Samsung Galaxy Tab 2

Summary

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 is a fantastic device. It hits the sweet spot between the budget tablets and the iPad. It has features and specifications that are value for money, and it is an better overall performer than the Sony Tablet S and the Motorola Xoom. The only disappointment comes with the display, which could have had a better resolution and the fact that the Google Play store isn't well populated with tablet specific apps. If you are in the market to spend Rs. 20,000 on a tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 should definitely be on your list.

Review:

Ever since the launch of the iPad we have seen a slew of tablets that have tried to take on the big Apple and quite frankly, failed miserably at it. It was with the launch of Google’s Honeycomb OS that Android tablets showed some potential and with the launch of Android 4.0 ICS, Android tablets finally started to make sense.

We have also begun to see some budget tablets hit the streets that boat of decent hardware under the hood and an attractive price point of around Rs. 10,000.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 is priced at the Rs. 20,000 mark which means that it offers features specifications and a build that goes beyond the budget devices and is aimed at the audience that doesn't want to drop a lot of cash on the iPad.

But does the device make a place for itself in the tablet market or are you better off aspiring for an iPad?

Design and Build

One look at the device and it has the build of a typical 7-inch tablet. It feels way better than any budget tablet that we have seen but doesn't have the classy feel of the iPad. The rear of the Galaxy Tab 2 has a grey plastic matte finish which is nice. It gives the device an elegant finish while making it a resistive to dust and fingerprints. The front of the device has the 7-inch display, which is glossy, and a fingerprint magnet.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 is really slim measuring in at 10.5mm thin and is relatively light at 344 grams. It fells really sturdy in ones hands. Considering its size, the device fells very comfortable in both landscape as well as portrait mode.

The device comes in three variants of internal storage – 8GB / 16GB / 32GB. The review unit we received has 16GB of internal storage. The memory of the device is expandable via microSD card up to 32GB. The microSD card slot rests to the left of the device along with a SIM card slot. Both the SIM card and the microSD card slots rests under a flap, which is easy to access and keeps the cards safe.

The right of the device has the volume rocker as well as the on/off/sleep/wake button. The bottom of the device has a proprietary dock connector, something that looks very reminiscent of the iPhone/iPad dock connector. The top of the device has the headphones jack. The rear houses the 3.15MP snapper without a flash and the front of the device ahs a VGA camera for video calling.

At the bottom of the tablet to the right and the left of the dock connector rest the two speakers.

The downside to the connectivity options is that Samsung has gone the Apple way with a proprietary dock connector. This isn’t a bad thing, but we have seen budget tablets from Zync and iBerry that offer HDMI-out straight out of the box. 

Features and specifications

From the moment you switch on the device, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 runs on Google Android 4.0 ICS skinned with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI. With TouchWiz, Samsung brings with it a bunch of preloaded apps such as PolarisOffice, Samsung Apps, eBuddy XMS, TuneIn Radio, Chat On and more. Samsung All share app comes preloaded on the device. The app enables uses to share multimedia content with the Galaxy Tab and a DLNA enabled TV.

At the bottom of the screen on the left, you have touch sensitive buttons representing back, home, task manager for easy killing of apps and freeing memory and a nifty button used to take screen shots.

Under the hood, the device is powered by a dual core 1GHz processor, has 1GB of RAM and comes with 3 variants of internal storage – 8GB/16GB/32GB. The review unit we received boasts of 16GB of internal storage. Other specifications include 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, GPS, gyroscope, accelerometer and digital compass. The screen on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 is 7-inches and has a resolution of 1024 x 600. This resolution seems a little disappointing as we have seen devices that boast of a resolution of 1280x 800.

Overall the device is quite well loaded with features. If you are used to the Android powered Samsung smartphones, you will fell tight at home here. If you are looking for a raw Android experience you will have to look elsewhere as every aspect of the interface than can be customized has been customized by Samsung with TouchWiz. If you want a raw Android experience, on a 7-inch device, you will have to take a look at the Google Nexus 7.

