Android and Me |
- Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ goes down to $349 on Google Play
- Google+ lands official tablet app and events with Google calendar support
- Nexus Q is the world’s first social streaming media player
- Jelly Bean: Google Now, Project Butter, enhanced notifications and more
- Nexus 7 full details outed early Update: Now official and available for pre-order
- Android and Me Google I/O 2012 Live Blog
- Four ways Google can make the Nexus 7 a success
| Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ goes down to $349 on Google Play Posted: 27 Jun 2012 12:14 PM PDT  If you’ve been waiting to pick up a T-Mobile and AT&T compatible GSM Galaxy Nexus from Google Play, today’s your lucky today. Along with putting the Nexus 7 and Nexus Q up for preorder, Google has knocked the price of the unlocked HSPA+ compatible Galaxy Nexus down to just $349. We’ve certainly had our say on the Galaxy Nexus here at Android and Me. Some good, and some bad. But no matter how you slice it, $349 for one of the best Android devices money can buy is an absolute steal. That’s incredibly close to what you’d pay for some Android devices on-contract. And for the one that’s guaranteed to get Jelly Bean first, well, like I said, it’s an absolute steal. I’ve been very happy with my Galaxy Nexus. So what are you waiting for? Is the Galaxy S III still tempting you? Perhaps you still have you eye on the One X? Let us know in the comments below.
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| Google+ lands official tablet app and events with Google calendar support Posted: 27 Jun 2012 11:42 AM PDT  Did you really think we’d get through a Google event without seeing what’s new with Google+? Google is always touting the numbers and services behind its social network whenever they get the chance, and today at I/O is no different. It seems like the network was just launching yesterday, but tomorrow, Google+ will be one year old. So how has it fared over the past year? According to Google, not too bad. Here’s how the numbers break down:
Those numbers are poised to go up, thanks to a little help from the new Google+ tablet app. Available on Android today, the Google+ tablet app looks great. It’s fast, it’s fluid and it puts content from your stream front and center. For those of you not using an Android tablet, an iPad version of the app is coming out soon. Also announced today, Google+ will be adding support for events that integrate with your Google calendar. By using a before, during and after mode, Google+ events will help keep photos and information organized surrounding the event. For example, during the event time, Google+ will ask if you’d like to share any photos taken to the event page. And afterwards, you’ll be reminded to share and tag pictures. Google+ events will be available to the public sometime in the near future.
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| Nexus Q is the world’s first social streaming media player Posted: 27 Jun 2012 11:01 AM PDT  Alongside Jelly Bean and the Nexus 7, Google has unveiled an interesting piece of new hardware called the Nexus Q. The Nexus Q is a cloud connected jukebox. It works as a sort of receiver for Google Play connected devices, allowing anyone with access to Google Music or YouTube, as just two examples, to play music or videos on whatever the Nexus Q is hooked up to. If you have your Nexus Q hooked up to a set a speakers (like the $399 pair being sold on Google Play), anyone who connects their device to that Nexus Q can play music through those speakers. No need to pass around phones or connect to different accounts. As far as the tech specs, the Nexus Q features optical audio, an ethernet port, micro HDMI port, micro USB and banana jack speaker outputs, all wrapped in a solid black ball shaped casing, surrounded by a ring of 32 color changing LED lights. The Nexus Q will be available in mid-July for $299. For more information on the Nexus Q, check out the dedicated web page for the Q here.
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| Jelly Bean: Google Now, Project Butter, enhanced notifications and more Posted: 27 Jun 2012 10:37 AM PDT  Google has officially announced and detailed Jelly Bean, Android 4.1. And it’s better than we could have possibly imagined. There’s a ton of technical changes and new features that will keep Android ahead of the curve. Let’s take a look at what the update will include. Jelly Bean will be smoother than any other Android version before it thanks to Project Butter. By using “triple buffered graphics,” Jelly Bean will feature faster and more consistent frame rates, creating a visually pleasing experience. Google used a super high speed camera to film animations on a stock Ice Cream Sandwich and stock Jelly Bean device. The difference was night and day. Android already has the best notification system in mobile today. With Jelly Bean, it’s going to get even better. Notifications are going to be expandable and collapsible in Jelly Bean, and they’ll feature developer customizable quick actions. For example, when you get a Four Square notification, you can expand it in the notification shade, and either like or comment on the notification without ever having to enter the app. Voice input is about to get a whole lot better in Jelly Bean too. From here on out, Voice Typing will no longer require an Internet connection. It will only be available in US English at first, but it should expand before too long. Google Now and the new Jelly Bean flavored enhanced Google search is hands down the most exciting feature to come out of I/O so far. When asking Google simple questions like what’s the weather, a card will pop up and tell you the weather. You can use Voice Typing to ask questions, and have the answers on cards read back to you. This is essentially Google’s answer to Siri. And it looks fantastic. Google Now takes the new Google search, and adds a personal assistant feature. Accessible by clicking the Google search bar or by swiping up from the bottom of the screen, Google Now will auto-populate information in certain cards, like sports scores, and use previous searches, calendar events and your location to provide you with other smart information. The more you use it, the better it gets. Jelly Bean will be hitting the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus S and Motorola Xoom in mid-July. We’ll be bringing you much more on Jelly Bean and the news out of I/O as the day rolls on. Stay tuned!
