10 years ago, Google launched the 2nd-gen Nexus 7, and no tablet has captured its magic since
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Ten years ago today, Google released the 2nd-generation Nexus 7, just days after a surprise announcement. Back then, Android tablets still felt fresh and exciting. It seemed like anything was possible, and things could only improve from there. Well, we know what happened next. But the depressing state of the tablet market to come was in no way the fault of the Nexus 7. In fact, this is still one of the best Android tablets ever made, and it's worth looking back and showing it the honor and respect it deserves.
I loved my Nexus 7. The rubbery silicone back of the tablet made it the most comfortable device I have ever held. Meanwhile my laptop and phone made of glass and metal making them cold and slippery
fuck glass, also nexus 5 back is the best
Oh I loved that one
I miss that back cover more than anything! It was so grippy.
Nexus One was the highest build quality Android I ever owned. I miss HTC.
The touch screen got wonky from time to time and the power button ribbon tended to wear out.
N5 was the sweet spot for me.
True, I forgot about the power button dying and needing to hack in trackball wake.
Never had screen issues.
I don't remember the exact details but it was something related to multi touch calibration. Turning the screen off and back on fixed it.
The Nexus 7's data storage became extremely slow after a while. The device became completely unusable.
A short while after the Nexus 7, many mobile phones screen got bigger, so the 7-inch screen size became sort of obsolete.
That was my experience with the 2012 model. Once it received the 5.0 Lollipop update, it couldn't handle basic tasks without significant slowdowns. CyanogenMod improved things a bit, but it was never the same after about 3 years of use.
Aspect ratio is different, so the tablets screen was still noticeably bigger.
I still have it and still use it occasionally. But yes, performance is often bad. Always suspected it was the storage but couldn't understand why or how it could become slower over time. Because I don't remember it being this slow when it was new. I also thought it was the new android updates that came out over time.
I thought that was only the 2012 model, and it was rectified on the 2013 refresh.
As a naive Google fan at that time, I bought the 2012 model when it came out. Google should have recalled the model and provide full refund/exchange.
I had the same issue. The Nexus program was cool for making subsidized, hackable devices available to the masses running pure Android. But the manufacturers seem to have taken a lot of shortcuts with components. Both my Nexus 7 and Nexus 6P (two of them!) eventually failed, and I got a pretty big class action payout for the 6P failing
How much did you get for the class action lawsuit? I took the free upgrade to a Pixel XL like a chump.
I don't actually remember, it might have been $300-400 for mine since I filed a claim years after the first one overheated and failed, and after already receiving a warranty replacement (which later also failed). Getting a Pixel XL sounds like a good deal!
Okay yeah that seems like a fair trade then. I loved the 6P until it started having hardware problems. A semi scraped up the whole drivers side of my car by merging into my lane without paying attention and I had to pull over to call the police. This was mid-january which was quite cold so my 6P kept dying on me due to undervolting even though the battery was full. It made it impossible to get the police out to me which in turn made it impossible for me to get the drivers insurance to cover the damage to my vehicle.
So technically the 6P probably cost me a couple thousand dollars in insurance payout... but two years later someone hit my car and totaled it so I got paid out for the whole thing anyway. Lucky me I guess.
Oh man that's terrible. Mine failed when I was abroad and caused me a decent amount of inconvenience (not nearly as much as yours), as I had been planning on using Google Fi for international service. Had to get a cheap loaner phone and sim which took a while and I was stuck with the rest of the summer abroad.
My Nexus 7 still lives and it's running Android 12. I use it for mostly YouTube these days.
What rom?
Lineage OS
Have you had to do anything to the hardware to get it to keep up? I was using mine as my bedside device up until about a year ago when it got too slow
Nope, just installed Lineage OS. To be clear its the 2nd gen, my 1st gen is worthless, Asus cheeped out on the flash and it degraded rapidly.
Lineage is not perfect, there are little bugs and I have to reboot youtube every now and then, but for just watching video's its good enough.
The nexus 7 was siesmic in the android tablet market at the time.
Previously, your choices were iPad, equally expensive (but often lacking) android tablets (galaxy tab, moto xoom), or really rather crap cheap offerings (I had a 7" resistive archos that cost me £70...I wish I hadn't spent the money).
When Google released the N7, it was a big change. It was a small tablet, with enough grunt, a good IPS screen, cohesive software, and was £150.
The fire-sale of the HP touchpad, imho, kicked google off on this. It made google realise that there was a market for a decent android tablet at a lower price point.
There have been very few good affordable Android tablets: both the variants of the Nexus 7, and then the only other one I can recollect is the Amazon Fire Tablet 7, which launched probably sometime in 2015 or 16.