Meanwhile, check out the video review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 below: 

Starting with the display, it is quite bright, but the viewing angles aren’t the best but the get the job done well. It is very smooth and responsive living up to the reputation of being a premium device. The dual core processor adds to the smoothness of the device and multitasking is relatively good. But run too many apps in the background and even with 1GB of RAM, you will see the device lag a bit.

The keyboard on the device is one to look out for. It has the standard QWERTY layout with the greatest addition being that the numbers 1 to 9 and 0 rest in the first line of the keyboard. This is nice as you don't need to alternate the layout to access the number pad. The typing experience is quite good too. The keys are well laid out and comfortable to use in both portrait and landscape. Predictive text makes typing faster and easier.

A disappointing feature of the device is that it didn't play .mov files straight out of the box. MP4 files ran smoothly and the device played them without any hiccups but the lack of file format support was disappointing.

Speaking of disappointments, it is virtually impossible to transfer files from a Mac to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2. We wish it were as easy as plug and play as it is on most Android tablets but it isn’t.
Users will have to download an app from http://www.android.com/filetransfer/ to transfer files and it is still unsuccessful. Ultimately, we had to resort to AirDroid to transfer files from our system to the Mac.

One of the best features of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 is that it can be used as a phone and you can also use the 3G connectivity via the SIM card. It has a SIM card slot. It does look very odd holding the 7-inch tablet to your ear but its nice that you have the option to use the device as a phone. Ergonomically though, unless you have a relatively large jacket pocket or a bag with you always, its difficult to carry the device. We wouldn't recommend you use it as your primary smartphone.

As we mentioned earlier, the device is skinned with Samsung’s TouchWiz. If you are a Samsung smartphone user you will feel right at home. If you are one who hates it, then you will have to install your custom launcher from the Google Play store.

One of the biggest disadvantages of Android tablets is that there are few tablet specific apps. The Facebook app looks similar to the one available on Android smartphones and a lot of screen real-estate look wasted.

Games on the other hand ran very well and look great on the device. It was fun playing the Angry Birds franchise, Nunjump and Paper Toss. The load times of the game were very swift.

The rear of the tablet houses has a 3.1MP camera without a flash and the front has a VGA camera for video chatting. The rear camera isn’t the best camera there is to take photos but it does a good job of clicking pictures when the ambient light is good.

In terms of raw performance, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 is a real performer. It scored a 2652 on Quadrant beating the Sony Tablet S (read our review) that scored a mere 1539 where as the Motorola Xoom scored 1404.

In the Antutu benchmark, it scored 5311 leaving the competing Sony Tablet S behind at 4901 and the Motorola Xoom scored 5260.

In the GLBenchmark, the device has proved that it is a great performer with its graphical capabilities. The device scored 3057, which is quite high when compared to the Sony Tablet S that scored 1878.

The inbuilt browser on the device isn’t the best. You do better to download chrome for Android and enjoy a smoother browsing experience.

The most important question, how long will the device last? Well for average use, i.e., social networking, email, playing games, browsing the internet, music and movies, the device lasted for a little over one and a half days.

Bottom Line
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 is a fantastic device. It hits the sweet spot between the budget tablets and the iPad. It has features and specifications that are a bang for the buck and it is an overall better performer than the Sony Tablet S and the Motorola Xoom. The only disappointment comes in the display that could have had a better resolution and the fact that the Google Play store isn’t well populated with tablet specific apps. If you are in the market to spend Rs. 20,000 on a tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 should definitely be on your list.

Samsung Galaxy Note 800

Summary

The Samsung Galaxy Note 800 is probably the best Android tablet we have seen till date, surpassing even the Asus Transformer Prime in its raw performance. The tablet has everything going for it - fantastic power under the hood, a great display and good battery life. The only thing it has against it is an underwhelming build that can be overlooked considering the overall package. If you are in the market to pick up a premium Android device, go ahead and pick this one up. Your only other alternative is the 32GB iPad (Wi-Fi + 4G), which is priced at Rs. 44,900.

Review:

The Apple iPad defined the tablet genre. It wasn't the first device in this category, but it was one that nailed it right. The third generation iPad is now considered as a benchmark for what the tablet should be like.

