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
The lack of a rear camera on the original Nexus 7 was always a bit of a downer. It clearly had the space for a module inside, but including a camera didn’t align with the efforts to drive that device into the price point that made it successful. With the new Nexus 7 we finally get a camera, and a 5 MP one with autofocus at that. Inside the camera is an OV5693 sensor, which best I can tell is a 1/4" format sensor with 1.4 micron pixels. It might not be the world’s best camera, but it’s no slouch either.
I took a handful of photos and videos with the Nexus 7 (2013) to gauge camera quality, and even if this isn’t necessarily a device with focus on imaging it’s not bad at all. I came away pretty pleased for what kind of camera it is. Even though I still strongly believe that you shouldn’t be using a tablet to take photos you intend on using for anything more than sharing on social networks, in this brave new era of mobile devices it’s a feature every tablet and smartphone does need.
I’ll save you the discussion once again about how the Android 4.3 camera UI continues to present a 16:9 aspect ratio crop of the 4:3 image captured by the sensor, which results in a smeary looking, inaccurate preview.
Video on the Nexus 7 (2013) is 1080p30 at 12 Mbps, H.264 Baseline with 1 reference frame, and 96 kbps 48 KHz single channel AAC audio. I've uploaded a sample I took in SF to our servers as well as YouTube. Again I’m dismayed why more OEMs don’t use the full encode capabilities of APQ8064 (20 Mbps H.264 High Profile) but that’s what it is by default on the new Nexus 7.
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Krysto - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
It looks like Adreno 330 will be pretty close in performance to AMD's Kabini.FwFred - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
At what power level? Temash level power for Temash level performance with an Ivy Bridge die size. Amazing!vailr - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
Any rumors on whether Amazon will be updating their Kindle Fire HD soon? Note that: Amazon's $200 8.9" Android tablet has had stereo speakers for almost a year now. Would also be nice if they could add an SD memory slot to the Kindle Fire HD.Krysto - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
Amazon's 1080p 8.9" Kindle Fire was $300, and it's $270 right now it seems.tom300 - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
I find it hilarious that Brian's Nexus 7 mini-review is 10x more in-depth than The Verge's full "review" (if you can call it that). Nice job as always.Alpeshkh - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
My thoughts exactly!Krysto - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
Not only that, but there are a lot of inaccuracies in the Verge review, too, such as all the talk about whether it will slow down or not in the future, without even knowing why the first one was slowing down in the first place, and researching the issue.phillyry - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
Ya. Tweeted @piercedavid about that one, just in case he hadn't read the anandtech mini review since posting his own.Nimer55 - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
I think I could have written the Verge review; i didn't learn anything i hadn't learnt while reading the hands on. It was mostly a "my experience with tablets and reading on them + nexus 7 (2012) problems + Nexus 7 (2013) hands on. "phillyry - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
I, personally, like the hands on feel that The Verge's reviews go for.I find that that combined with the detail here on anandtech give a nice Type A-Type B balance.