Google Nexus 7: Android's first true market shaker

By now you've probably seen and read all the rave reviews, tear-downs, and all the media coverage surrounding Google's new offering in the tablet market: the Nexus 7.  As an attendee of Google I/O, this year I received one of these devices. I wasn't particularly excited about the device given my experience with the tablet they gave out last year, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 which seemed (and probably was) like a rushed product. The build quality was iffy, Android Honey Comb seemed like a stop-gap measure rather than a true well optimized operating system, soon thereafter a number of people started reporting hardware problems ranging from screen glitches to batteries not holding a charge and so forth. Then sometime late last summer, I bought a brand new Acer Iconia A500, which was OK for the most part, but still, in my opinion, it didn't seem like a worthy competitor against Apple's offerings. I also tried out Amazon's Kindle Fire which was OK, except it didn't really feel like an Android product. It seems like Amazon really went to great lengths to use the OS, but remove as many references to Google's services as possible (including, of course, Google Play).

So, I waited until my last day in San Francisco to take some time to Play with the Nexus 7 (partially, too, in case something was wrong with the device I could get direct help form the techs on-site). The first thing I noticed is the high-quality, sleek packaging which definitely shows the care Google put into this product. After taking all the protective plastic sleeves around the the device itself, I could tell this was not a rushed product, at all. It feels like a solid well-put-together hardware. It also looks stylish and "sexy". It only has two buttons, up/down volume combo and on/off switch. It has a 1/8'' jack output for headphones and a standard micro USB port  (a big omission on last year's Galaxy Tab) for charging and connecting to other devices. The screen is perfect: sharp, excellent colors, great brightness and contrast; it might not be technically a "Retina" display, but it surely feels that way. While some people might prefer the 10.1'' format, I personally prefer the compact 7'' form factor which is more portable and can be comfortable held in one hand (which is specially helpful for long reading sessions). The OS, though, is what makes the real difference. Android Jelly Bean is, what I think, the best Android OS to date. They have taken notice of all the gripes throughout the years and have fixed those and then some. The UI feels just right: consistent, stylish, and "buttery". The Android team finally realized that as far as the end-user is concerned, the UI/UX is the product and all other technical merits being secondary or non-existent, and they have applied this mantra to Jelly Bean to the extreme: everything seems to be where you expect it to, visual semantics remain the same throughout every nook and cranny of the system and out of the user's way. The device integration with Google Play is fantastic and adds a layer of "awesomeness" to the whole experience. Video playback is great: I watched Transformers: The Dark of The Moon" on high def and it was fantastic, I tried some of the free books on the Play store and they look handsome. Nice typography, excellent contrast and very "buttery" animations for flipping  pages and so forth. 

I could go on and on about the fantastic combination of software and hardware the Nexus 7 is, but I leave that to the plethora of reviews already out there. I prefer to close making the point that, in my opinion, Google Nexus 7, is hitherto the one true competitor against Apple's iPad, in spite of having a smaller screen size.