HTC has begun fulfilling pre-orders for the Nexus 9 tablet today. Unfortunately, it seems the tablet is hard to find in the Play Store, much like the Nexus 6. Google has had a few years to deal with Nexus launches, so it's strange that this year it's doing so badly with the launch of the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9. Either the devices are much more popular than last year's Nexus 5 and what they expected, or they didn't expect to sell too many of them in the first place.
Google hasn't launched a new Nexus tablet in two years, and tablets aren't some of the hottest selling products right now. As for the Nexus 6, they may have realized the 6" screen would appeal to even fewer people than the Nexus 5 did, and prepared fewer units. Regardless of the reason, hopefully, it won't take too long for Google to start selling new units soon.
The Nexus 9 is the first Android tablet to have an Nvidia Denver CPU that has very high single-threaded performance. However, it doesn't have a very high multi-threaded performance due to the fact that it's only a dual-core CPU. Many other chips powering Android devices have four cores or more, so they may score higher in multi-threaded benchmarks and possibly even perform better in heavy multi-tasking.
The device is also the first to come with Android 5.0 Lollipop, a major redesign of Android both in terms of looks and in terms of functionality. The new version arrives with over 5,000 new APIs. Many are new, while others are just overhauled to make third-party developers' jobs easier.
The Nexus 9 is one of the few Android tablets to have a 4:3 ratio, much like iPads. The 16:10 ratio of Android tablets has made them almost unusable in portrait mode if they are over 8" large. The new 4:3 ratio does increase the letterboxes for movies and videos a little, but the trade-off in usability for most other apps is probably worth it. The tablet also has a 2048 x 1536 resolution, which is the same as the iPad Air 2, but the tablet is slightly smaller with a screen size of 8.9". This should also make it a little easier to hold.
Other specs include 2 GB of RAM, 16 GB of storage for the base model, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, DLNA, 8MP rear camera, 1.6MP front-camera and a 6,700 mAh battery.
The 16 GB Wi-Fi version is now being sold for $400, and the 32 GB version costs $480, but as mentioned earlier, it will be hard to find them in the Play Store. If you do find one, the tablet should ship within "1-2 days." The 32 GB LTE version will be "coming soon."
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