Ten years ago today, Google released the 2nd-generation Nexus 7, just days after a surprise announcement. Back then, Android tablets still felt fresh and exciting. It seemed like anything was possible, and things could only improve from there. Well, we know what happened next. But the depressing state of the tablet market to come was in no way the fault of the Nexus 7. In fact, this is still one of the best Android tablets ever made, and it’s worth looking back and showing it the honor and respect it deserves.
I loved my Nexus 7. The rubbery silicone back of the tablet made it the most comfortable device I have ever held. Meanwhile my laptop and phone made of glass and metal making them cold and slippery
fuck glass, also nexus 5 back is the best
Oh I loved that one
I miss that back cover more than anything! It was so grippy.
Nexus One was the highest build quality Android I ever owned. I miss HTC.
The touch screen got wonky from time to time and the power button ribbon tended to wear out.
N5 was the sweet spot for me.
True, I forgot about the power button dying and needing to hack in trackball wake.
Never had screen issues.
I don’t remember the exact details but it was something related to multi touch calibration. Turning the screen off and back on fixed it.
The Nexus 7’s data storage became extremely slow after a while. The device became completely unusable.
A short while after the Nexus 7, many mobile phones screen got bigger, so the 7-inch screen size became sort of obsolete.
That was my experience with the 2012 model. Once it received the 5.0 Lollipop update, it couldn’t handle basic tasks without significant slowdowns. CyanogenMod improved things a bit, but it was never the same after about 3 years of use.
Aspect ratio is different, so the tablets screen was still noticeably bigger.
I still have it and still use it occasionally. But yes, performance is often bad. Always suspected it was the storage but couldn’t understand why or how it could become slower over time. Because I don’t remember it being this slow when it was new. I also thought it was the new android updates that came out over time.
I thought that was only the 2012 model, and it was rectified on the 2013 refresh.
As a naive Google fan at that time, I bought the 2012 model when it came out. Google should have recalled the model and provide full refund/exchange.
I had the same issue. The Nexus program was cool for making subsidized, hackable devices available to the masses running pure Android. But the manufacturers seem to have taken a lot of shortcuts with components. Both my Nexus 7 and Nexus 6P (two of them!) eventually failed, and I got a pretty big class action payout for the 6P failing
How much did you get for the class action lawsuit? I took the free upgrade to a Pixel XL like a chump.
I don’t actually remember, it might have been $300-400 for mine since I filed a claim years after the first one overheated and failed, and after already receiving a warranty replacement (which later also failed). Getting a Pixel XL sounds like a good deal!
Okay yeah that seems like a fair trade then. I loved the 6P until it started having hardware problems. A semi scraped up the whole drivers side of my car by merging into my lane without paying attention and I had to pull over to call the police. This was mid-january which was quite cold so my 6P kept dying on me due to undervolting even though the battery was full. It made it impossible to get the police out to me which in turn made it impossible for me to get the drivers insurance to cover the damage to my vehicle.
So technically the 6P probably cost me a couple thousand dollars in insurance payout… but two years later someone hit my car and totaled it so I got paid out for the whole thing anyway. Lucky me I guess.
Oh man that’s terrible. Mine failed when I was abroad and caused me a decent amount of inconvenience (not nearly as much as yours), as I had been planning on using Google Fi for international service. Had to get a cheap loaner phone and sim which took a while and I was stuck with the rest of the summer abroad.
My Nexus 7 still lives and it’s running Android 12. I use it for mostly YouTube these days.
Have you had to do anything to the hardware to get it to keep up? I was using mine as my bedside device up until about a year ago when it got too slow
Nope, just installed Lineage OS. To be clear its the 2nd gen, my 1st gen is worthless, Asus cheeped out on the flash and it degraded rapidly.
Lineage is not perfect, there are little bugs and I have to reboot youtube every now and then, but for just watching video’s its good enough.
What rom?
Lineage OS
The nexus 7 was siesmic in the android tablet market at the time.
Previously, your choices were iPad, equally expensive (but often lacking) android tablets (galaxy tab, moto xoom), or really rather crap cheap offerings (I had a 7" resistive archos that cost me £70…I wish I hadn’t spent the money).
When Google released the N7, it was a big change. It was a small tablet, with enough grunt, a good IPS screen, cohesive software, and was £150.