Till date, if there was one Android tablet that could give the iPada run for its money, it was the Asus Transformer Prime. Its biggest disadvantage was the price at which it launched in India (Rs. 50,000 with the keyboard dock).

Today we have with us the Samsung Galaxy Note 800. Globally the device is called the Galaxy Note 10.1 N8000. The tablet brings with it some impressive specifications and nifty features too. It also brings with it the S Pen, which we first saw, in the Samsung Galaxy Note smartphone-tablet hybrid. At its price - Rs. 40,000, can it compete with the iPad or the Transformer Prime? Let us find out.

Design and Build
Unbox the device and it is quite pretty looking. It has a white body with a silver border surrounding it. Straight up, the face of the device has the 10.1-inch display, front facing camera, ambient light sensor, and two speakers on either side of the screen. This is a refreshing design change when compared to the other tablets in the market where the speakers are either on the frame or the rear of the device.

The overall build of the Galaxy Note however is very plasticky. If you have seen the third generation iPad or the Asus Transformer Prime, then the build of this device unfortunately, in comparison feels a little cheap. Being built-out of plastic isn’t a bad thing – the Note 800 is quite a lightweight device at less than 600 grams – but we would have liked to see some aluminium or a rubberized finish or any material that would make the tablet feel more like a Rs. 40,000 device.

With the build out of the way, let’s take a look at the design. For those of you that are familiar with Samsung’s line-up of products would think that the Note 800 looks like the love child of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Samsung Galaxy Note!

In terms of connectivity, the Galaxy Note 800 has the Samsung proprietary dock at the bottom. This dock connector is very reminiscent of the Apple 30-pin dock connector. We wish that Samsung had stuck with microUSB as it is more universal and easily accessible.

On the top of the tablet we have all the controls neatly laid out. You have the power/sleep/wake button, volume rocker, micro SD card slot, an IR beam (which lets you use the device as a remote), headphones jack and a SIM card slot. The SIM card slot can be used not only to access 3G data but make calls as well. There is no earpiece on the Note 800 but you can use the on-board speakers and if you want privacy, the bundled headphones.

The bottom right of the Note 800 also houses the S Pen. It is a lot bigger when compared to the Galaxy Note, but its build is quite nice. Overall, the connectivity options on the Note 800 are what you’d expect from a tablet. The build quality is sub-par when compared to the competition but the trade off is that the device is really light weighing less than 600 grams. But the fact still remains that the Transformer Prime is a well-built device and that too manages to keep the weight under 600 grams (without the keyboard dock).

Features and SpecificationsThe build of the device may be sub par but when it comes to the power under the hood, the Galaxy Note 800 blows the competition straight out the window. To start with, it has a quad-core 1.4GHz Exynos 4412 CPU and a whopping 2GB of RAM. It shows off the Mali-400MP GPU and runs on Android 4.0 ICS. Two gigabytes of memory on a tablet is a first, its effects on the Galaxy Note 800 are quite visible. More about that will be covered in the performance section below.

To put things into perspective, here is a quick look at the specifications of the Asus Transformer Prime, Apple’s third-gen iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Note 800.

Models	iPad (third gen Wi-Fi+4G)	Asus Transformer Prime	Samsung Galaxy Note 800
Thickness	9.4mm	8.3mm	8.9mm
Weight	662gms	586gms	600gms
Display Type	LED-backlit IPS	Super IPS+ LCD	PLS TFT
Display Size	9.7-inch	10.1-inch	10.1-inch
Display Resolution	1536 x 2048 pixels	1280x800	1280x800
Internal Storage	16/32/64GB	16/32/64GB	16/32/64GB
Expandable Storage	NA	microSD, up to 32GB	microSD, up to 64 GB
Chipset	Apple A5X	Nvidia Tegra 3	Exynos 4412
CPU	Dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9	Quad-core 1.3 GHz Cortex-A9	Quad-core 1.4 GHz
RAM	1GB	1GB	2GB
GPU	PowerVR SGX543MP4 (quad-core)	ULP GeForce	Mali-400MP
OS	iOS 5.1	Android 4.0 ICS	Android 4.0 ICS
Skin	NA	ASUS Waveshare UI	Samsung TouchWiz UI
Front camera	VGA	1.2MP	1.9MP
Rear camera	5MP	8MP	5MP
Battery	11560mAh	6930mAh	7000mAh
Price	Rs. 38,900 / Rs. 44,900 / Rs. 50,900	Rs. 50,000	Rs. 40,000

