I’ve been using my nexus 7 for just under a week now (16GB). I figured I’d collect my thoughts on this lazy Sunday morning. I’ve mostly used iOS devices since 2007 and have just sold a one year old ipad mini (potentially waiting for a retina mini). Main reason I got an N7 was that, since getting the mini, my ipad use had consisted almost entirely of reading twitter, Gaf and RSS feeds...
General impression is that the N7 a very good tablet for reading twitter, Gaf and RSS feeds. The screen is gorgeous, the unit is light and solid and it’s pretty responsive.
So, regarding screen size compared to the ipad mini, I find the 7” widescreen display is just fine for reading single column text. pages render great and are very easy to read.
But if, for whatever reason, I want to “take in” the design of a complete page. stuff like nytimes or The Verge (or non mobile gaf), the narrow aspect ratio and smaller size makes it a little harder to read than using the ipad mini - even though the mini has a lower screen res. But once I double tap to zoom into an article, it’s A-OK.
Apps:
I found some good apps for twitter and feedly on the Play store. I needed tweet marker support for the twitter app and a simple, clean UI for the feedly syncing (not a huge fan of the feedly app on any platform).
I think Plume for twitter and Press for RSS/feedly are excellent. Maybe missing that very last bit of polish found in the best iOS apps but certainly good enough for most (good enough for me, FWIW) and, of course, they can offer some functionality not found in iOS versions like seamless background updating (which only just got added in iOS 7 but not all apps use it)
Some other apps were less impressive. I don’t know why the imdb app is formatted the way it is but the top half of the screen is fixed and the space for new content is mostly limited to the bottom, scrollable half. it makes the app feel cramped.
The Flipboard app looks like the ipad version on the homepage but actual articles are more constrained and render as single column text whereas the ipad version feels more magazine-like with multiple columns and images mixed together.
And the tumblr app is really slow and bad. this one puzzles me. gifs do not load at all unless you tap them and then they run way slower than just loading tumblr in Chrome. Not sure what’s going on here as the iOS situation is different - the tumblr app is faster than loading tumblr in safari.
The nexus 7 has issues with gifs in general. animating them eats battery and heats up the top third of the device to hotter-than-ipad3-levels. and they run waaaay slower than on the ipad mini.
Also, they don’t animate at all in mobile gaf but I wonder if that’s a mobile gaf thing and not a Chrome/Android thing. This may seem small but it could be a deal breaker. I need my gaf gifs!
I have not found the kinds of unique apps that I like on the iPad. Stuff similar to The Elements, Korg iElectribe, Brian Cox Wonders of the Universe. But the flip side is that there are SNES emulators and apps to modify OS level stuff like Do Not disturb functions (glad I found this one). so that’s a bit of give and take. Depends what your priorities are
I did find a very good comics reader very easily. Sidebooks supports dropbox, renders files super fast. lots of touch options. very, very nice. And it’s free!
Other Android 4.3 thoughts:
I really like the notification shade in Android. easy to clear all items, access to the music controls, some items are directly actionable. And it doesn’t take up the entire screen like NC on iOS 7 on the iPad. The control center shade on the right side of the screen is also useful.
I would prefer if the UI for the entire OS was not black but I am glad that Google’s UI for their apps are mostly greyish and white. very clean.
I still have limited use for widgets. I put an accuweather forecast widget up there. But no need for RSS or email widgets. seeing limited info of those items is not that important to me as I can’t really action anything unless I get into the app. I think the library widget to get shortcuts to media you’ve bought on the play store is pretty handy.
Scrolling, panning performance across the system is a mixed bag. It is still not as smooth as the one year old ipad mini (which uses a 2 year old CPU). Scrolling in Chrome is close to the ipad and generally good enough. I know the acceleration curves are way different between OSes but I can get used to either after a minute. But pinch to zoom performance in Chrome is awful. Don’t know why but it’s animating at under 30fps. definitely not smooth. double tap to zoom is fast and good. but pinch to zoom is not.
I’ll continue to use the Nexus 7 for the next couple weeks at least. The gif animating issue is a surprisingly big one for me as I do browse tumblr everyday and lots of gaf threads are more fun when the gifs actually, y’know, animate. But I can shift some of that time browsing those sites to the laptop.
I’d say if the ONLY ipad Apple sold was $500 for the 10” model, the $230 for the Nexus 7 would be a no-brainer for more people. But with a mini coming in at $330, it becomes a tougher decision and you need to balance what your requirements really are and what’s more important to you. The ipad mini is better at some things (apps designed for larger screen, more games, better performance with some multituch gestures) but the N7 is more portable, customizable, has a sharper screen, and is cheaper. I hope the screen res difference becomes moot after the new mini is announced this month. If it doesn’t then it remains a big, easily noticeable advantage of the N7 for another year.
score: 83 slices of individually wrapped american cheese out of 100.
edit: after a reboot, gifs now animate in gaf. I don’t know if this is something that will reoccur.