More by luck than judgement, the “Google Nexus 7” arrived yesterday eveningafter falling off my mountain bike on the way home (another story for another day), I arrived at a friend’s house where the parcel had been diverted in the absence of my better half (who was at the dentist). If you’re wondering about the chaotic series of eventsit’s pretty normal. Given that Google didn’t notify me the parcel was coming, it was pure blind luck that we managed to catch it at all.First impressions of it are stellar. I can make direct comparisons against both the second and third generation iPads because we have both of them in the house, and those comparisons leave me wondering if I will touch the iPad again. I can’t help agreeing with M G Siegler in his recent write-up at TechCrunchthe Nexus 7 is as good or better at most things than the iPad, but overall is just easier to carry around with you. The likelihood of throwing it in a bag as you leave the house is far higher than the iPad because it’s easier to carry.
Much has been written about Jelly Beanthe new version of the Android operating system on the Nexus 7. I haven’t really explored it in too much depth yet, but the greater freedom Android gives you in terms of sharing content between applications is a breath of fresh air after the iPad. If anything, the freedom means you need to be more careful about the apps you install, because most of them will be available as sharing destinations for content between each other.
The unexpected killer feature (for me) has been widgets. Although I’ve used an Android phone for the last 18 months, I have never had widgets on the home screens. Given the greater real-estate of the Nexus 7 screen, they finally come into their own. I cannot over-state how good the GMail and Google Calendar widgets are, and how useful it is to have them available at a glance.