Why Google’s Nexus 7 Makes The Case For An iPad mini Compelling – The ‘Book Mystique
If there was any lingering residue of doubt that Apple will make a 7.85-inch screen iPad mini, it should have been erased by the recent release of Google’s Nexus 7 tablet. While the Asustek-engineered and built Nexus 7 doesn’t compete directly with the iPad, which in most respects is a more comprehensive and capable machine, it does have the potential to eat some of Apple’s lunch by bleeding off potential sales to brand-pragmatic customers who might’ve opted for a lower-end 9.7-inch iPad had the Google tablet not been available — a dynamic comparable to how the iPad has hurt PC laptop sales especially, and almost certainly cannibalized a proportion of Apple’s own MacBook sales as well.
Of course there has been a staggering array of other 7-8-inch tablets rolled out over the past couple of years claiming to be “iPad challengers” or more ambitiously “iPad-killers,” but even the most successful like Amazon’s Kindle Fire or several efforts from Samsung have proved to be only modest sellers compared with the iPad, while most others have ended up roadkill crushed by the advance of Apple’s steamroller slab.
The Nexus 7 is different. While its base 8 GB version sells for the same $199 as Amazon’s Kindle Fire, it’s got a much better spec., with for example a modest 1.2 megapixel front-facing camera and a higher-resolution 1280 x 800-pixel display, which is sub-Retina grade at 216 pixels per inch but clearly superior to other 7-inch tablets’ typical pixel density of 170 ppi. It’s the first “alternative” tablet since the iPad’s introduction two and a half years ago that pretty much every reviewer and pundit commenting has been able to praise with no fudging, rationalization, or conjured-up enthusiasm. Reportedly it’s selling at a brisk pace.
Reporting on their Nexus 7 Teardown, iFixIt’s Chief Information Architect Miroslav Djuric notes approvingly that the Nexus 7 is just one millimeter thicker than the latest iPad (10.4 mm vs. 9.4 mm) but yet that tiny millimeter could save users hours of time and hundreds of dollars should the device ever need to be serviced. How so? Because Asus commendably has used retaining clips to hold the case together, not glue, so opening up the Nexus 7 requires a only couple of minutes and some plastic opening tools. Opening an iPad? Forget it.
Nexus 7 vs. iPad Thickness – Photo Courtesy iFixIt
Overall, the Nexus 7 earned an iFixIt 7 out of 10 repairability score, just slightly lower than the Kindle Fire’s 8 out of 10, but dramatically better than the miserable 2 out of 10 awarded to the third-generation iPad. The Nexus 7’s display glass and LCD are fused together, so you’ll have to replace both components should one of the two break (which is not the case with the Fire). However, the rear case is very easy to open, the battery can be replaced without ever reaching for a screwdriver, and all fasteners inside are standard Phillips #00 screws. These engineering decisions make the Nexus 7 light-years more repairable than its Apple counterpart, and not too far off its Amazonian cousin.
Removing battery – Photo Courtesy iFixIt
Price is of course a key factor. The Nexus’s price is 38 percent less than the cost of an iPad 2, and 50 percent of what a third-generation iPad will set you back, but that’s not the whole story, and evidently those price points haven’t been arrived at by cutting corners on quality. Google has reportedly acknowledged that the base 8GB Nexus 7 is essentially a loss-leader, with iSuppli estimating that the $199 model is perhaps breaking even, and Google possibly realizing a small profit on the $249 16GB model, which incidentally is the one to go for if you can scrape up the extra 50 bucks. You’ll thank yourself that you did.
Nexus 7 features a 1280 x 800 resolution display (same WXGA res. as a 13-inch MacBook Pro’s 1280 x 800, 113 ppi HD display, but with a much higher 216 ppi density on the smaller-dimensioned panel, greater than the iPad 1 and 2’s 1024 x 768 VGA resolution) and protected by a layer of scratch-resistant Corning glass.
The Google tablet powered by a 1.2 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor, whose 12-core GPU delivers lively graphics performance. The Tegra 3’s patented 4-PLUS-1 CPU design gives you robust processing power when you need it, and battery saving efficiency when you don’t. It also supports WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth, and has both USB and Micro USB I/O ports for more, and more convenient, connectivity than the iPad supports. Other goodies include a microphone, NFC (Android Beam) support, and accelerometer, GPS, a magnetometer, and a gyroscope.
The Nexus 7 is equipped with 1 GB of RAM – twice the iPad 2’s 512 MB, and Google claims its 4325 mAh battery will provide up to 8 hours of “active use.” According to third-party testers, that’s a conservative estimate. iFixIt logged 9:49 hours (in the same ballpark as the new iPad), and PCWorld 10 hours in a video playback test. The Kindle Fire, by comparison, has a 4400 mAh, 16.28 Wh battery that only lasted 7:42 hours in iFixIt’s test.
The complete iFixIt teardown report and illustrations can be found here:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nexus-7-Teardown/9623/1
AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg, a longtime Apple products aficionado, also praises the Nexus 7, which he declares “a winner” after testing it for a couple of weeks, calling it the best Android tablet he’s used and a serious alternative to both Apple’s $499 iPad and Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire. Mossberg deems Google’s tablet a better choice than the iPad for people on a budget; for those who prefer a lighter, more compact tablet that’s easier to carry and operate with one hand; and for those who prefer Google’s ecosystem of apps, services and content to Apple’s. It’s also the first tablet he’s tested that beats the iPad in in his standard battery test, lasting over 10 hours, about 45 minutes more than the latest iPad. Mossberg summarizes that Google and Asus have produced a very good tablet in the Nexus 7, one he can recommend.
So, notwithstanding Steve Jobs’s famously scornful dismissal of seven-inch tablets, the smaller form factor does make sense for some, perhaps many, users. It’s handier to take along, and even theoretically pocketable if you have some biggish pockets and should fit nicely in most handbags. With the form factor seeming to have finally come of age, Apple can no longer ignore it without suffering consequences in the marketplace, and if the rumor mills are correct they have gotten the message.
The trickiest element of the iPad mini equation for Apple to finesse isn’t so much engineering but pricing. A broad consensus has been building that Apple will release a 7.85-inch iPad mini come October, likely displacing the $399 entry-level iPad 2, perhaps at that price point, or possibly even selling for $299, although Apple’s customary profitability becomes difficult to sustain at that level, and matching even the Nexus 7’s $249 is almost certainly out of the question. So is an 8GB version, what with rapidly swelling obesity of iOS apps as optimization for Apple’s New iPad Retina display is added.
My provisional best guess is that an iPad mini will likely not have a Retina display, and will be powered by the downsized 32nm version of Apple’s dual-core A5 CPU that’s being used in recent iPad 2s. I expect that the mini slab’s 7.85 panel will have at least the same 1024 x 768 resolution as the iPad 2.
So, would you buy an iPad mini? I can see the attraction for folks who use their tablets mainly for content consumption and social media. However, speaking personally, while I find my iPad 2 great for Web surfing, email, and such, it’s a compromised platform as a production and content creation device, and a 7.85-incher would be even less well-suited to serving as a laptop surrogate. Trying to make it work in that role would IMHO be too far of a reach.
That said, the iPad 2’s 9.7-inch screen is actually larger, and much higher resolution than the 9.5-inch screen of the PowerBook 5300 that was the machine I started out on the Internet with, so you never know. Seven-inch tablet offerings when Steve Jobs made his famous comments were indeed pretty lame. Google’s Nexus in particular is a far more compelling machine than what was available two-and-a-half years ago. Apple needs to have a dog in that fight.
