The latest addition to Google’s Nexus family has finally arrived in the form of a $399 10.1” tabled dubbed the Nexus 10.
In an effort to capitalize upon their wildly successful Nexus 7, Google has now introduced the so-called Nexus 10, a larger 10.1” tablet that has an envious feature set. Produced by Samsung and perfected by Google’s internal design teams, the hope is that this new Nexus model will provide a reasonable alternative to Apple’s refreshed iPad.
There’s no doubt the Nexus 10 is a flagship device. It boasts a dual core Cortex A15-based Exynos 5250 CPU clocked at 1.7GHz alongside which resides a dedicated Mali T604 GPU for graphics acceleration and 2GB of RAM. Regardless of those drool-worthy specifications, the Nexus 10 is still able to offer up to nine hours of battery life or 500 hours of standby time courtesy of its 9,000 mAh battery. All of this runs smoothly courtesy of Google’s new Android 4.2 operating system and is crammed into a chassis that is a mere 8.9mm thick while weighing in at 603 grams.
The screen meanwhile comes in at a Retina display defying resolution of 2560 x 1600 (or 300ppi for those keeping track of such things) and is flanked by a pair of front facing speakers. Connectivity is particularly impressive with NFC for Android Beam (among other uses), Bluetooth 4.0, Micro USB, Micro HDMI, a 3.5mm headphone jack and the usual WiFi 802.11 b/g/n support with MIMO and HT40. Unfortunately, an LTE cellular version is not planned for the time being.
Unlike the smaller, less expensive Nexus 7, the Nexus 10 comes with a full allotment of cameras. The primary lens (on the back side) uses a 5-megapixel sensor while the front facing camera is rated at 1.9MP.
The Nexus 10 may be loosely based off of Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy 2 10.1 but many of the Android faithful have already taken to social media, deriding the design choices. Indeed, the Nexus 10 really does look like a product that was cobbled together in a dark room filled with lawyers, in a desperate attempt to avoid Apple’s design patents. The result is a 10” tablet with flared edges, mounds of plastic and an oversized bezel.
In keeping with its budget-conscious mentality, Google is keeping their Nexus 10 in affordable territory with a starting price of just $399 for the 16GB WiFi version. The larger capacity 32GB edition tacks a on a $100 premium. This means Apple’s iPad with Retina display has been undercut by a solid $100 in both the 16GB and 32GB markets.
While pre-orders of the Nexus 10 are available now on the Google Play store (in Canada, the USA and some European countries), the new tablets will only begin shipping on November 13th.
