what performance is like on the Nexus 7. I asked around, did my own digging, and wound up confirming that what's inside the Nexus 7 is indeed a Tegra T30L SoC. This is a lower leakage / lower binning T30 that no doubt is offered at a cost advantage to ASUS - I was expecting a T30L inside and am wholly unsurprised to see one. The only difference is that CPU clocks are 1.15 GHz for all four cores at 100%, or 1.3 GHz on a single core. The GPU clock is also slightly lower at 416 MHz. The Nexus 7 also ships with 1 GB of RAM, and I'm pretty certain this is DDR2 at 500 MHz based on what I see from the digging I've done.
I've borrowed Anand's TF700T review graphs and added data from the Nexus 7 that I hastily ran this afternoon. The results are in line with my expectations for T30L and other devices with T30L inside that we've already benchmarked.
The Transformer Pad 300 uses the same T30L SoC as the Nexus 7, so it isn't surprising to see the two post numbers very close to each other in so many places.
I should note on the browser synthetics that we're also talking about Chrome here, not "Browser" as the Nexus 7 is the first Android device to ship with Chrome as the default browser. In this case, that means there's no "browser" to be found anywhere on the device. You can still install Flash from the Play Store, it just doesn't do anything anymore.
Speaking of digging, I sent Francois Simond (@supercurio) a voodoo report from the Nexus 7, and he has graciously done a component analysis just like we've done with other devices in the past. There aren't too many surprises inside. WiFi and Bluetooth is courtesy the ever-ubiquitous BCM4330 module, which no doubt has gotten cheaper now that BCM4334 is out. The front facing camera is a Aptina MI 1040 1.3MP CMOS with 3.6µm pixels and 1/3" optical format. NFC comes courtesy a new NXP PN65 controller which is best I can tell a PN544 with embedded SE (secure element).
The next question is what that display looks like. We've seen other lower cost tablets ship before, but usually the first thing that gets skimped on is the display. In the case of the Nexus 7, ASUS notes that the panel is an LED backlit IPS panel with 10 point multitouch and 400 nits maximum brightness. Resolution is of course WXGA (1280 x 800) at 7". If you do the math out, that's a pretty high PPI, and in person it looks great - I can't see pixels unless I look very closely.
Since I expected having to do something of a tablet review on this trip to Google I/O, I brought along my i1D2 colorimeter. I took measurements on the Nexus 7 using my normal workflow – a combination of Francois' Voodoo Screen Test Patterns and Color HCFR.
Brightness falls a bit short of the advertised 400 nits at just 312 nits. I'm actually not sure whether there's some of Nvidia's Prism power saving tech going on here (there's no toggle anywhere for it), but that's as bright as I could get the Nexus 7 to go. Contrast on the other hand is pretty good, at 850, and blacks are very good at 0.37 nits.
The rest of the display metrics are a bit interesting, with color temperature hovering around 5500K which is a bit warm for my taste, and gamma isn't flat over the grey scale either. What's really curious to me is that the greens seem undersaturated (the larger triangle is sRGB), which was my first impression on seeing the Nexus 7 while installing some apps from Google Play (which has lots of green). Again I'm not sure whether this is some power saving Prism technique at work here.
I feel like those metrics could mislead you into thinking the display is bad, on the contrary it's obvious this is an IPS panel based on the viewing angles, which are superb off axis in the horizontal and vertical. You just can't get away with putting a TN in a tablet because of how bad viewing angles are immediately visible on a big surface device like a tablet. The Nexus 7's IPS display is very contrasty and has a high enough PPI that I'm not wishing for higher resolution.
Left - some bundled Google Play books, Right: Notice the new rotation lock toggle on the notification shade, and new style
Google is also doing something interesting with the Nexus 7 by bundling a $25 Play Store credit which pops up in your account after signing into your Google account for the first time. The strategy seems pretty obvious here - get Nexus 7 buyers to at least check out the Play stores. In addition, they've preloaded a number of books and videos which should bait users into at least checking out the respective Google Play applications.