In terms of its features, the Note 800 is very well endowed. To start with the OS is skinned with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI. The amount of customization that TouchWiz offers is nice and something we have come to like from the skin. It is also an advantage to those who have used other Samsung devices such as the Galaxy S III, or the Galaxy Tab 2, you will feel right at home here.

The Galaxy Note 800’s lock screen is simple and elegant. It has the watery effects that we have seen on the Galaxy S III - touch anywhere on the lock screen and you will see ripples. It is meaningless in terms of utility but somehow, its presence made us feel happy. The screen can be unlocked by swiping anywhere on the display.

The Note 800’s lock screen also gives you quick access to 4 apps. To access these apps simply swipe them, and the app launches. By default these apps are – S Note, Browser, Videos and Gallery.

Unlock the Galaxy Note 800 and you have access to five customizable home screens that you can load with apps and widgets.

At the bottom of the home screen you have access to the usual Android buttons – back, home and multitasking. There is another touch button present here which is a shortcut for taking screen shots. The bottom of the screen also has a dock that is hidden and can be accessed with a simple tap. This dock houses the shortcut to 10 apps and can be accessed at anytime, whether you are on the home screen or using a particular app. This dock can be edited to house the apps of your choice.

Despite the fact that the Galaxy Note 800 can be used as a really big phone and an Android tablet, its biggest feature has to be the S Pen.

Pull out the S Pen from its holder and a menu pops up on the right hand corner of the screen. This menu is a shortcut access to S Notes, S Planner, Crayon physics, Photoshop Touch and the Pen settings. The good thing is that this menu gives you quick access to apps that take advantage of the S Pen. The downside is that this menu cannot be customized to list apps of your preference.

S PenWe’ve given you a glimpse of the S Pen above and now let us take a detailed look at it. If you are one who has used the Galaxy Note, then you will be on familiar territory with its functionality. The entire device can be navigated with your figure and as well as the S Pen.

To get the negatives out of the way, there are a limited number of apps that exploit the utility of the S Pen. The good thing is that the apps that do exploit it do a good job.

There are a bunch of apps that take advantage of the S Pen. You can take a look at the video below to see its functionality.

The S Notes apps lets you take notes with the S Pen. You can jot down minutes of a meeting, add images and make a magazine (this looks a lot like Apples Pages for iOS) and the app even recognizes your handwriting.

But one app that really makes use of the S Pen is the Photoshop app. You can do a multitude of things such as layering, paint, effects, adding people and effects to an image and much more. If you are someone in the creative or design business you will find some value in the S Pen features. For the rest of us, it is an add-on app to geek around with.

Performance
So, with all that awesome power under the hood, how does the tablet perform?

To start with the Galaxy Note 800 can be used as a phone. It isn’t the most convenient to use considering that it is so big. The tablet doesn't have an earpiece and usability, as a phone is completely inconvenient.

The display of the Note 800 is surprisingly good. The resolution is 1280x800, which is the same as the Transformer Prime but far behind when compared to the iPad. Despite the fact that the resolution is relatively low, the performance of the display is very good. The blacks look deep and the viewing angles are probably one of the best we have seen on a premium tablet. Be it text, images or video, the display is very good.

In terms of its raw performance it beat the Transformer Prime hands down. The start up time of the Prime (from shut down to lock screen) was 34.1 seconds, and the Note 800 booted up in a mere 22.5 seconds. Even in the other benchmarks, the Note 800 performed much better.

We ran a bunch of apps and games on the Galaxy Note 800 and anything we threw at it ran with absolute ease. We even played a bit of Shadow Gun (the version optimised for the Tegra 3 quad-core processor) and that too ran smoothly.