I still have my Nexus 5 somewhere in a drawer, and it’s still my favorite phone ever. Time from time I pick it up, and I get reminded of how good it felt to hold it in the hand. It’s so light. The buttons are at the right place.
I wish they made phones with the same form factor again.
Was great value too, back in the days when you could spend a few hundreds dollars and get a top quality phone.
Damn that phone felt good to hold.
The first phone with Material Design UI, surely felt diffrerent. Although every "premium tier" phone back then would be cheap and plastic by today's standard.
Oh I meant literally the physical shell of the phone. I actually prefer the slightly grippy, rubbery plastic feel of the Nexus 5 and Nexus 7.
Did the shell become sticky over time?
The nexus 7 2013 supports LineageOS 20 which is android 13
Part of me is intrigued to dig out my N7 and install LoS 20 on it. But I have to imagine that it is slooooooooooooow.
It is slow. But it is OK as a spotify hub for house parties
The 2nd gen Nexus 7 was the reason I left Apple hardware and to never return. I loved the iPhone but I got bored of them very quickly. I tried two Android phones and each time absolutely hated the experience and returned to the iPhone. I eventually picked up a Nexus 7 and wow it changed my perception. No bloat. Simple and fast. It felt like an iPhone where the software complimented the hardware. I switched to a Nexus 5 phone and have been with Google phones ever since.
Man, Google really had a great run for a bit there. The Nexus S, Nexus 4, and Nexus 5 were all great phones in my eyes. Both Nexus 7's were nice tablets, but taking care of the performance issues in the 2nd gen made it great. I know a lot of people also loved the Nexus 6, though way too big for my tastes, and the Galaxy Nexus would have been much better if not for the Texas Instruments CPU hamstringing it. Then they went on to develop the Moto X 2013 and 2014, though I feel they were starting to slip with the 2014.
This was my first Android device. Still got it, not using it much, but its still working.
Man, I always wanted a Nexus 7, but it was never easy to get one in my country back then. And then Google officially partnered with Amazon and Flipkart to launch the tablet...right after I'd gotten a new iPad.
I remember when it came out, it only launched in a few countries and I was super surprised to see it on the play store in Australia (when historically we usually get fuck all)
I paid 299 AUD for it. An unthinkable price nowadays
I still miss how nice this was when it came out. Rocking a Galaxy Tab S5e with Lineage OS which I'm really enjoying now though.
My Lenovo Duet 3 (8gb) is the only tablet to feel as nice as the Nexus line to me.
Magnetic keyboard, pen, full Chrome via ChromeOS, Android apps, Linux support. And with Code-server its basically a desktop for me when needed, all for $300 at time of purchase.
Agree but the battery is too light for my usage
Really? I use mine like crazy with no issues. I use mostly Android and Chrome apps, and rarely start the Linux container.
If you use the camera it drain the battery really fast. That's what I noticed. For everything else is ok.
I loved mine, but sitting a year or two the flash memory had degraded to the point it was completely unusable, even just as a digital photo frame.
The small tablet market is still underserved today, I’m running an iPad mini, which is great, but it’s definitely a second-class citizen compared to the bigger iPads.
That was the first version, the article is about the 2nd gen device where the flash memory problem got fixed.
I had a second gen one, and it suffered less than the first, but definitely did suffer as it aged.
I remember getting both. The first gen was pretty sweet, had an interesting texture on the back. The second one came out in a 3G/4G model and was great. I've got it in a draw still, no idea what I could do with it nowadays.
Yes, definitely! I don't have as much use for a tablet these days, which is an unfortunate thing. My phone is big enough to cover most use cases, and my iPad 2017 is too big to be used comfortably for most things - it's not ergonomic to hold upright in most conditions, it's slippery without a folio case (and cases are hard to find unless you get an official Apple one which is very expensive), typing on it is a pain because of how thin it is, and the only saving grace it has in terms of typing is the mini floating swipeable keyboard added to iPad OS in recent years.
I'd definitely love to run something like a Nexus 7 again! Perfect form factor for most things, including media consumption, reading books, and much much more!
iPad Mini is about the same dimensions, though slightly wider.
All other Android tablets that exist in that space have horrible CPUs.
Or just some terrible flaw that's obnoxious
I have some 8" Lenovo tablet I got years and years ago. It's fine for videos and such and that's where I use it most. It also has 2 forward facing speakers. Very decent, balanced sound. Low on space because android sucks under 64GB but it's manageable
Any "upgrades" to it over the years have had single speakers or some other annoying flaw so I haven't upgraded
I've tried Samsung ones but even their newer ones are slower than my 5 year old one. It's so annoying
The Lenovo M8 4th Gen is slower than the 3rd Gen. We're going backwards.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Tab-M8-2023-Gen-4-LTE-tablet-A-performance-downgrade-for-the-affordable-8-inch-tablet.717060.0.html
The Nokia T10 is only decent one. The Samsung A7 Lite has bad performance and traditionally poor Samsung OS. Amazon Fire is another option, but I won't do FireOS.
