Hi everybody and thanks for stopping by. I've had my Nexus 7 tablet for a little over a week now
and so I'm just going to take a few moments today
and kind of give you my first impressions of the product.
One of the things I wasn't sure about when I purchased this tablet is how I would
like
the seven-inch form factor.
I'd previously used a 10-inch Android tablet and that was pretty
comfortable for web browsing - it really worked well for that because you could
turn it in landscape and have a nice wide
area to view web pages
and just wasn't sure about the seven-inch.
As it turns out i like it very well. In face, I like it better than the 10 inch
tablet I had.
The main reason is smaller easier to handle. You can easily use it in portrait mode with just
one hand it's very comfortable.
I find that webpages are a little small but these days a lot of web pages
are designed
for mobile devices and so that makes it easier.
Also many of the common websites I visit on a daily basis such as,
you know, Facebook and
and Google+ and so forth have their own apps so I really don't have to
mess of those websites anyway.
A lot of other sites that I commonly visit such as Google News
work very well on a mobile browser so
yes there are web sites that
the 7-inch is a little small
for
but all-in-all I like the 7-inch better than the 10-inch tablets.
Just a couple of the applications that come with it that I really like:
One of my favorites is Currents
and this lets you basically subscribe, if you will, to digital
editions
of certain magazines or
uh... you know certain
news organizations - ABC News for example
and
what this is it actually fetches these articles in advance
it's synchronizes when you're connected to WiFi
and even when you're disconnected you can go and read anything
that is downloaded and that's pretty valuable because obviously
I have the wifi version of the tablet here
and I like to read the news when I'm out and about and and not connected so
that's a really valuable application for me and it was a something I didn't know
existed but
was a pleasant surprise when I got my tablet.
Another application I'm fairly impressed with is the Navigation application which
is still in beta.
I find it works pretty well - I live in, I guess, a pretty backwoods area of
Pennsylvania and so far I've not had any trouble with the directions this gives.
Now there is a drawback
by default it doesn't store any of the maps offline and so for that reason if
you have a WiFi-only unit like I have that is somewhat of a problem
because as soon as you leave, you lose the map. But it does have the option of
downloading a fairly large area - just a rectangular block of the map
and storing it offline so you can use it.
It probably stores a good hour or two drive in each direction
from where I live
and that, of course, isn't sufficient if you're going on a trip. There are
other
free GPS applications out there that do have offline maps
but I'm guessing , or at least hopeful that Google eventually will allow you to
download the entire US or a least several states worth
of offline maps so you can use this more effectively.
As far as battery life it's pretty good. I find if I charge it
overnight
it'll give me pretty much all day of use. Now I'm not using it constantly - if I were it would
probably go dead
but I can use it a lot
throughout the day and by the end of the day it's pretty much depleted and ready
to be charged again.
If I'm constantly watching videos, for example, I might have to actually charge
it
before the day is over but generally, you charged it at night and during the day
you can use it without any trouble.
One of the nice things about
Google tablets as compared to other manufacturer's tablets is that
google seems to be very committed to providing
operating system updates and other updates as soon as they become available. Some
of the other
tablet makers you can wait a good while before you get new versions of
Android ,for example, but Google seems pretty good at releasing updates
for their own devices. That's one of the things that led me to buy a Google device
as opposed to one
branded by another manufacture.
Hopefully this review has been useful if you're looking into buying this device.
As always, thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time!