The New Nexus 9 tablet is now available for preorder

[A_Crummy_Biscuit]

Google has released the Nexus 9 for preorder, a possible competitor for the ipad Air 2?

 

The new Nexus 9 is now available to preorder from Google Play, Amazon and Best Buy.

 

 

There's also a 32GB model for $479. Both are offered in "Indigo Black" and "Lunar White" color options, and coming soon with be a "Sand" color option in 32GB.

 

Other features include an Nvidia Tegra K1 2.3GHz processor (Denver), 2GB of RAM, 8MP rear camera, 1.6MP front camera, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and front-firing stereo speakers, a welcome trait though not unsurprising since HTC was put in charge of manufacturing the Nexus 9.

The 16GB model with Wi-Fi starts at $399.

 

The Nexus 8.9" screen which according to Google allows you to hold it in one hand. It also has a 2048x1536 IPS display. And to help you hold it, it has a soft grip back and also a brushed metal frame.

 

All in all the Nexus 9 looks pretty slick.

 

Source: http://www.maximumpc.com/googles_nexus_9_tablet_now_available_pre-order_2014

 

 

Technical specifications

OS

Android™ 5.0 Lollipop

Screen

8.9" IPS LCD

4:3 aspect ratio

QXGA (2048x1536)

Gorilla Glass 3

Double tap to wake

Rear Camera

8MP

f/2.4

Auto-focus, LED flash

Front Camera

1.6MP

f/2.4

Size

153.68 mm x 228.25 mm x 7.95 mm

Weight

425g

Color

Indigo Black

Lunar White

Sand

Battery²

6700 mAh

Wi-Fi Browsing: Up to 9.5 hours

LTE Browsing: Up to 8.5 hours

Video Playback: Up to 9.5 hours

Wi-Fi Standby: Up to 30 days

LTE Standby: Up to 30 days

CPU

64-bit NVIDIA Tegra K1 Dual Denver @ 2.3GHz

GPU

192-core Kepler GPU

Wi-Fi

802.11ac 2x2 (MIMO)

NFC

Bluetooth 4.1

Memory

2GB RAM

16GB & 32GB storage (actual formatted capacity will be less)

Ports

Micro-USB 2.0

3.5mm audio

Dual front-facing speakers with HTC BoomSound™

Dual microphones

^These are all the specs off the Google Play website.

[TheSLSAMG]

I want one of these just because of the Denver core.

[Imabigmac]

And their gone! 

 

 

JK, give it two hours though.

[Kherm]

I'll just wait 4 weeks and buy it for $70 less.

I read that as $70 OR less  :lol:

[Sidiox]

Interesting device, I wonder how the reviews will be like. Also I would love them to just stop with the front facing speakers, they take up wayyyyy too much space and I nearly always listen to any kind of audio on my smartphone and tablet using headphones anyway, since that is still a lot better than those speakers.

[Sidiox]

I read that as $70 OR less  :lol:

I think that would also do for him... Would be quite an appealing price point, to say the least.

[Toddwjp]

SD card slot??

[A_Crummy_Biscuit]

Interesting device, I wonder how the reviews will be like. Also I would love them to just stop with the front facing speakers, they take up wayyyyy too much space and I nearly always listen to any kind of audio on my smartphone and tablet using headphones anyway, since that is still a lot better than those speakers.

Personally I love front facing speakers.

[A_Crummy_Biscuit]

SD card slot??

Sadly no, for me that's a bit of a deal breaker.

[Sidiox]

Personally I love front facing speakers.

Don't get me wrong, they have a lot better audio quality (my Surface Pro 3 with front facing speakers sounds amazing compaired to my Surface RT gen1), butttt I don't think they amount of extra space they take up on the face of the phone is worth it, since I hardly ever use them anyways

[TheGamingBarrel]

Genuinely more powerful than my laptop.

[Dietrichw]

Interesting device, I wonder how the reviews will be like. Also I would love them to just stop with the front facing speakers, they take up wayyyyy too much space and I nearly always listen to any kind of audio on my smartphone and tablet using headphones anyway, since that is still a lot better than those speakers.

Yeah, with the iPad Air 2 I usually use headphones even though the speakers are actually pretty good. The speakers make the iPad vibrate a little.

[dizmo]

I'd love one of these...however that price will likely keep me away. Might see if I can pick one up sealed off Craigslist or something next year.

 

 

Interesting device, I wonder how the reviews will be like. Also I would love them to just stop with the front facing speakers, they take up wayyyyy too much space and I nearly always listen to any kind of audio on my smartphone and tablet using headphones anyway, since that is still a lot better than those speakers.

I think you're probably one of the very few people that think that..

I mean the space sucks on a phone, but on a tablet where you'll likely have a bag anyway, it's fine.

 

SD card slot??

On a Google device? Please..

[LAwLz]

Don't get me wrong, they have a lot better audio quality (my Surface Pro 3 with front facing speakers sounds amazing compaired to my Surface RT gen1), butttt I don't think they amount of extra space they take up on the face of the phone is worth it, since I hardly ever use them anyways

It takes up next to no space on a tablet. I can understand not wanting it on a phone but come on, this is an 8.9" tablet. It's totally worth spending a bit of extra space on the front for the speakers on a tablet.

 

 

Reviewers are starting to appear on the web by the way. Anand has a "preliminary finding" article, The Verge has a full review and so do GSMArena.

None of them will change my mind on the Nexus 9 though. It's a piece of shit and I hope whoever is responsible gets the punishment they deserve for ruining the Nexus tablet lineup.

[Tonylu1595]

But... its a 8.9 inch screen. Should be named Nexus 8.9

[Sidiox]

It takes up next to no space on a tablet. I can understand not wanting it on a phone but come on, this is an 8.9" tablet. It's totally worth spending a bit of extra space on the front for the speakers on a tablet.