Ok, that makes it even more sad what they're doing. Feature wise it was already worse in my experience, but actually worse for performance? Geez
Guess I'll just have to keep my Tab4 8 alive even longer
Hi friend. Just wanted to alert you the Lenovo Legion Y700 2023 version checks all my boxes, assuming there's a Global/US version launching...
Thanks, I keep checking their stuff but haven't seen anything. I'll take a look
I had the T10 and it was horrible. The display was poor and pixelated and it took the entire first day to update software, which was required on first login.
I seriously thought to return it, the update was taking so long. Eventually it let me log in.
But then it lasted six months before the screen glitched out and stopped working.
Hmm. I have a Tab S4, a Tab S6 Lite and a Tab S8, and the S8 is markedly quicker.
None of those are 8.x inches. They're all 10" or greater. Once we're talking 10+ inches, I'd just use a Surface Go. It seems nobody besides Apple wants to sell a tablet in that form factor that has decent speed.
Even the Lenovo M9 is vastly superior to the M8 in terms of CPU. Good 8 inch tablets outside the iPad Mini don't exist. I'd gladly pay $400 for something that's good on Android. I've even thrown money away for a Dell Venue 5855.
The only reason I stopped using my Tab S 8.4 was because you can only get so far trying to keep it alive with LineageOS.
All Samsung? And maybe that's the case, relatively, but going from Lenovo with pretty much stock android to a newer Samsung was a very noticeable downgrade
Sorry yes, those are all Samsung model names that I was listing.
Well, I can't speak for the Lenovo experience as I've never used one, and I'll happily admit that any Samsung device needs a little tweaking to begin with, but I use my Tab S8 regularly for editing 60mb RAW photos off my full-frame camera and I can confidently say it performs very well.
My daughter uses my Tab S6 Lite and it's more than up to meeting her demands — which includes a lot of educational games and so on.
My son uses my Tab S4 and he's had no complaints either.
I mean, there's not much else a tablet is meant for, really!
And now that I look it up, it's a $500 tablet? This discussion was around the cheap media consumer ones that are $150 give or take. At $500 I would just get a $1000 laptop
Mine still works
When digging through some stuff from a move in 2018 I noticed a tablet. WTF is this?
Charged it. Booted it up. Nexus 7 v2
Little fucker still was going
At this point I use all Apple Products (Except for my Ubuntu Desktop) but damn do I miss the Nexus 7 so so so much
This was my primary device for a couple of years. I didn’t have a phone at all. I could do everything I needed to do. Camera quality was of course terrible, but I had one of those Sony “lens cameras” paired with it, and that worked great.
I even sailed across the Atlantic with the Nexus 7 as my only media device (I packed a Kindle but it died a week in).
That is why I’m considering a foldable now. If only they weren’t so fragile…
They're not fragile anymore i guess. I use my fold 4 without a cover and unfortunately dropped it a few times recently on hard floor and on rocks once. Nothing happened, no screen scratches also, except for a tiny part on the side of the phone the body got a bump.
I had one. Well I still have it, but I stopped using it years ago for some reason. I forget why. I think I ran out of storage or something. Anyways, I had gotten a cheap Fire tablet and that thing sucked, so I dug out my Nexus and somehow wound up bricking it. Yay. Now I have a Tab A8 that's working fine so far.
I had the first gen, and it wasn't great in terms of performance, but damn I Ioved it. Very fond memories.
Also, I do have to chuckle at the progress since then. My S23 Ultra's screen is almost as large at 6.8 inches, yet the overall device is much smaller and obviously much, much, much more powerful. Progress!
Completely different aspect ratios, the tablet had a much larger screen than the s23u
I would vouch for Mi Pad 4 as N7 2nd gen sucessor had it not been for its limiting supply
I'm still enjoying the Pixel C, still a great tablet I think
I remember listening the launch of this one in the local radio, the hosts sounded excited, I was excited, everything was great. Never got one though, it was my dream device at the time
Same! Never had one but definitely wanted one. I also wanted that Nexus 4 with the sparkle back to compliment it but I ended up with the Note 2 for that massive screen.
