Google ‘Nexus 7’ tablet ships in July with Tegra 3, 7-inch display, $199 for 8GB, $249 for 16GB (with video)

“Google is officially in the tablet hardware business,” Matt Burns reports for TechCrunch. “The announcement of the Nexus 7, was spoiled by the Google Play Store.”

“Both 8GB and 16GB models pack a 7-inch 1280×800 HD display (216 ppi) back-lit IPS display covered in ‘Scratch-resistant Corning glass.’ A Terga 3 SoC powers Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) and Google promises the 4325 mAh battery should provide up to 8 hours of use. There’s NFC, GPS and and 1.2MP front-facing camera,” Burns reports. “The 8GB will go for $199 with the 16GB hitting at $249. For a limited time, buyers will get $25 in Google Play store credit with the purchase. Google is taking pre-orders now with shipping expected in 2-3 weeks.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: The market for weak-selling tiny screen tablets gets another entry. 45% the screen area of an iPad, 20% less battery life, Wi-Fi-only, and no apps. Yawn.

One naturally thinks that a 7-inch screen would offer 70% of the benefits of a 10-inch screen. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. The screen measurements are diagonal, so that a 7-inch screen is only 45% as large as iPad’s 10-inch screen. You heard me right: Just 45% as large.

If you take an iPad an hold it upright in portrait view and draw an imaginary horizontal line halfway down the screen, the screens on these 7-inch tablets are a bit smaller than the bottom half of the ipad’s display. This size isn’t sufficient to create great tablet apps in our opinion. While one could increase the resolution of the display to make up for some of the difference, it is meaningless unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one quarter of their present size.

Apple has done extensive user testing on touch interfaces over many years and we really understand this stuff. There are clear limits of how close you can physically place elements on a touchscreen before users cannot reliably tap, flick, or pinch them. This is one of the key reasons we think the 10-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create great tablet apps… The 7-inch tablets are tweeners. Too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad.

These are among the reasons we think the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA. Dead On Arrival. Their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small and increase the size next year, thereby abandoning both customers and developers who jumped on the 7-inch bandwagon with an orphaned product.

Sounds like lots of fun ahead. – Steve Jobs, October 18, 2010

Note that Mr. Jobs never said word one about 7.85-inch devices. 😉

Related articles:
Apple’s revolutionary iPad widens lead as tablet sales surge – June 15, 2012
Apple’s massive domination of tablet market unabated as Amazon’s tiny screen Kindle Fire demand tumbles – June 5, 2012
Apple’s iPad remains dominant in Q112 while Amazon’s tiny screen Kindle Fire fizzles – June 4, 2012
Amazon’s tiny screen Kindle Fire shipments have dropped off a cliff – May 9, 2012
Amazon’s Kindle Fire shipments fizzle to anemic 4% market share – May 4, 2012