Honestly I think ASUS and Google have really done an excellent job here with the Nexus 7. The combination of a quad core SoC, IPS panel, solid construction, and the latest version of Android all for such a killer price point pretty much make it hard to really find any faults. Sure, it'd be useful to have a full size USB host port, microSD slot (though no Nexus has shipped with one since Nexus S), 5 GHz WiFi (Nexus 7 is 2.4 GHz only), or cellular, but the tablet wouldn't be $199 anymore. I also really feel like the 7 inch diagonal form factor is an ideal one, and the Nexus 7 is quickly growing on me.
Update: I've had many emails and questions about whether USB-OTG (On The Go) is supported on the Nexus 7, and didn't touch on it when I originally hit publish becuause I wasn't entirely sure. I've now confirmed that USB-OTG is supported on the Nexus 7, and works on the current Android 4.1 non-final build that has been sampled. That's encouraging, and I'll test it myself when I get home and to my miniUSB OTG adapter.
Update 2: I've asked for further clarification about what USB-OTG functionality is supported. Using a mouse and keyboard will be supported, and I saw Google using an ethernet to USB adapter over USB-OTG as well. Unfortunately I found out that mounting USB storage will not be supported natively. In addition MHL is not supported.
Now, what about Android 4.1?
Android 4.1 is the newest release of Android, and in keeping with the dessert-alphabet naming scheme, goes by the name of Jelly Bean. Henceforth you'll see JB or 4.1 interchangeably. Google sampled me another Galaxy Nexus, running the same build of Android 4.1 that was handed out to Google I/O attendees today. This isn't the final version that will be pushed out in July, but is close to final – or at least final enough to give to a few thousand attendees and press.
I mentioned in the pipeline post about Android 4.1 that I heard UI performance was going to be a big emphasis in 4.1, that Google wanted to make the UI "smooth as butter" everywhere possible. Today seeing the announcement of Project Butter comes as no surprise, and represents further optimization to the hardware accelerated OpenGL ES render path that was introduced in Android 3.0 Honeycomb, and further improved in Android 4.0.x with more graphics primitives, making moving to it easier for developers.
In Android 4.1, the improvements that are under Project Butter are really four things:
- Improved 60 Hz Vsync timing from the Android drawing framework for individual applications. That means render path, touch, and display composition now take place on a 16 ms step.
- Triple buffering for the UI, which I believe previously could be enabled, but only in individual OpenGL ES instances. The Android 4.0.x UI did not have triple buffering enabled as it now is.
- Changes to the CPU governor which now send the SoC into its highest performance state as a function of touch interaction. I'm still eager to learn more about this in an upcoming session, but Android now better handles the latency associated with changing P-states on SoCs and getting into that maximum state when you're aggressively scrolling and panning.
- Enhancements to analysis in the form of Systrace for seeing the actual time spent in each part of the render process for a frame. This is being pushed out in the new Android SDK and there are obvious hooks into it under Developer Options inside 4.1. Google also gave us a glimpse of that earlier today.
The result of these improvements is that the Galaxy Nexus feels like a different device to me with Android 4.1. It isn't huge, but the trouble spots that used to annoy the heck out of me with Galaxy Nexus and 4.0.4 are now largely smoothed over. That's not to say it's perfect, but it's clear Google has invested time (finally) into mitigating some of Android's lingering UI choppiness.
I wanted to show this on video, however my DSLR only captures at 24 FPS which would make it pretty difficult to see dropped frames. I brought my other Galaxy Nexus with 4.0.4 and put it alongside the 4.1 device, and there's a substantial difference in trouble areas.
Additional GPU related drawing debugging under Developer Options
Some of those trouble spots included: scrolling the applications launcher into the widgets tab, the task switcher, screenshot compress and fade animation, application launch / close, and scrolling list boxes. In the case of the task switcher (which was not smooth in 4.0.4), the animation is now finally one that doesn't drop frames left and right. It is a huge difference. The others just feel better. I've also noticed that a number of other primary UI transitions have been somewhat simplified from a squeeze and fade to just a translation up or down across the screen. I think some might make the case that this is just optimization by removing transition flashiness, but on the whole the result is a much snappier interface.
