Anyone got a Nexus 7?

[Pete.]

I'm thinking about getting work to by me one of these in lieu of my laptop. I find the laptop bulky and awkward to lug around, the battery life isn't great and it takes time to boot up.

The nexus 7 seems to tick a lot of boxes for my job. Portable, fast boot, built-in camera, long battery life. Most of the guys use Iphones and Ipads, but I don't want a 10" device and I quite like android having had android phones for a good few years now.

What I will use it for will be taking progress photos, the odd video, emails, writing method statements, excel spreadsheets (or equivalent).

Mostly I'm fed up with the size and inconvenience of my Toshiba laptop, but it's been to hell and back with me, bounced about in the back of the van endlessly - bounced down the road even when I went superman over a guy's bonnet, rained on, and though it's battered and bruised it keeps chugging like a champ. Can I expect anything like such rugged service from a tablet, if I perhaps get one of those cushioned pouches?
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a.k.a 'Geri'

132.9mph off and walked away. Gear is good, gear is good, gear is very very good

[Aff]

Like most tablets, it's good at what it was made for, consuming content. Reading forums, watching videos, generally wasting time, its perfect and I love mine.

But for creating content they are pretty limited. Touch keyboards are slow to type and touch screens make navigating crowded websites slow.

Main problem i can see for you is the lack of camera, the nexus 7 only has a 1MP front facing camera, so useless for photographing and taking video, apart from Skype. I also wish it had an HDMI port.

However if you wait for the new Nexus 7 to come out (where they have made pointless improvements) you will be able to get a second hand 16GB for under £100 which is well worth it.
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[Pete.]

Aah that's a deal killer then, I was hoping it could save me having to carry my camera about too.
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a.k.a 'Geri'

132.9mph off and walked away. Gear is good, gear is good, gear is very very good

[bazza]

Hold on for the new one (Septemberish). The current Nexus 7 only has a forward-facing camera.
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"That's it. You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college."
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[Pete.]

I can wait that long. Are the specs out for the new version? Does it have a good camera?
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a.k.a 'Geri'

132.9mph off and walked away. Gear is good, gear is good, gear is very very good

[ajag]

Found this: https://www.engadget.com/2013/07/29/nexus-7-review-2013/
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Street Triple

[Scotsman37]

You could use a bluetooth mouse and even a keyboard with it, but I would prefer the Nexus 10'' for reading ebooks/emagazines or use with Facebook games.

There is alternatives out there the Asus TF700 series which has an optional keyboard attachment, or even the Acer tablet and both of those have quadcores with an nVidia graphics chip. Both items have plenty of inputs for adding devices/memory.

Nexus is a good choice, but what do you really want to do with it in the end because you may find the ones I mentioned above or something similar will suffice for what you need? So, don't get roped into buying the latest just see what you need that will do the job, and while your normal laptop can do the rest because tablets are still very limited compared to a normal laptop which can do far more and is far more suited to office work and even gaming while the tablet is better for book reading, simple surfing and using with facebook/twitter, etc.

[el_oso]

depending on how much stuff you are writing 7" is too small imo.
I certainly wouldn't want to be writing code on 7 inches, however I wouldn't want to be lugging a 10" around if I wasn't carrying a bag with me all the time. getting that balance between portability and functionality is quite difficult. You can get away with 7" but if you really wanted to do some reasonably serious work outside of general web browsing, watching movies, playing music and reading a few e-books (which I think is where it excels because it is just small enough to carry in one hand but big enough not being difficult to work with)
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[bazza]

Manually typing reports and the like would be a bit of a pain. However, this:

https://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-activate-voice-input-on-the-nexus-7-keyboar.html

makes it a lot easier.
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"That's it. You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college."
'98 Ducati 750SS, '08 Suzuki GSX650F ©2004-2014, Bazza's Harmless Banter

[FriendlyEllis]

September?
https://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/features/tablets/3460242/new-nexus-7-2-release-date-price-specs/

[Carl_steveo]

There was three problems with the nexus 7 depending on the month you bought it. Some had an issue that when you bought it the volume was too loud out the box that the start up sound blew the speakers. Second issue was the USB cable was faulty so stopped charging the unit and not covered by the manufacturers warranty. Third issued was a power fault, that turned out to be the fact that the battery was loose on a batch of units this was fixed by Asus by sellotaping the battery into place.
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Luke "cant be arsed to read your post, but suck my balls anyway."

[Pete.]

[Seb]

Alternatively, an ipad mini in a griffon/otterbox case might be worth a shout. It all depends on if the new Nexus improves on the current model's rather frail screen mounts imo.

*edit* at the risk of sounding like I'm agreeing with Scotsman, have you seen the oldish Vaio P series machines? 8 inch but with a slimmer narrower profile than most tablets so highly pocket friendly, plus being a clamshell you've got a little extra screen protection right out of the box, you'd likely want to stick with a seperate camera for the progress photos but it'll give you proper MS office and a quality keyboard for the emails and spreadsheets. Worth a look if you're not too sure on the move to a tablet.
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2010 Triumph 1050 Sprint ST

[Stevie GooGs]

If i was you i would get a tablet/netbook, one that clicks into a dock that you can use both in netbook or tablet mode. I have had the transformer original, transformer prime and nexus 7 (still go the nexus 7). I really wanted a tablet/netbook to work for what i wanted but i had issues with android and what i needed it to do, so i go the nexus 7 basically as browser and ereader nothing more.
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[Pete.]

Well, this evening I borrowed (mugged a child for) an iPad mini and took some sample photos - pretty good. Then I typed out a few passages of text, and to my great surprise found that so long as I propped up the back a bit it was pretty comfortable and I could type just as slowly as with a proper keyboard and with perfect spelling. Not a single missed key.

Now I don't want an iPad, but I at least know that I can type comfortably on the on-screen keyboard. I guess I'm going to have to go out an test-drive a few devices.
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a.k.a 'Geri'

132.9mph off and walked away. Gear is good, gear is good, gear is very very good

[huskie69]

I'm a Nexus 4 and 7 owner and the one thing I can't live without now is the way you can enter text via the on screen keyboard by just swiping your finger from one key to the next in sequence (I think there may have been an app which had similar features called Swype but I never used it). Dunno what the feature is called but it's available from android 4.2 onwards and it's incredibly accurate.
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'10 Skyjet SJ125-23 - Crashed > '09 YBR 125 > '53 Suzuki SV650 - Died > 2010 Suzuki VanVan 125 > '87 Yamaha FZ750 Sold > VTR 1000 FireStorm - Sold > Honda CB1000R

[stigger]

Samsung Galaxy Tab 7" or note 8" both have rear cameras...

[Omega]

I've been well impressed with mine. Get a lot more use out of it than I expected too. Most web sites work well on the smaller screen size. Hopefully the camera will be half decent on the newer one.

[bazza]

[Hetzer]

Both my kids have had one since xmas and they're going great.

Probably hexed them now.
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"There's the horizon! Ride hard, ride fast and cut down all who stand in your way!"