Watching multimedia on the Galaxy Note 800 is a lot of fun. Sure, the device doesn't recognise all the vide formats and you will need a third party video player for that, but the ones that run natively (such as MP4) ran very well. The fact that the speakers are on the front of the devices is good and added to the overall performance of the tablet. The audio while playing games, watching movies and running apps was a lot better when compared to devices that place the speakers on the back or the side panel.

Multiscreen

Samsung has also introduced a feature with the Galaxy Note 800, multiscreen. This feature is available only on a few apps as of now but support for more apps is expected in the future. What this means is that you can run two apps simultaneously on the device. So you can have a video playing in one half of the display and you could be browsing the Internet on the other. You could be using S-Notes in one half and checking your mail in the other.

More benchmarks

This feature is very convenient to use on a tablet and is very similar to the functionality we have seen on early Windows 8-powered tablets. The only downside is that at times while switching between the apps we faced a bit of lag, which is a downer considering the Note 800 has some stellar hardware under its hood. Hopefully, an update will fix this.

The Galaxy Note 800 is powered by a 7000 mAh battery. We ran a 720p HD MP4 video on loop with full brightness and full volume and the device lasted us for nearly six hours, which is very good. We expect it to last roughly 8-10 hours with intensive usage. With moderate daytime usage, the device lasted us two days, with about 25 percent life left. In that time, we’d played some ShadowGun, run a few benchmarks and video clips, done some browsing, along with some social networking.

Bottom LineThe Samsung Galaxy Note 800 is the best Android tablet we have seen till date even surpassing the Asus Transformer Prime in its raw performance. The tablet has everything going for it - fantastic power under the hood, a great display and good battery life. The only thing it has against it is an underwhelming build that can be overlooked considering the overall package. If you are in the market to pick up a premium Android device, go ahead and pick this one up. Your only other alternative is the 32GB iPad (Wi-Fi + 4G), which is priced at Rs. 44,900. 

Google Nexus 7

Summary

The Nexus 7 is the best Android tablet experience you can have right now. Jelly Bean has really made the Android experience much smoother, the Tegra 3 processor keeps things fast, the IPS panel ensures a great display with the highly reflective screen being the only drawback. Taking into consideration its US pricing, the Indian pricing is almost over Rs. 5000 premium, which is a lot of money. Also the 8GB version will offer you only 5.92 GB of usable space, so if you are the kind who like to store their content on their devices, opt instead for the 16GB version. It does not offer any microSD card slot, so expansion is out of the question.

Review:

The Indian market is flooded with Android Ice Cream Sandwich based tablets. Many players are offering tablets across various form factors, with Android ICS, at sub-10k prices. It is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between these Android tablets. Now while, the Apple iPad is the undisputed king as far as higher end tablets go. We have yet to see a budget tablet that is worth that title. The next best tablet size after the 9.7-inch form factor is the 7-inch. While Samsung has given us its 7-inch tablets, their pricing is nothing short of ridiculous. Google has come out with the Nexus 7 made by ASUS as its maiden Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) sporting 7-inch tablet. As of now it is the only official Android 4.1 tablet on the market. So does the crown for the 7-inch tablets finally have a taker? We shall find out in the coming pages.

Build and Design

Coming in the 7-inch form-factor, the Google Nexus 7, manufactured by ASUS, fits quite well in the palm of your hand. The textured rubber/leather covering on the rear side, does give you that much needed grip that is lacking in many brush-metal finished tablets. In addition to grip, the textured finish also gives the Nexus 7 a slightly premium feel. But beware, oily palms will leave their indelible mark on the rear side. While one-handed operation is not practical, you can hold the tablet in one hand for long periods thanks to its weight of just 340 grams which is almost half that of the New Apple iPad and is also lighter than other 7-inch tablets such as the BlackBerry Playbook,Reliance 3G tab among others. In fact, it is the lightest tablet we have tested to date.