I still feel like the SGX 540 running at non-max clocks inside the Galaxy Nexus' OMAP4460 is overburdened, but with the right SoC Android 4.1 is going to scream. On the Nexus 7, the interface is very close to being fluid everywhere. I'm very impressed with performance on that device.
While we're talking about settings related improvements, the settings page gets some reorganization, including putting accounts right on the settings page, and under WiFi are new toggles for WiFi direct, and WPS pairing. Google has also changed up the toggles in 4.1, from the slanted, almost razor-blade like sliders to just plain switches. Another subtle thing is a change under About Phone -> Status: the network type indicator now shows "HSPA+" instead of "HSPAP" which previously confused users.
There are some other new UI related 4.1 features. First up, notifications shade gets a dramatic improvement, including support for action to be taken right from the notification menu, such as dismissing a calendar alert, declining a call, or sharing photos. The top entry in the list also gets shown off in a larger box, and includes more detail. The bar also includes a rotation lock for tablets, and moves higher up on the display, obscuring the status bar indicators. The lock screen also gets an updated look, and a shortcut to Google Now.
Widgets are also automatically resizeable and reposition themselves in 4.1, which is a subtle but important improvement over the rigidity of the AOSP home screen in 4.0. I feel like a lot of these subtle improvements are inherited from various skins and 3rd party customizations, which makes sense. Third party widgets will need an update to support official resizing.
The keyboard also gets some improvements, including support for additional languages, and an expanded dictionary. One subtle change is that when you have the keyboard up, the back symbol changes to a down caret, which will no doubt make that UI step easier to grasp for new users.
Left: Another Google voice search query, Right: New intents picker
Google's answer to Siri is a two pronged approach - improved voice search with offline voice recognition, and semantic data results to those queries. In practice, the use paradigm is almost exactly like Siri, though the approach Google demonstrated is a bit less conversational. I have only had time to ask a few queries (such as the above search for a camera store for a new battery charger), but voice recognition does indeed work with no cellular connectivity, though you do lose the confidence level underline under words. Part of the better Google search idea is Google Now, which Google believes so strongly in, it dedicated an entire shortcut to it.
Camera UI gets an overhaul and now reminds me of the Windows Phone 7 approach. You can swipe left to view the previous captured images, while the live preview remains live and slides off the screen. Photos can be deleted by then dragging up, like dismissing a card in webOS. This is also nice and smooth throughout. Android 4.1 also adds a new capture animation, but oddly enough I couldn't grab a screenshot of it.
Android 4.0.4 vs 4.1 on Galaxy Nexus | ||||||||
Location | WebKit Version | HTML5test.com Score | CSS3test.com Score | Sunspider 0.9.1 | Browsermark | |||
Android 4.0.4 | 534.30 | 280 + 3 bonus | 49% | 1830.9 | 99493 | |||
Android 4.1 | 534.30 | 281 + 3 bonus | 49% | 1411.8 | 125103 |
While the Nexus 7 formally replaces Browser with Chrome (sans beta as of today), Android 4.1 proper on the Galaxy Nexus and other devices will retain Browser for some time. That web browsing experience gets improved in 4.1 with better support for HTML5 video, better rendering performance and memory usage, and further improvements to the V8 JavaScript engine. In browsermark and sunspider the difference in V8 is pretty dramatic, elsewhere there isn't a big change at all, as it's the same core version of webkit, just optimized more.
There are more changes as well, including binary diff / delta update support for updating marketplace applications. Google has done the usual thing and outlined all of those other changes on their developers page for Jelly Bean. It's impossible to pass judgment on Android 4.1 after just 12 hours with both an updated Galaxy Nexus (with my primary SIM inside) and the Nexus 7, but thus far the improvements to UI smoothness have made a noticeable difference. Beyond that, probably the second most appreciable difference is in notifications, which now conveys much more information for things like new mail beyond the subject line and sender. The other thing to note is that again, this Android 4.1 isn't 100% final, but it is extremely close. I haven't seen any glitchiness yet, but obviously there will be changes before the final mid-July OTA update for Galaxy Nexus devices and others that were announced in the keynote. I'm looking forward to digging up the other subtle things that are new in Android 4.1 and updating if necessary.