My last Android device was from over 2 years ago. While I’m perfectly happy in Apple ecosystem now, as a person with passion about technology, I could not simply turn a blind eye to what happen in the other side: the Android ecosystem. Thanks to a huge variety of brands and models, Android devices (especially cheaper models) gain significant market share in the last 2 years, and that certainly triggered my curiosity to “peek” again inside that world.
I already had this plan to get another Android device about 2 months ago. Since the super ugly experience with Samsung Galaxy device last time (so bad that I deleted all my previous reviews on Android devices, and I regret it now), I promised myself I will never ever get another Samsung’s Android anymore. So my choice was Motorola, HTC, Asus and LG. After a lot of reading, my target became clear: Nexus line. It’s the “real” Android coming from Google. Vanilla taste. The purest form of Android. Plus, it has much better track record in receiving future OS updates.
2 months ago everyone was eagerly waiting for the announcement of new Nexus line for 2014. And when Google finally announced Nexus 6 and Nexus 9, I was turned off. Nexus 6 is too big for a phone, and 9″ tablet was never my favorite (I returned my iPad Air to Apple Store, and got iPad mini instead). Plus, their price range is now too high for my experimental purpose.
When the first reviews of Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 became available, I read many of them and decided it’s not worth it to spend the new premium price for experimental device.
So my eyes turned into the next target in line: last year’s models of Nexus: Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 (2013). I had a serious back and forth dilemma in deciding which one to get. The goal is to taste the sweetness of Lollipop, and get a feel of how far has Android improved over the last 2 years.
And here I am with Nexus 7 (2013, second generation), 32GB with 4G.
I opened the box and found a nicely build hardware inside, pre-installed with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. I quickly can use OTA update to get Kit Kat. For some reason, it won’t allow me to go straight to version 4.4.4 (the latest version of Kit Kat). Instead, I need to upgrade to 4.4.2 first, then use another OTA to get 4.4.4. As per today, Nexus 7 (2013) with 4G model still does not get the Lollipop love from Google.
Before this device, the last versions of Android I played intensively with were Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich. Jelly Bean certainly has the same look and feel to ICS and I don’t quite like it. After upgrading to Kit Kat, my user experience does improve. Just from less than 2 hours of testing (mainly launcher and some basic apps), so far I like Kit Kat better than Jelly Bean. Hopefully Lollipop will impress me even more.
For a one year old device, Nexus 7 second generation still offer reasonable specs. It processing power comes from Qualcomm Snapdragon™ S4 Pro 1.5GHz, accompanies with Adreno 320 400MHz GPU. The RAM is 2GB. The screen is 7.02” 1920×1200 HD IPS display (323 ppi), protected by Scratch resistant Corning® glass. The tablet dimension is 114 x 200 x 8.65 mm, almost the same height as iPad mini, but smaller in width.
Since my unit is the LTE model, it weighs 299g. For comparison, iPad mini 2 with cellular weighs 341 g. Having a lighter tablet of the same size range is certainly a good thing. Just for completeness, Nexus 7 (2013) weighs 290g.
For camera, Nexus 7 (2013) has 5MP rear facing auto focus and 1.2MP front facing fixed focus. Personally, I never care about camera in a tablet. I did try to snap few photos and so far my impression is not good. The response time is very slow. Hopefully this will get fixed in Lollipop.
Nexus 7 (2013) comes in 2 choices of internal storage: 16GB and 32GB. There is no slot for memory card. Some people might consider this as a weakness, but it’s not a problem for me as many third party apps don’t provide access to the external storage anyway (or provide crappy access).
For connectivity, this tablet has Dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4G/5G) 802.11 a/b/g/n, Android Beam NFC and Bluetooth 4.0.
The battery of Nexus 7 (2013) is promised to survive 9 hours of “active” usage. The actual battery capacity is 3950 mAh and it’s compatible with Qi wireless charging. I haven’t tested the actual battery life for my style of usage, yet.
Medium tablet size (7″) is to my liking. The 16:10 screen ratio is good for watching movie and reading some books, but it’s kinda awkward for everything else. The back surface has some sort of rubbery feeling. It’s not metal, but certainly likeable. Kinda wish that it won’t gather dust too fast. Sound quality is ok, but not special. Well, I don’t expect anything grand from a device this size anyway.
All the basic functions work properly, nothing worth to mention here. One thing I notice is that when the tablet sit on a desk for a while, sometimes the screen would turn on for few seconds and got back off few seconds later. Or, if I pick up the tablet from a table, sometimes the screen will turn on automatically, but sometimes it won’t. I still haven’t figured out why.
For the actual use of the tablet, I downloaded some apps to read text books and comic books, apps to do social media, apps to watch movies, apps for online shopping, apps for productivity and some games. Overall, what I get here is mainly the same impression as the Android user experience from my memory 2 years ago. It has apps for almost anything, but many of those apps don’t feel polished.
For reading books, flipping pages of my e-books doesn’t feel as natural as I usually do in iPad mini. Comic reading is occasionally laggy. Different app has different ways to manage their “book library”.
For doing social media, I have to admit that the Android version of most social media apps has shown significant improvement. It feels comfortable and intuitive to use those apps now. So far I like most apps in this category.
For movies, most of apps that I downloaded fail to open some of my movies. Especially movies with Hi10p bitrate. Even VLC could not play them well. I thought maybe the processor is not powerful enough. But then I found BSPlayer app, which so far can play all the movies I tested without any issue. Bravo. I certainly will enjoy watching movies in this nice 16:10 screen.
For online shopping, most apps that I use without issue in iPad feels laggy here. My favorite Lassoo app crashed few times. CatchOfTheDay app runs but rather slow and sometimes non-responsive. Thankfully eBay app runs normal and smooth as I expected.
For productivity, Google’s productivity suite naturally works great in Android. Google Play says that Microsoft Office for Android is not compatible with my device.
For games, it really different from one to another, so it’s kinda hard to make general statement here.
Overall, I have mixed feeling about my new tablet. It has some good points, but I’m also disappointed in some aspects. Well, I bought this Nexus mainly to try Lollipop and this device still has not got official Lollipop update from Google, yet. So I guess it’s too early to make any conclusion. I will write more about Nexus 7 (2013) LTE running Android Lollipop when it becomes available.
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