An Asus representative has supposedly spilled the beans on the next-generation Nexus 7 tablet, AKA the Asus K009. This latter name is an actual product that showed up on both the Bluetooth SIG and the FCC with Android 4.3 "Jelly Bean" (JWR11) installed. Information provided by the rep isn't anything new, but does verify the specs that appeared on the FCC's component list.
According to the rep, the new Nexus tablet will have a 7 inch LED-lit screen with a 1980 x 1200 resolution, powered by Qualcomm's quad-core Snapdragon 600 SoC (APQ8064) and 2 GB of RAM. It will also sport 32 GB of internal storage, a 5MP camera on the back, and a 1.2MP camera on the front. So far there's still no sign of a microSD card port.
As for other specs, the new tablet will have Wireless N connectivity, Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC enabled. There will also be versions supporting LTE, WCDMA and GSM wireless connectivity which good news for consumers on the go who grow weary of turning their smartphone into a hotspot. A 4000 mAh battery possibly supports Qi wireless charging.
The component list yanked from the FCC reveals that Liteon is providing the cameras and Hynix is providing the eMMC flash storage. Japan Display Inc. is supplying the LCD display and Asus is using its own ME571KL motherboard and Li-ion battery. Naturally Qualcomm is handling the SoC and WWAN/WLAN components.
The new Nexus 7 is slated to launch in July alongside Android 4.3 "Jelly Bean". The new build was recently spotted on the Samsung GT-i9505G, AKA the pure-bred Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition smartphone which Google recently started selling for $649 USD unlocked. A source inside Samsung said the new Jelly bean will appear by the end of the month.
The Asus rep responsible for Monday's spec list leak quickly concluded that the information stems from internal documents not yet released to the public. This leak could be pure garbage for all we know (as it arrives in the form of dialog in screenshots), but the list of hardware matches what has been reported in prior weeks. We'll find out what's real or not sometime this month if rumors of a July reveal are true.
