Hugo Barra, vice president of Android product management at Google, holds up a new Nexus 7 tablet Wednesday.
The company announced a new version of its popular Nexus 7 tablet
during a press event Wednesday in San Francisco. Sundar Pichai,
Google's senior vice president of Android and Chrome, unveiled a
slimmed-down, speedier version of the tablet, which will start at $229
when it goes on sale next week.
The new Nexus 7, made by
Asus, has undergone some subtle physical changes. The size of the device
has been trimmed down while keeping the screen the same dimensions. The
higher resolution screen is now 1,920 by 1,200 pixels, packing in 323
pixels per inch. The amount of RAM has been doubled, and the CPU is
twice as fast as the previous Nexus 7. The company also said that it has
improved its speaker performance and that it can last for nine hours of
high-definition video playing.
Netflix will be one of
the first apps to take advantage of the new video-friendly specs. The
streaming-video company's new Android app will stream movies at 1080p on
the Nexus 7.
The device will run Android Jelly Bean 4.3, a new version of Google's Android operating system.
Tablets are on track to
take over PCs, and Google has a bigger stake in the boom than its own
flagship devices. Half of all tablets sold worldwide are based on
Android, according to the company.
"By the end of 2013, consumers are going to buy more tablets every year than personal computers," Pichai said.
The new version of
Android 4.3 will have parental controls so you can prevent the little
ones from seeing saucy content or inappropriate apps. There are also
user profiles for tablets that end up in the hands of multiple users.
The company expects to
have more than 70 million tablet activations this year. Many of those
users are downloading content such as apps, music and movies from the
Google Play store. The Play store has more than 1 million apps and has
seen more than 50 billion downloads, according to the company.
A new app, called Google
Play Games, is similar to Apple's Game Center. In it, Android users can
see what games their friends are playing and go up against other users,
checking out their accomplishments on leader boards.
Older Nexus devices will
also be able to test out the Android upgrade -- existing Nexus 4, Nexus
7, Nexus 10 and Galaxy Samsung devices will receive over-the-air
updates for the operating system.
The Wi-Fi versions of
the Nexus 7 will be available starting July 30, and an unlocked LTE
version of the tablet will go on sale in the coming weeks.
source cnn.
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