At 10.4 mm thickness, the Nexus 7 is one millimeter thicker than the New Apple iPad, but the edges around the Nexus 7 are nicely beveled out. The bottom edge has the micro USB port and the 3.5-mm earphone jack whereas on the top left-hand edge you have the stand-by/power and the volume rocker buttons. The Nexus 7 tends to taper off from the edges, and the standby and volume rocker buttons are present on the tapering edge. The plastic buttons have a great feedback. A horizontal strip opening just above the micro USB port on the rear side, shows the speaker section.

Overall build quality is quite sturdy and we did not find anything amiss. Although the tablet we got was fine, there have been an unhealthy number of cases where in the display screen tends to lift off from the casing, an issue called screen-lift. There are a number of resources online which talk about methods to resolve the issue. Since we did not come across any such issue, we would advise you to immediately check for this discrepancy in your tablet by pressing mildly onto the glass and see if there is any displacement of the screen from the casing on the sides. The display is made of Corning gorilla glass which is scratch-resistant as advertised.

DisplayThe Nexus 7 has a backlit IPS panel and has a resolution of 1280x800 pixels. Not quite the retina display, but the Nexus 7 packs in a respectable 216 pixels per inch. There aren’t any buttons on the display surface and the bezel is thicker along the breath and comparatively thinner along the longer side of the tablet. It sports a 1.2 MP front-facing camera and lacks a rear camera.

Thanks to the IPS panel, the viewing angles on the Nexus 7 are fabulous. But the one thing we did not like very much was the extremely reflective surface on the screen, just like the iPad. So make sure there are no lights behind you, while you are watching movies or reading books.

Features

The Nexus 7 is powered by the NVIDIA Tegra 3 system-on-chip which has a quad-core processor running at 1.3 GHz. It comes in the 8 GB and 16 GB iterations. We got the 8 GB model which has only 5.92 GB of usable space. It has 1 GB of RAM. On the OS front, it is the only tablet to sport the plain vanilla Jelly Bean OS aka Android 4.1. Even though it’s just a .1 increment in the naming convention, the improvement in terms of features is quite significant.

Project Butter: The one thing that was oft-repeated when the Nexus 7 was launched was Project Butter which was meant to improve the responsiveness of the tablet. It basically makes the CPU and GPU run in parallel which gives a shot in the arm to the responsiveness of the tablet. Transitions are happening at a spiffy 60 frames per second.

Having played with a lot of Android ICS tablets, we have to say that Google has definitely delivered here. The response follows your finger swipes quite well, in the sense that if you swipe fast, the response is quick and vice versa. Web-page scrolling isn’t as buttery smooth though if the page has a lot of images, even after it has completely loaded. Only after you have settled on the web page for a while does the scrolling speed improves.

You can now resize your widgets and the surrounding apps will rearrange themselves to fit the widget in.

Widgets customization: Widgets are one thing that separate Android from Apple iOS. And there have been some improvements in this section. Jelly Bean allows you to resize your widgets. Also when you place your widget on the homescreen which already has some apps, those apps will automatically rearrange themselves to fit in the widget.

Google Now in action on the search page.

Google Now: This is a nifty addition to Google search. It can be activated from the lock screen as well as by swiping upwards from the Home soft key. What Google Now offers is contextual search based on your location. So for instance, if you want to know Italian restaurants around your current location, then you just type ‘Italian restaurants nearby’ and you will get a card showing you the nearest Italian restaurants along with a map view. If you click on a particular restaurant, it will open up a map showing you the location and you can then find directions to reach it or also get additional information on that restaurant.

Sample cards for Google Now.

There are various category of cards for weather, public transport, traffic, sports and so on. We even had a card which showed us the bus schedule. Certain cards can be customized to be pulled up as soon as Google Now is activated. It takes into consideration your search history, calendar and other habits to deliver relevant information to you throughout the day. If you have any calendar event coming up in a couple of hours, as soon as you power up search, you will find the card reminding you of your calendar event, without you having to ask for it or without you having to go the relevant app for it. Just before you are getting out of the house, you can also get a situation of the traffic. Getting completely used to Google Now will take a learning curve. Also it will get better the more you use Google Search. In a way it observes you and learns your search habits to give you relevant results over time. Scary?

