Report: 3G Nexus 7 Tablet to Launch in Six Weeks
Just in time for the holiday rush.
Back in July, Google finally took the wraps off its hotly anticipated 7-inch tablet. Priced at $199 and directly competing with the Kindle Fire, the device features a 7-inch display, Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3 processor, and WiFi. What the tablet doesn't have is 3G. However, all that may change in the coming weeks.
Paul O'Brien over at MoDaCo cites an inside source that says Google is working on a 3G model of the Nexus 7. Little else will change, but Asus is said to be ramping up production for a launch that's reportedly scheduled for six weeks' time. Precise launch dates and countries have yet to be confirmed, but we imagine the U.S. will be among the first to get the new Nexus 7.
Aside from adding some 3G connectivity on top of the device's 802.11a/b/g/n, there's no other hardware changes. Those purchasing the new device will get the same 7-inch, 1280 x 800 HD display, quad-core Tegra 3 processor, 12-core GPU and 1GB RAM. The tablet also features the aforementioned 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, as well as NFC, GPS, a gyroscope, an accelerometer, a mic, and a 1.2-megapixel camera on the front of the tablet.
No word on pricing for the new 3G model, either. Currently, the Nexus 7 is priced at $199 for the 8GB model, while the 16GB model will set you back $249. If we had to hazard a guess at pricing, we'd say you might be looking at $249 for the 3G 8GB and $299 for the 3G 16GB.
Oh sweet my tablet cannot access the internet unless I am in a WIFI spot... What is this? 1998?
I am gob smacked to see how many people actually buy WIFI only devices.
saves you cash on buying a 3g tablet, eats up your phones battery though
Most people actually coudn't care less about 3G on a tablet.
The price offered by acrriers just isn't worth it.
Even on my phone I blocked the Data completely and saved over 30$ a month, and I'm sure I am not the only one. So would I pay an extra 50$ for 3G on my tablet, absolutely not.
Wifi only, who cares, it's not like it isn't gonna work offline.
Not everyone wants to pay for another data plan like you.
My $200 tablet can get access through internet through my SGS2 through wifi hotspot for FREE.
No way I'm paying extra for 3g/4g chips that I'll never use.
I don't take my Nexus 7 out of the house, and even if I did, my phone has 3G and can be a Wifi hotspot for any Wifi-only device I'm carrying... which happened zero times so far. In fact I don't use up even 10% of the data cap on my phone, so I definitely don't need a 3G tablet (or a 3G laptop modem or anything like that).
I do agree that for many, lack of 3G is not a big deal. Even for my personal one, I don't tend to miss it. However, I can see the necessity as not all of our buildings have WiFi yet (or wifi throughout the building due to old designs), and for those in remote locations, or in a vehicle that still get cell connection, these could be really useful.
Also, my wifi-only nexus 7 is going to be my first and last device with a tegra SoC if nvidia does not drastically improve GPU performance in Tegra4.
Seriously, when my old dualcore/mali400 SGS2 outperforms my new "powerful" quadcore rooted-and-overclocked nexus 7 in every single game out there, you know the gpu s***.
To be fair, SGS2 is just over a year old, and Tegra 3 is just under a year old. Also, 1280x800 vs 800x480 = 2.6 times more pixels to push on the Nexus 7, and finally it costs half of what SGS2 goes for even now.
you can also overclock the CPU a decent amount.
PS A CPU overclock does not effect the GPU clock speed on the tegra 3, that has to be done separately (usually needs a custom kernel that allows for GPU overclocking.
On my HP touchpad, there used to be a decent modded kernel but the developer doesn't update it anymore (it had a number of improvements, but I just wish that person would release a kernel where the only change is the GPU overclock)
with the GPU overclock kernel, I nearly doubled my antutu 3D and 2D benchmark scores (sadly it only works for a very alpha build on cyanogenmod 7)
(the GPU overclock put the snapdragon's GPU in the same range at the tegra 3 and the 1.9GHz overclockk but the CPU performance within about 30% of the tegra 3 which is pretty good for a dual core CPU)
When someone releases a tegra 3GPU overclock kernel, you will see the tegra 3 perform significantly better
Use bluetooth internet tethering instead, it uses a TON less battery than the wifi hotspot.
My Verizon contract ends in 8 months and I don't want to replace it with ANY cell phone contract. I also need a new tablet with my original IPAD suffers from slowdown.
I can solve both problems with a new 3G nexus. $30/month gives me a tablet and cell phone if I use Google Voice and Messages, or something of that nature. I probably use my actual phone for talking like 10 times a month, so the 3g is more for emergency phonecalls and texting.
$30/month is FAR cheaper than a cell phone contract and 7" Nexus is far more portible than a new 3g 10" IPAD.
There are already kernels supporting both cpu and gpu OC.
my N7 I OCed the CPU to 1.5ghz and GPU to 484mhz. the improvement is mostly notable in benchmarks. but in terms of gaming, the device still lags behind my old SGS2. especially in intense 3d games.
Not only the N7.. but any other higher-priced device powered by tegra3 like HTC OneX, ASUS transformer prime.
You have a point for the pixels argument, but if you look at device like the SGS3.. 720p display and still outperforms every other android device out there..
The problem with nvidia's gpu is that they chose the more traditional z-buffered rendering pipeline and non-unified separate pixel and vertex shader cores.
Whereas ARM and ImgTec are using tile-based deferred rendering.