The fire-sale of the HP touchpad, imho, kicked google off on this. It made google realise that there was a market for a decent android tablet at a lower price point.
There have been very few good affordable Android tablets: both the variants of the Nexus 7, and then the only other one I can recollect is the Amazon Fire Tablet 7, which launched probably sometime in 2015 or 16.
I still have my Nexus 5 somewhere in a drawer, and it’s still my favorite phone ever. Time from time I pick it up, and I get reminded of how good it felt to hold it in the hand. It’s so light. The buttons are at the right place.
I wish they made phones with the same form factor again.
Was great value too, back in the days when you could spend a few hundreds dollars and get a top quality phone.
Damn that phone felt good to hold.
The first phone with Material Design UI, surely felt diffrerent. Although every “premium tier” phone back then would be cheap and plastic by today’s standard.
Oh I meant literally the physical shell of the phone. I actually prefer the slightly grippy, rubbery plastic feel of the Nexus 5 and Nexus 7.
Did the shell become sticky over time?
The nexus 7 2013 supports LineageOS 20 which is android 13
Part of me is intrigued to dig out my N7 and install LoS 20 on it. But I have to imagine that it is slooooooooooooow.
It is slow. But it is OK as a spotify hub for house parties
The 2nd gen Nexus 7 was the reason I left Apple hardware and to never return. I loved the iPhone but I got bored of them very quickly. I tried two Android phones and each time absolutely hated the experience and returned to the iPhone. I eventually picked up a Nexus 7 and wow it changed my perception. No bloat. Simple and fast. It felt like an iPhone where the software complimented the hardware. I switched to a Nexus 5 phone and have been with Google phones ever since.
Man, Google really had a great run for a bit there. The Nexus S, Nexus 4, and Nexus 5 were all great phones in my eyes. Both Nexus 7’s were nice tablets, but taking care of the performance issues in the 2nd gen made it great. I know a lot of people also loved the Nexus 6, though way too big for my tastes, and the Galaxy Nexus would have been much better if not for the Texas Instruments CPU hamstringing it. Then they went on to develop the Moto X 2013 and 2014, though I feel they were starting to slip with the 2014.
I loved mine, but sitting a year or two the flash memory had degraded to the point it was completely unusable, even just as a digital photo frame.
The small tablet market is still underserved today, I’m running an iPad mini, which is great, but it’s definitely a second-class citizen compared to the bigger iPads.
That was the first version, the article is about the 2nd gen device where the flash memory problem got fixed.
I had a second gen one, and it suffered less than the first, but definitely did suffer as it aged.
I remember getting both. The first gen was pretty sweet, had an interesting texture on the back. The second one came out in a 3G/4G model and was great. I’ve got it in a draw still, no idea what I could do with it nowadays.
Yes, definitely! I don’t have as much use for a tablet these days, which is an unfortunate thing. My phone is big enough to cover most use cases, and my iPad 2017 is too big to be used comfortably for most things - it’s not ergonomic to hold upright in most conditions, it’s slippery without a folio case (and cases are hard to find unless you get an official Apple one which is very expensive), typing on it is a pain because of how thin it is, and the only saving grace it has in terms of typing is the mini floating swipeable keyboard added to iPad OS in recent years.
I’d definitely love to run something like a Nexus 7 again! Perfect form factor for most things, including media consumption, reading books, and much much more!
This was my first Android device. Still got it, not using it much, but its still working.
Man, I always wanted a Nexus 7, but it was never easy to get one in my country back then. And then Google officially partnered with Amazon and Flipkart to launch the tablet…right after I’d gotten a new iPad.
I remember when it came out, it only launched in a few countries and I was super surprised to see it on the play store in Australia (when historically we usually get fuck all)
I paid 299 AUD for it. An unthinkable price nowadays
I still miss how nice this was when it came out. Rocking a Galaxy Tab S5e with Lineage OS which I’m really enjoying now though.
My Lenovo Duet 3 (8gb) is the only tablet to feel as nice as the Nexus line to me.
Magnetic keyboard, pen, full Chrome via ChromeOS, Android apps, Linux support. And with Code-server its basically a desktop for me when needed, all for $300 at time of purchase.