Back then people made jokes that I carried an iPad as a phone lol how times have changed
I had one of these! Loved it 😍
NVidia Shield K1 was pretty great too. It was also $200, about the same size (8"), 1920x1200 screen, fairly stock android, and had a pretty speedy chipset. It even had decent speakers. Came out 2014. I really liked that thing. I got it to replace my first Nexus 7 (2012), whose storage had decayed really fast, to the point it wasn't really usable anymore.
So far I've been pretty happy with the new Pixel Tablet, hope we see more like it and better in the future.
Loved the Nexus 7. I remember getting the 4G model and finally being able to do crap on my way to work (back in the days when 4G connectivity was hard to get back on Android tablets)
I still have mine, changed screen 2 times, battery is weak, but it is still used daily to watch videos. I installed Lineage on it. I have it for 10 years, it is still pretty snappy!
I won mine off a KitKat bar. Still have it, a little sluggish but it works.
I had a gen 1, I bought my mom a gen 2. Mine is long since unusable, maybe if I rolled back to an earlier release it would have been better. My mom is just starting to think about replacing hers, though her usage is light. So is mine, for that matter, I actually replaced mine with e-ink Kindles.
Aaah tablets, the grown ups toy.
No android tablet since then you mean. I loved that thing. I still use Pixel phones but I caved and bought an iPad. Even the Pixel tablet can't compare.
How
Sheer processing power, stylus compatibility, and interoperability with computers of the same brand, which Samsung does too. I want an Android tablet that has as good a stylus and CPU speeds, then I would be right on it, because Android is a superior mobile OS in many ways. I loved my Nexus 7 and my ASUS Transformer but they just weren't there yet.
Literally the opposite of my definition of interoperability 😂
That would be "intraoperability", I guess.
"walled garden"
True, that was poor word choice. I guess it would just be "operability?" Or "integration?"
"Forced ecosystem"
Honestly can't say enough good things about my Tab S8. I use it for editing photos in Lightroom Mobile, and it works so damn well with the stylus. Very responsive and fast.
Good on you M8 glad it works well.
So is it the ipad pro you're talking about? Are the high end Samsung tabs comparable?
I haven't been satisfied with the iPadOS software compared to the S23U. Feel like that utilizes multitasking and stylus functionality way better which would be much more appreciated on the large screen of the iPad. Little things like edge panels, one hand operation +, and stylus being built in and having options like smart select pop right up when I take it out leads me me to using it more. Then the limited folder options on top of that and worse external monitor support feels like all that power that can run a full on desktop is wasted and held back by the mobile OS.
One thing I do love about the iPad is that I can rely on long term security updates, since majority of my use is as a glorified comic reader along side my kindle for ebooks. It does make it easier to tolerate iPadOS, and pretty the only reason I chose it over the Samsung despite finding myself using the S23U way more even when I have the iPad available. I ended up expecting less from the iPad than my phone. I don't know if it would have ended up that way even if it had more features, or if it was just me adapting and accepting iPadOS for what it was.
Thank you for a detailed post with pros and cons. With everything it's not black and white,
Agreed about the software. I wish we had a base Android tablet with the same hardware as the iPad Pro.
I remember the high end Android tablets being in a rough place because of app performance and layouts (where some apps still don't offer a really good tablet centric layout, they give you a big mobile layout)
I remember looking at the Galaxy tab range about 5-6 years ago and while they had good processors, they seemed to struggle on multi-core performance and smoothness.
It could totally be a different scenario today, but it feels like their reputation has been set, the Android tablets are a poor man's iPad (which is a bit funny considering how expensive some can be!)
This is basically it, we just need better hardware in android tablets and maybe more optimization, Google is trying with tensor but it is a ways off.
Unfortunately, not really. iPad with an m2 chip is on another level.
Ugh yes, I have been talking about it ever since, I got an 8inch cheap Chinese tablet to use as an e reader and it's ALMOST the same size (and almost the same specs lmao) the only reason I'm not used my nexus 7 is usb c on this on and I soft bricked it trying to put a lightweight OS on it 😢
The Nexus 7 would be absolutely pointless today. It's barely bigger than most phones.
I had one at the time but the form factor was simply inferior to either a 10inch Android offering or any iPad.
I remember a co-worker having the Dell Streak (5") and being astounded how something that large would fit in your pocket.
Mind you, a decade later and I still use a phone under that size!
I had that phone also, anytime anyone would see it outside they would marvel at how large it is. Now I have a fold which is even bigger when unfolded. The dell streak from what I remember feels like an s23u would be similar size to it but it was probably larger due to bezels and the aspect ratio
I disagree. 7" 16:9 is still much more usable than 6.7 20.5:9. And not everyone wants a giant phone. Having a cheap, usable tablet would be very useful for a lot of people.
Agreed, this is rationale for my comment about the Duet 3. Its the "new kind of tablet" for today. And cheap.