The star attraction of Google’s annual I/O event next week will be an upgraded version of the hugely popular Nexus 7 tablet – a Nexus 7 MK2, if you will.
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who tends to have a rather good track record of predicting tech trends and happenings, believes that Google will announce a brand new Nexus tablet at the event. He confirms that Google has again paired with Asus to manufacture the tablet, which will remain 7-inches in size, although with upgraded internals.
Most notably, Google and Asus have made the switch from Nvidia to Qualcomm for the processor. Whereas the Nexus 7 uses an Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core chip, the new model will use the very new and very fast Snapdragon Pro S4 chip from Qualcomm, which will be quad-core again and clocked at 1.5GHz.
As is tradition, the new gadget will be the first to run Google’s latest version of Android, which it will also reveal at the show. As we’ve heard recently, this will be version 4.3, dubbed ‘Jelly Bean’, rather than version 5.0 or the name ‘Key Lime Pie’, as was originally thought.
Another big change is in the camera department, with Google set to resolve one of the main gripes of the Nexus 7; no rear camera. Ming-Chi Kuo believes that Google and Asus will implement a 5 megapixel camera on the back of the tablet, which would be a great update from, er, no camera at all.
The screen estimations fall in line with other previous Nexus 7 MK2 rumours in that the size will stay at 7-inches but the resolution will jump to 1920 x 1080, which is Full HD.
All in all we very much like the sound of these specs and hope they’re accurate to what Google will inevitably announce at I/O on the 15th of this month. What would you change about the Nexus 7?