Nexus 7 (2013) - Mini Review
by Brian Klug on July 27, 2013 12:54 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Snapdragon
- Qualcomm
- Android
- Mobile
- APQ8064
- Nexus 7
- Android 4.3
One of the biggest complaints I had about the original Nexus 7 was connectivity, as it only included 2.4 GHz 802.11b/g/n support. The hilarity of that situation was only compounded by the fact that Google could only demo the Nexus 7 at that Google I/O plugged in through USB-OTG Ethernet adapters because 2.4 GHz is effectively impossible to use at conferences. With the new Nexus 7, dual band (2.4 and 5 GHz) WLAN is now included with a WCN3660, Qualcomm’s companion WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n, BT 4.0, and FM Tx/Rx combo (though FM features aren’t enabled on the Nexus 7 2013).
Performance is correspondingly improved, and if you’re in an urban area where 2.4 GHz is congested beyond use, this makes the difference between an unusable brick and working tablet. Many have asked, why not WCN3680 (the 802.11ac enabled successor to 3660), the answer is of course, you’re talking about a ~$200 tablet, stuff like this understandably has to be n–1 without making the bill of materials untenable.
There’s also GNSS (GPS+GLONASS) on the WiFi only model which I tested, this goes through WCN3660 and into the baseband on APQ8064 in this configuration I believe. I’ve had nothing but great success with Qualcomm’s GNSS being the fastest out there to 3D cold fix, that holds true with the Nexus 7 (2013), even walking around the urban canyon scenario that San Francisco poses to GNSS.
Charging
The Nexus 7 (2013) is Qi (pronounced: “chee”) enabled, the de-facto wireless charging standard of the now. The Qi charger area is dead center in the middle, using a coil inside of the NFC one. That makes positioning easy.
I tossed the Nexus 7 on my Energizer Qi two-position mat when I got home, and it works perfectly, of course Qi can only charge at up to 5 watts. The in-box supplied charger is a 1.35 A variant, which isn’t anything special. Connected to my special linear power supply and battery charge downstream port controller which negotiates the proper standard, I saw the Nexus 7 (2013) draw a max of 1.32 A (6.6 watts), which makes sense given the supplied charger. I don’t have a 0–100 percent charge time number yet.
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hughlle - Sunday, July 28, 2013 - link
Not to mention my nexus ten has no option for LTE, so this solution is that i'm only allowed so much on my tablet and if i want something else i have to go back home and get it. Furthermore not all of us have the money or are willing to buy a seperate sim contract so that they can access cloud data on the move. I do not want to pay £7.50 a month so that i can access data that i could have on an sd card for free.Further more it makes absolutely no sense to refuse to allow SD cards when i can happily plug a flash drive into the usb socket. If they don't want us using additional flash memory, then why allow for the ability to use it via USB at all? It's comes off looking like they are happy for us to have additional local storage, but do not wish for us to have it in a convenient manner.
BrandoHD - Thursday, August 1, 2013 - link
I currently live in one of those non-US market and I have a 32 GB 2012 N7 and a 16 GB N4, the N7 has 21 GB free and the N4 has 9 GB free, and I hear every song or watch every movie that I want to hear/watch, through the use of the cloud, what you have there with non-expandable storage is a personal preference issue, it would do you well to remember that and not to create an issue for those in the so-called non-US markets.So the decision to not use expandable storage is not wrong, it is something you should get used too
Broo2 - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
One of the reasons Google is going away from SD expansion is that it confuses a majority of the populace. Most users need to have Gigabytes translated to a number of songs/photos/movies and cannot grasp the difference between internal and external (removable) storage. Google now needs to appeal to the iPhone mentality people (reminds me of the iPhone vs EVO video from a while back).I personally have about 30GB of (cherry-picked) music and I may choose 8-10 favorite albums and 200-300 favorite songs that i will listen to on a regular basis- which gives me about 20hrs of continious music in 5GB of 320kpps MP3s (or 12GB of FLAC).
...or I can use Spotify/Pandora/Mog/Rdio/Google and listen to 95% of all my music + new music that sometimes can catch on.
jcompagner - Sunday, July 28, 2013 - link
i find it always weird that "it confuses ta majority of the population"huh? which majority is that?
I never confused me, it never confused my people around me (even the not so tech savvy persons)
Also many of use are used to laptop/desktops that has "c" and "d" drives and so on (multiply drives)
thats how i see external storage, its just an extra "d" drive..
Kidster3001 - Friday, August 9, 2013 - link
There is no exapandable Memory on any mobile device.phillyry - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
Agreed.At least the Nexus was bumped up to 16GB, 32GB from 8GB, 16GB but especially with the prices you're paying for a full sized iPad, you should be getting at least 32GB - it's just way to easy to fill that bad boy up.
32GB on a $229 model, on the other hand, maybe not so realistic but we can dream.
hrrmph - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
You nailed it: It's a nice upgrade, but, it definitely needs a Micro-SDXC slot, removable battery, and WiFi-AC to fix the most fundamental limitations that remain.fokka - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
you will never see a removable battery in a mainstream tablet. i'm sorry, but that's just the truth, as it seems.feteru - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
You're forgetting this is a $230 tablet that needs to stay light and thin somehow. As long as they continue to improve internal storage and make the connectivity better, I don't really have a problem with it on a tablet. And if you're so serious about having all of your music, get a real audio player like a RWA iMod or an HM801.Bob Todd - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
It's a *budget* tablet, get over the lack of AC. If the $400+ Nexus 10 refresh doesn't have AC wifi then you can bitch all you want. And as someone who's grown old while waiting to copy large amounts of data to a 64GB microSDXC card (< 15MB/s writes)...they aren't exactly the most amazing option for large data storage. Ideally all android tablets would have both microSDXC and USB OTG, but for my personal tablet if I have to choose one I'll got with OTG since the micro cards are just too damn slow. And asking for a removable battery in a mainstream tablet is just asinine. It isn't hurting anyone's sales because you and one other guy in Botswana are the only ones demanding that feature. The rest of the world realizes that if you have to carry some large(ish) battery around with you it might as well charge all of your devices (go to Amazon and type "Anker").