2y ago

10 years ago, Google launched the 2nd-gen Nexus 7, and no tablet has captured its magic since

www.androidpolice.com 10 years ago, Google launched the 2nd-gen Nexus 7, and no tablet has captured its magic since

It's been ten years since the 2013 Nexus 7 was released, and no tablet since has recaptured the magic of that era.

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.

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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.

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 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.

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.
- 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.
- Was great value too, back in the days when you could spend a few hundreds dollars and get a top quality phone.

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

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

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!

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.

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.

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.
  https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Tab-M8-2023-Gen-4-LTE-tablet-A-performance-downgrade-for-the-affordable-8-inch-tablet.717060.0.html
  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.
  
  Hmm. I have a Tab S4, a Tab S6 Lite and a Tab S8, and the S8 is markedly quicker.

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

Mine still works
When digging through some stuff from a move in 2018 I noticed a tablet. WTF is this?
Charged it. Booted it up. Nexus 7 v2
Little fucker still was going

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

I had one. Well I still have it, but I stopped using it years ago for some reason. I forget why. I think I ran out of storage or something. Anyways, I had gotten a cheap Fire tablet and that thing sucked, so I dug out my Nexus and somehow wound up bricking it. Yay. Now I have a Tab A8 that's working fine so far.

I'm still enjoying the Pixel C, still a great tablet I think

I had one of these! Loved it 😍

I remember listening the launch of this one in the local radio, the hosts sounded excited, I was excited, everything was great. Never got one though, it was my dream device at the time
- Same! Never had one but definitely wanted one. I also wanted that Nexus 4 with the sparkle back to compliment it but I ended up with the Note 2 for that massive screen.
  Back then people made jokes that I carried an iPad as a phone lol how times have changed

I would vouch for Mi Pad 4 as N7 2nd gen sucessor had it not been for its limiting supply

So far I've been pretty happy with the new Pixel Tablet, hope we see more like it and better in the future.

NVidia Shield K1 was pretty great too. It was also $200, about the same size (8"), 1920x1200 screen, fairly stock android, and had a pretty speedy chipset. It even had decent speakers. Came out 2014. I really liked that thing. I got it to replace my first Nexus 7 (2012), whose storage had decayed really fast, to the point it wasn't really usable anymore.

I won mine off a KitKat bar. Still have it, a little sluggish but it works.
- I had a gen 1, I bought my mom a gen 2. Mine is long since unusable, maybe if I rolled back to an earlier release it would have been better. My mom is just starting to think about replacing hers, though her usage is light. So is mine, for that matter, I actually replaced mine with e-ink Kindles.

I still have mine, changed screen 2 times, battery is weak, but it is still used daily to watch videos. I installed Lineage on it. I have it for 10 years, it is still pretty snappy!

Loved the Nexus 7. I remember getting the 4G model and finally being able to do crap on my way to work (back in the days when 4G connectivity was hard to get back on Android tablets)

Aaah tablets, the grown ups toy.

No android tablet since then you mean. I loved that thing. I still use Pixel phones but I caved and bought an iPad. Even the Pixel tablet can't compare.
- How
  
  Sheer processing power, stylus compatibility, and interoperability with computers of the same brand, which Samsung does too. I want an Android tablet that has as good a stylus and CPU speeds, then I would be right on it, because Android is a superior mobile OS in many ways. I loved my Nexus 7 and my ASUS Transformer but they just weren't there yet.

Ugh yes, I have been talking about it ever since, I got an 8inch cheap Chinese tablet to use as an e reader and it's ALMOST the same size (and almost the same specs lmao) the only reason I'm not used my nexus 7 is usb c on this on and I soft bricked it trying to put a lightweight OS on it 😢

The Nexus 7 would be absolutely pointless today. It's barely bigger than most phones.
I had one at the time but the form factor was simply inferior to either a 10inch Android offering or any iPad.
- I remember a co-worker having the Dell Streak (5") and being astounded how something that large would fit in your pocket.
  Mind you, a decade later and I still use a phone under that size!
  
  I had that phone also, anytime anyone would see it outside they would marvel at how large it is. Now I have a fold which is even bigger when unfolded. The dell streak from what I remember feels like an s23u would be similar size to it but it was probably larger due to bezels and the aspect ratio
- I disagree. 7" 16:9 is still much more usable than 6.7 20.5:9. And not everyone wants a giant phone. Having a cheap, usable tablet would be very useful for a lot of people.
- Agreed, this is rationale for my comment about the Duet 3. Its the "new kind of tablet" for today. And cheap.

105 comments