Agree but the battery is too light for my usage
Really? I use mine like crazy with no issues. I use mostly Android and Chrome apps, and rarely start the Linux container.
If you use the camera it drain the battery really fast. That’s what I noticed. For everything else is ok.
At this point I use all Apple Products (Except for my Ubuntu Desktop) but damn do I miss the Nexus 7 so so so much
iPad Mini is about the same dimensions, though slightly wider.
All other Android tablets that exist in that space have horrible CPUs.
Or just some terrible flaw that’s obnoxious
I have some 8" Lenovo tablet I got years and years ago. It’s fine for videos and such and that’s where I use it most. It also has 2 forward facing speakers. Very decent, balanced sound. Low on space because android sucks under 64GB but it’s manageable
Any “upgrades” to it over the years have had single speakers or some other annoying flaw so I haven’t upgraded
I’ve tried Samsung ones but even their newer ones are slower than my 5 year old one. It’s so annoying
The Lenovo M8 4th Gen is slower than the 3rd Gen. We’re going backwards.
The Nokia T10 is only decent one. The Samsung A7 Lite has bad performance and traditionally poor Samsung OS. Amazon Fire is another option, but I won’t do FireOS.
Ok, that makes it even more sad what they’re doing. Feature wise it was already worse in my experience, but actually worse for performance? Geez
Guess I’ll just have to keep my Tab4 8 alive even longer
Hi friend. Just wanted to alert you the Lenovo Legion Y700 2023 version checks all my boxes, assuming there’s a Global/US version launching…
Thanks, I keep checking their stuff but haven’t seen anything. I’ll take a look
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I had the T10 and it was horrible. The display was poor and pixelated and it took the entire first day to update software, which was required on first login.
I seriously thought to return it, the update was taking so long. Eventually it let me log in.
But then it lasted six months before the screen glitched out and stopped working.
Hmm. I have a Tab S4, a Tab S6 Lite and a Tab S8, and the S8 is markedly quicker.
All Samsung? And maybe that’s the case, relatively, but going from Lenovo with pretty much stock android to a newer Samsung was a very noticeable downgrade
Sorry yes, those are all Samsung model names that I was listing.
Well, I can’t speak for the Lenovo experience as I’ve never used one, and I’ll happily admit that any Samsung device needs a little tweaking to begin with, but I use my Tab S8 regularly for editing 60mb RAW photos off my full-frame camera and I can confidently say it performs very well.
My daughter uses my Tab S6 Lite and it’s more than up to meeting her demands — which includes a lot of educational games and so on.
My son uses my Tab S4 and he’s had no complaints either.
I mean, there’s not much else a tablet is meant for, really!
And now that I look it up, it’s a $500 tablet? This discussion was around the cheap media consumer ones that are $150 give or take. At $500 I would just get a $1000 laptop
None of those are 8.x inches. They’re all 10" or greater. Once we’re talking 10+ inches, I’d just use a Surface Go. It seems nobody besides Apple wants to sell a tablet in that form factor that has decent speed.
Even the Lenovo M9 is vastly superior to the M8 in terms of CPU. Good 8 inch tablets outside the iPad Mini don’t exist. I’d gladly pay $400 for something that’s good on Android. I’ve even thrown money away for a Dell Venue 5855.
The only reason I stopped using my Tab S 8.4 was because you can only get so far trying to keep it alive with LineageOS.
This was my primary device for a couple of years. I didn’t have a phone at all. I could do everything I needed to do. Camera quality was of course terrible, but I had one of those Sony “lens cameras” paired with it, and that worked great.
I even sailed across the Atlantic with the Nexus 7 as my only media device (I packed a Kindle but it died a week in).
That is why I’m considering a foldable now. If only they weren’t so fragile…
They’re not fragile anymore i guess. I use my fold 4 without a cover and unfortunately dropped it a few times recently on hard floor and on rocks once. Nothing happened, no screen scratches also, except for a tiny part on the side of the phone the body got a bump.
I had the first gen, and it wasn’t great in terms of performance, but damn I Ioved it. Very fond memories.
Also, I do have to chuckle at the progress since then. My S23 Ultra’s screen is almost as large at 6.8 inches, yet the overall device is much smaller and obviously much, much, much more powerful. Progress!
Completely different aspect ratios, the tablet had a much larger screen than the s23u