Yeah! But you do have the option to disable it.

Google Maps give you a lot of contextual search results when you arrive at them from Google Now.

Unlike the Nexus phones for which you will be on an EDGE or 3G connection, the Nexus 7 only has a Wi-Fi version. So using Google Now while you are on the road, is not really practical, as there aren’t many Wi-Fi hotspots around in India except maybe if you are in a café or a restaurant. Nonetheless, it is a wonderful feature to have so long as you have a working connection.

Expanded notifications give you the option to directly share images from the notification tab.

Expanded notifications allow you see contents of your mail.

Notifications: Notifications have undergone a sea-change. Not only do you get much more details in your notifications, but you can directly go to the app where the next action regarding the notification needs to be taken, by tapping on that particular notification. For instance if you’ve taken a screenshot (by holding onto the power and volume down button) you will get a notification, which an option to Share that image. So you can directly share the image from the notification tab itself, rather than going to the Gallery app and then sharing it. If you do not want to take any action, you can simple swipe off that notification either to the right or left. Using a two-finger pinch gesture you can expand/contract notifications which is adds a nice touch to it.

You can set reminders with voice commands.

Voice Control: You can make use of the dedicated voice action commands for listening to songs, getting maps of locations, sending emails to contacts, going to websites, etc. The keypad has a dedicated voice recognition symbol (a microphone) which can be used even when not on a network, to type out messages or take down notes. The voice action commands work with Google Now to give you relevant cards. So for instance if you give a voice command to find directions to a particular location, then it will pop up a card which will then lead you to the map with the directions or if you want to listen to a track on your tablet, you can speak out ‘Listen to (followed by the artist/song)’ and it will then play that song. You can set alarms, do currency conversions, find out trivia about Hollywood stars, etc. by voice command. However, it cannot be called a voice assistant a la Siri, as most of the answers that you get are via Google’s search engines. For instance it can set alarms or add appointments, but if you want to search your calendar schedule for the next three days, you will have to do it manually by going to the calendar app. As expected it falters when you voice out non-American sounding names or locations, but it thankfully does not take as much time to get friendly with Indian accents.

Although you can now download maps for offline use, you will have to keep the map area limited.

Offline Maps: This is one feature which has finally come on Google devices, although we feel it should’ve come quite a while back as Nokia has been providing offline maps. But you have a limitation as to the area you can download – around 83MB worth of maps can be downloaded at a time. If you select a very wide area, you will get a red box saying “Selected Area too large” You will then have to zoom in until your area is small. This is a limitation Google could have done without, especially for users who are using offline maps in an alien country for instance.

It also supports Near-Field Communication (NFC) but due to obvious reasons it’s really not that useful at the moment. But from a future-proofing perspective it is a nice addition.

PerformanceWe ran our standard synthetic benchmarks and got the scores as mentioned below. It is certainly less powerful than the new iPad, but that is expected. It performed at par with the ASUS Transformer Prime among the Android tablets, whereas beat most of the budget Android tablets that have been flooding the Indian market of late.

The onboard keypad is quite decent to type on, but you are much better off using third party keyboard apps such asSwiftkey 3 or Swype as they are much faster. The onboard keypad does come with a microphone option to dictate notes. In the landscape mode, typing on the keypad is a bit of a task if you are using only your thumbs.

Watching movies on the Nexus 7 is a treat so long as you do not have any light source behind you as the screen is mighty reflective. Sometimes in extremely dark scene we could see our reflections. But apart from that there were no issues in terms of banding or dead pixels. Also the Nexus 7 is able to play a majority of formats thrown at it via the default video player. Apart from the default video player, you have a whole army of third-party apps at your disposal. The display is crisp, making the colours look natural. You can set the brightness in the auto-adjust mode.

