Google Nexus 7 Tablet Imminent?

Google is preparing to unveil its own tablet at its Google I/O conference announcement this week, according to Gizmodo Australia which claims to have seen a training document relating to the device.

The documents revealed a number of details and images purporting to be the widely-expected but as-yet-unconfirmed tablet.

The tablet will apparently be called the Google Nexus 7 and will look to spearhead the Android tablet charge against the market-leading iPad, similar to the Microsoft Surface which was revealed last week.

Magnificent Seven

The seven-inch Nexus 7 will reportedly be powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor, GeForce 12-core GPU, 1GB of RAM and will be the first device to run the Jelly Bean version of Android. No details about the operating system have been disclosed, but the document said that from Nexus 7 onwards, Google will handle software upgrades and Jelly Bean will actually be version 4.1 of Android, rather than 5.0 as reported elsewhere.

The screen will be an IPS display, capable of a 1280 x 800 resolution and a 178-degree viewing angle. It will also have a 1.2 megapixel front-facing camera, Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, Google Wallet, Android Beam and will allow nine hours of battery life.

The device will be available in two capacities, 8GB and 16GB. The former will apparently cost $199 (£127) and the latter $249 (£159), an aggressive price point that will put it into competition with Amazon’s popular Kindle Fire tablet.

The Nexus 7 is expected to be manufactured by Asus, which has long been rumoured to be the manufacturer of any such tablet, with reports last month suggesting it had begun producing an initial shipment of 600,000 tablets. The tablet’s launch was set to be earlier, but Google was apparently unhappy with the design and costs, and sent it back for minor design adjustments.

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