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| Nexus 7 full details outed early Update: Now official and available for pre-order Posted: 27 Jun 2012 09:27 AM PDT  Apparently Google forgot to lock up the Nexus 7 area in the Google Play Store this morning and Modaco went ahead and let themselves in. We’ve had some images and rumored details leaked already, but this is pretty much every last nugget of information you could be looking for regarding the Nexus 7. Hit the image at the bottom of the post for the full page image, but here are the highlights. The Nexus 7 will come in 8 and 16 GB versions, The Nexus 7 will come with a $25 credit for the Play store for a limited time only along with some content including the movie Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, the Bourne Dominion book and some magazines. The full specs rundown is as follows:
Gallery
It’s an amazing list of specs for the price and assuming Google supports the Nexus 7 beyond just the hardware I think they have a definite hit on their hands. Update: Official press images available in gallery above. Update 2: The Nexus 7 is available in Google Play today and will be shipping in mid-July.
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| Android and Me Google I/O 2012 Live Blog Posted: 27 Jun 2012 09:19 AM PDT  This is it, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Google is all set to unveil the Nexus 7, Nexus Q (?!) and Jelly Bean, and we’re all set to give you our input as the even unfolds. Sit back, relax and feel free to chime in using the comments below.
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| Four ways Google can make the Nexus 7 a success Posted: 27 Jun 2012 06:19 AM PDT  It’s pretty much set in stone at this point that Google will unveil the Nexus 7 tablet today at the kickoff of Google’s I/O developer conference in San Francisco. With the Nexus 7, Google is hoping to make a dent in the tablet market dominated by Apple’s iPad, whose only competition came (briefly) from the sub-$250 Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet hybrid ereader/tablet devices. There have been many Android tablets released in the last 18 months, and all have failed to generate meaningful sales. So can Google’s Nexus 7 be the tablet that finally breaks this trend and gives Apple the competition the tablet market so sorely needs? We obviously hope so, but Google and Co. will need to focus on four key areas to generate consumer interest in their Android 4.1 slate. AppsThe biggest gripe with Android tablets thus far have been the severe lack of applications available that are customized to the larger screens. The remedy thus far has been blown-up phone applications, which look awful on a 10″ screen. Google has a slight advantage here in that these applications look fairly decent on the 7″ screens, but Google still needs to push developers to put out versions of their applications that take full advantage of the larger displays afforded to them by tablets. Google has previously said that it wants to double down on tablets this year, and with Google I/O set to kick off today, Google has a perfect opportunity to reach the developers it needs to get this goal accomplished. Here’s hoping Google places a focus on apps when it takes the stage later this morning. Price PointWhen it comes to getting the most people to adopt a product that doesn’t have an Apple logo on the side, pricing is key. Amazon showed the power of the bargain when it unveiled the $200 Kindle Fire, which sold like hotcakes throughout the holiday season. Other Android tabs have been fairly expensive, with price points mirroring Apple’s iPad, and sales have obviously suffered. In order for Google to have a shot at success, it will need to keep the price point low. Fortunately, it looks like Google is doing the right thing here. We first suggested that the Nexus Tablet would retail for $149-$199, and all signs recently are pointing to an 8GB model for $199, and a 16GB model for $249. This is with a fully-powered Tegra 3 quad-core processor inside, giving Google the unquestionable leg up against the low-cost competition. MarketingMarketing is something Apple has done extremely well with its iPhone and iPad devices. Adverts for Apple’s leading slate are everywhere, from your television, to the websites you visit, and even on many bus stop benches. Amazon’s marketing with the Kindle Fire was almost equally impressive, with the tablet plastered all across Amazon’s homepage, as well as a few TV ads geared at generating large amounts of sales. How many people use Google? That’s right, a crapton. While Google usually doesn’t do more than text ads on its own page, we’d like to see Google do more of a visual push on the Nexus 7, perhaps featuring it in the daily doodle a few times in the first few weeks. Google will also need to buy some TV spots in key markets, similar to what it and Samsung did with the Galaxy Nexus device, one of the few Android phones people actually lined up at stores to purchase (see also: Galaxy S III). In short, the advertising campaign needs to be large scale if Google is to successfully push the Nexus 7 tablet. EcosystemAgain, how many people use Google’s services? From Drive to Gmail, hundreds of millions of people are using Google’s services every day, and even though competing tablets can hook you into these services, nobody does it as well as Google itself. The Android Google experience is head and shoulders above the competition, and Google needs to demonstrate that ecosystem experience in its marketing campaign. Google is also set to launch a true cloud storage platform to rival that offered by the likes of Amazon and Dropbox. Imagine if Google offered something extra–say, 50-100GB of free storage–if you purchase a Nexus 7 tablet. The costs to Google would be fairly minimal, and free cloud storage is a strong incentive to get people to purchase a tablet, especially when the tablet only costs $200. And the return for Google is two-fold, not only do they get more Android tablets (and therefore, search revenue) in the hands of consumers, they tie these customers into their cloud storage service, and as more and more services move to the cloud, people would likely upgrade to Google’s higher storage tiers. So too with a tie-in to Google Music, another under-performing service Google is hoping to bolster. ConclusionGoogle I/O is set to kick off in just a few short hours, and we should learn a lot more about the Nexus 7 tablet very soon. Google has the potential to make the Nexus 7 a runaway success, if only Google puts an adequate amount of focus on apps, pricing, marketing, and the powerful Google ecosystem. Should they do so, we believe the Nexus 7 could finally be the tablet that can help Android emerge as a true competitor in the tablet market.
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