AnTuTu

GLBenchmark

LinPack

Quadrant

The underlying Tegra 3’s quad-core processor ensures that the tablet excels at multi-tasking. We did not notice any slowing down of the device despite opening around 10 apps, downloading stuff in the background, buffering video on YouTube and so on. NVIDIA Tegra 3 also ensures that you have a wonderful experience with graphics. Playing Dead Trigger was a lot of fun. The game ran smoothly without any sort of lag. Even physics-heavy games such as Puddles and Angry Birds Space were quite great to play on the Nexus 7.

Audio was good as long as it was around the 60-70 per cent mark. At higher volumes we noticed a distortion in the sound output. Turns out this is not an isolated case and a lot of users who have bought the Nexus 7 are facing this issue. We were able to overcome this issue by adjusting the equalizer settings in the Sound menu, which completely got rid of the crackling that was experienced out of the box. Earphones however, deliver very decent sound even at maximum volume. We did notice slow responses while adjusting the equalizer, as the touch responses were taking some time to get registered.

The 4325 mAh battery can easily withstand 7-8 hours of regular usage which includes surfing the net, playing games, watching movies, having email, Twitter and Facebook apps running in the background. We noticed that the device did get slightly warm whilst gaming or watching HD movies.

Verdict
If you want to get the best Android experience on a tablet, look no further than the Nexus 7, at the moment. Jelly Bean has really made the Android experience much smoother, the Tegra 3 processor keeps things fast, the IPS panel ensures a great display with the highly reflective screen being the only drawback. Taking into consideration its US pricing, the Indian pricing is almost over Rs. 5,000 premium, which is a lot of money. Also the 8GB version will offer you only 5.92 GB of usable space, so if you are the kind who like to store their content on their devices, opt instead for the 16GB version. It does not offer any microSD card slot, so expansion is out of the question. Speaker distortion at the highest volumes is a downer, but that can be overcome by using earphones which does not have any issues. At Rs. 17,000 for the 8 GB model and Rs. 21,000 for the 16 GB model, pricing is way off the charts, if you are considering buying it in India. But if you have friends or relatives coming from the US, it makes sense to buy the tablet as it is a complete value for money proposition at around Rs. 13,000 for the 16 GB model. But considering the other respectable 7-inch Android tablets in the market, if the Google Nexus 7 is available for under Rs. 15,000, it makes for a great purchase.

For existing Android tablet owners, it is a question of whether you want a stock Android Jelly Bean experience on a hardware which is equally good.

As far as 7-inch tablets go, this is the best we have tested so far. We say so far, because we did not have another 7-inch tablet running Jelly Bean OS to compare the Nexus 7 with. Moreover, Apple is rumoured to come out with the iPad Mini which is supposed to be Apple’s 7-inch answer to Google. So we would advise prospective buyers to give it time till Diwali before taking the plunge to buy the Nexus 7. Two reasons: prices will normalize and you will most likely have more tablets to compare the Nexus 7 with.  

Contact Details
Pure Nexus
Phone: 022 2371 3552
Email: huzefasid@gmail.com
Price for 8GB model: USD 300 (approx Rs. 16,500) - (This includes a USD 50 annual plan which is like insurance. Allows you to ship it to the US for RMA/repairs free of cost for 1 year)
Bulk Discounts: Order 5 Nexus 7 (16 GB) for just Rs. 18,500 per pc.

The Apps menu.

Normal equaliser setting gave a crackling distorted sound at higher volume levels.

At this equaliser setting we were able to get rid of the crackling sound from the speaker.

 

Dictating noted using the microphone key on your keypad. It does take time to recognise Indian accents, but does a terrible job with Indian sounding names.

Doing a restaurant search throws up a card and on tapping on a location, you are directly taken to Google Maps.

See more images of Jelly Bean in action on the Google Nexus 7, below:

                                                   

Even flight search will draw up a card provided you know the exact flight number.

For simple questions like these, you get the answer in the form of a card.

Gallery app gives a 3x4 table of your images.

Since the Magazines app is not available for download, we used Magzter to check out SKOAR.

The weather card.

Widgets menu (1)

Widgets menu (2)

After you come to a hotel location from Google Now, you get other details such as user reviews and navigational help.

Digit's YouTube channel.