Software, Performance, Battery Life

The Nexus 7 runs pure Android iv.iii 'Jelly Bean' without any device-specific customizations. The result is a practiced blend of optimization, design and functionality, with most aspects of the standard Android smartphone software transitioning very well to small tablets, particularly after a lot of refinement since Android 3.0.

In my last review I chastised Sony for not optimizing the Xperia Z Ultra'due south software for the big screen, merely the Nexus 7 is an entirely different ball-game. For starters, the OS itself is running in a tablet-specific fashion, designed for devices of this screen size, complete with an optimized lockscreen, app drawer, notification pane and homescreens. Each of the apps also runs in a tablet fashion, pregnant more data is displayed on the screen compared to the smartphone versions.

For example, the agenda app shows the calendar week view and a small-scale month view side past side, and the contacts app evidence both a list of contacts and contact info in ane screen. These optimizations extend to all Google-fabricated apps and that's exactly what you want to see.

Unfortunately one of the chief downsides to purchasing an Android-powered tablet is the small selection of awesome tablet apps y'all can find in the Google Play Store. 3rd-party apps are clearly not upward to the standard found in the iOS App Store, and although there are some actually practiced apps to be found and enjoyed, there just isn't enough of them. The problem certainly isn't as bad as with Windows Phone or Windows eight – with Android on tablets I see improvements each month – simply at the same time it could certainly be amend.

On the upside, you'll find no shortage of solid, loftier-quality games to play on the powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset, which is something I'll await at below.

Performance

When choosing an SoC for the new Nexus 7, Asus decided to ditch Nvidia in favor of Qualcomm, incorporating a Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset into the tablet. Tearing downwardly the Nexus 7 reveals the SoC is an APQ8064-1AA, which is actually closer to a Snapdragon 600 than the S4 Pro information technology's branded as, due to the inclusion of Krait 300 CPU cores as opposed to Krait 200s usually institute in the S4 line.

The APQ8064-1AA features a quad-core Krait 300 processor clocked at 1.5 GHz, alongside an Adreno 320 GPU clocked at 400 MHz, an LPDDR3 memory controller, a Hexagon QDSP6V4 digital indicate processor (DSP), and radios for Bluetooth 4.0 and dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/thou/n. The chip is produced using a 28nm LP process, and is very like to the APQ8064 SoC seen in the LG-fabricated Nexus 4, if not a little faster.

Aslope the Snapdragon SoC is 2 GB of RAM and sixteen GB / 32 GB of internal storage. Unfortunately at that place's no microSD card slot to aggrandize the storage, though I withal establish it to be plenty of infinite even on the 16 GB model. There's as well a version available with LTE connectivity, although for this review we tested the Wi-Fi only model.

As with essentially all devices in the upper operation echelon these days, the Nexus seven is a shine and capable performer. Android feels well optimized for the device, and then you're always getting the interface rendered at sixty frames per second with no lag to speak of. App switching is fast, and 2 GB of RAM allows a lot of applications to exist stored for quick access, although task management isn't as fast as contempo Snapdragon 800 CPUs I've used.

In the early days of Google's Chrome browser for Android, which is the merely browser included out of the box on the Nexus seven, it wasn't exactly the fastest or almost stable piece of software. However, improvements to both Android and Chrome, especially in recent months, take made Chrome much nicer to use. It can be a little slow when zooming in or switching tabs while you lot wait for the webpage to re-render, simply overall I was happy with the browsing capabilities of the vii-inch device.

The Adreno 320 GPU inside the Nexus 7's SoC is snappy, and despite it needing to render over 2.three million pixels, it's more than capable of running today'southward Android games smoothly. Everything from my personal favorite games such as Existent Racing 3, to console-to-Android ports like 1000 Theft Motorcar Iii run fluidly and shut to lx frames per second on the Nexus 7. The large screen also helps to make this a worthy portable gaming system, easily every bit capable every bit the summit-end smartphones simply for a fraction of the price.

Looking at benchmark results, the tablet performs equally expected. In Vellamo it scored 20% lower than Snapdragon 600-powered smartphones, although this can partly by explained by a ~15% clock speed decrease. It's also a lilliputian slower than other devices in the Peacekeeper criterion, although it was expected considering the Krait 300 cores and 1.5 GHz clock speed.

The Nexus vii's Adreno 320 GPU also performs on-par with other Adreno 320-powered devices in GFXBench, although you can come across the newer Adreno 330 in the Xperia Z Ultra powering ahead with a 50% lead.

Bombardment Life

In an interesting motion, Asus has reduced the bombardment size of the new Nexus 7 opting for a 15 Wh (3950 mAh) battery over a 16 Wh (4325 mAh) unit of measurement. Clearly this motility was made to slim down the device, and as the SoC has seen a performance boost, the battery life should suffer as a result.

With that said, I plant bombardment life to be very good from the 2nd-gen Nexus vii, perhaps fifty-fifty surpassing the original thanks to software optimizations and a more than power-efficient CPU. Whether you lot're browsing the web on Wi-Fi or watching a video, generally the tablet lasts at least nine hours, if not more if you employ a low effulgence setting.

If yous're large into gaming or high-performance tasks, you could probably go four hours of usage out of a fully-charged Nexus 7, which isn't too bad from a device of this course. Naturally the more than strenuous the job, the less battery life you'll get, just 4 hours is enough to crack through a number of missions in GTA: Vice City or Modern Combat iv.

In our battery rundown test, where we loop a 720p video at 75% brightness in airplane fashion until the bombardment dies, the Nexus 7 performed very well, lasting for viii hours 40 minutes. The relatively high screen brightness ready during the test means you could easily get more if you lot suit the settings, and fifty-fifty so, virtually nine hours is a very respectable effect.