Google took the world by storm (and much surprise) when they announced their Nexus 7 tab. It was perfect. A quad-core nVidia Tegra 3 processor, a 7" 1024x600 IPS display, 1 GB of RAM and to top it all off, Google's brand new and fresh of the oven Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The tablet did have a slight few drawbacks. Lack of USB OTG support turned away some, especially when there is no MicroSD card slot to expand over the 8/16 GB of internal storage model options (okay so the tablet is not that perfect). However, everything can be forgiven the moment you hear the pricing which is just $199 (for the 8 GB model, $249 for 16 GB). At that price, the tablet was already offering too much and way more than anything competition offered. And Google instantly had in it's hands a best seller tablet. They literally beat Apple with it's iPad Mini to the market.
This brings us to the Nexus 10. It can be assumed that Google must have been thinking that a Nexus 7 made more sense, as everybody was waiting for a smaller iPad Mini. And so Google made a flagship product at a low price tag and tempted all waiting and those taken by surprise to buy their tablet. But now, Google wants to take on the iPad (3), big time! Latest reports suggest that Google has teamed up with Samsung to make their 10" flagship tablet. Let's have a look at what we know about it till now (or can safely assume):
- 10" 2560x1600 ultra high resolution display
- Exynos 5 Cortex A15 based Quad/Dual Core
- ARM Mali T604 MP
- Android 4.2 Key Lime Pie
Display: We know that Samsung has developed such high resolution displays for 10" devices, and that to beat the new iPad's 2048x1536 pixels this is the way. Well, if this is true, Google will have beaten the iPad's 264 ppi display with their own near 300 ppi display (on a tablet, that is simply huge!).
Chipset: Next up is the chipset. Shortly after the launch of their flagship Galaxy S3, Samsung announced their dual-core Exynos 5 (scalable) chipset featuring new ARM Mali T604 GPU (50% faster than the ARM Mali400 used in previous Exynos chipsets). ARM Cortex A15 based CPUs would automatically increase per core performance (clock for clock) by near 50% compared to previous generation. Basically, a quad-core Cortex A15 would even beat the Snapdragon S4 Pro Krait quad-cores by some 10-15% (depending on clock speeds). We expect the processor to be manufactured on Samsung's own 32nm process.
OS: Without doubt Google would stuff their latest and greatest hardware with software. Android 4.2 (internally known as Key Lime Pie) will continue on the redemption path set by Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (that is, of fixing Android 4.0 ICS and all of Android's issues one by one) with new features, most notably Project Roadrunner. Like Project Butter was to super fast and lag-free user interface, Project Roadrunner is to long battery life. We really hope this feature makes it soon, battery life is something all Android phones desperately need (unless you have a Droid Razr MAXX that is).
Pricing: Sounds all fantastic, so what about the pricing? With features such as these, the Nexus 10 will be everything but cheap. We know that Google is planning on a Nexus 7 32 GB which should take a price tag of near $299. This opens up the window for a $349-$499 tablet by Google. Now we know one thing for sure, this tablet won't be that cheap (it's more of a can't with the feature set). So we firmly believe Google will launch a 16 GB Nexus 10 tablet for $449, and probably a 32 GB Nexus 10 tablet for $549. At these prices, Google will remain competitive to the iPad as well as competing Android tablets and at the same time offer the most premium of the devices.
It's all very exciting, and the next few months will continue to unpack more info and reports leading up to an eventual launch somewhere in the end of 2012 time frame (or Q1 2013). What we know for certain is that, we can't wait!