 

 

Reviewers are starting to appear on the web by the way. Anand has a "preliminary finding" article, The Verge has a full review and so do GSMArena.

None of them will change my mind on the Nexus 9 though. It's a piece of shit and I hope whoever is responsible gets the punishment they deserve for ruining the Nexus tablet lineup.

On this Shield it does take up a lot of space (more understandable though since it is a gaming tablet, but it is just a example) And it is not just about the externals, but also the internals, I'm not entirely sure but I assume that front facing speakers would take up more space then bottom/side facing speakers, because of the space needed for the "chamber" or what ever it is called (just a guess though). On my SP3 they also don't take up too much space but they do ruin the clean aesthetic of the device. On phones it is as you say indeed a much much bigger issue and to be frank it is one of the main reasons why I never bought a HTC One M7 nor M8, because the front is just ruined because of those speakers. 

 

I wonder though, why do you hate it so much? It seems to have decent specs, a bit of an odd aspect ratio but that is about it (price wise it is a bit more expensive than previous iterations but still)

[nicholaswillems]

Honestly I'm just very disappointed that the max capacity is 32GB. Most people share a tablet and in my experience, 64GB is a bare minimum.

[zanduh]

Don't get me wrong, they have a lot better audio quality (my Surface Pro 3 with front facing speakers sounds amazing compaired to my Surface RT gen1), butttt I don't think they amount of extra space they take up on the face of the phone is worth it, since I hardly ever use them anyways

Question for you since you own a surface pro 3

Do you use any 3d applications? (maya, blender, zbrush) and if you do can you tell me how well they perform? 

[Sidiox]

Question for you since you own a surface pro 3

Do you use any 3d applications? (maya, blender, zsculpt) and if you do can you tell me how well they perform? 

I've used many 3d applications on my desktop, haven't used them that much on my sp3 yet though. I have however used some 3d chemical simulations and photoshop. It is not too suitable for that, for the simple reason that it will become way too hot, its cooling simply isn't too amazing. For simple editing or fast simulations, it works, that is how I use it, but for any actual serious prolonged work it is not suitable. If you are going to college/uni then it is good device, I use it for that, but don't expect too much performance. For any of the Autodesk stuff you really want a dedicated GPU in your device with good cooling, otherwise you will over heat very fast with any significant poly count. And ofc you can forget about rendering, unless you want molten magnesium .

[zanduh]

I've used many 3d applications on my desktop, haven't used them that much on my sp3 yet though. I have however used some 3d chemical simulations and photoshop. It is not too suitable for that, for the simple reason that it will become way too hot, its cooling simply isn't too amazing. For simple editing or fast simulations, it works, that is how I use it, but for any actual serious prolonged work it is not suitable. If you are going to college/uni then it is good device, I use it for that, but don't expect too much performance. For any of the Autodesk stuff you really want a dedicated GPU in your device with good cooling, otherwise you will over heat very fast with any significant poly count. And ofc you can forget about rendering, unless you want molten magnesium .

 

Ahaha I never dreamed of rendering on the tablet, but I would love to do some sculpting while out of my house. If I could get to like 3 subdivisions and still be able to sculpt relatively smoothly I would buy it. I'll have to find a friend nearby with a pro 3 and test it for myself.

 

The only other option seems to be a powerful laptop with a wacom intuos pad, which just seems really inconvenient

[LAwLz]

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On this Shield it does take up a lot of space (more understandable though since it is a gaming tablet, but it is just a example) And it is not just about the externals, but also the internals, I'm not entirely sure but I assume that front facing speakers would take up more space then bottom/side facing speakers, because of the space needed for the "chamber" or what ever it is called (just a guess though). On my SP3 they also don't take up too much space but they do ruin the clean aesthetic of the device. On phones it is as you say indeed a much much bigger issue and to be frank it is one of the main reasons why I never bought a HTC One M7 nor M8, because the front is just ruined because of those speakers. 

 

I wonder though, why do you hate it so much? It seems to have decent specs, a bit of an odd aspect ratio but that is about it (price wise it is a bit more expensive than previous iterations but still)

Front facing speakers shouldn't take up more space than bottom or rear facing ones internally (if there is proper stereo sound, with mono you can get it smaller).

The Shield Tablet is smaller so yeah, it will take up more spaces than on a 9" tablet. The speaker grills on it are far bigger than they need to be though. Even the front facing speakers on the Nexus 10 are far smaller than the Shield Tablet speakers.

 

I hate it because of the aspect ratio.

I am a huge fan of the Nexus 10. I even imported it in order to get it before the (very late) Swedish release.

Smaller tablets have never made sense to me because I have always had some of the biggest phones on the market, and the size difference between my phone and a small tablet was never enough to justify having two devices.

The Nexus 10 started showing its age fairly quickly. The GPU, or maybe the memory bandwidth was not powerful enough to drive that 2560x1600 display smoothly in all scenarios, the CPU was powerful at launch but quickly got overshadowed by newer chips and so on. So for the past year or so I have eagerly been waiting for the Nexus 10 (2014) or Nexus 11 or whatever it was going to be called. What I got was a huge disappointment.

I got a few main issues with the Nexus 9.

1) The screen is smaller and has a lower PPI - Why does your 6" phone have a higher resolution (and thus much higher PPI) than your 9" tablet? It's not even a 9" tablet, it's 8.9" but more on that later.

2) The screen is considerably smaller. The Nexus 9 is only 83% of the Nexus 10 if you're looking at the total area of the screen. The numbers becomes even worse when you take the aspect ratio into consideration but again, more on that later.

3) Why is there only a 16GB or 32GB option, and that upgrade costs $80/£80? Why do we still have 16GB options in 2014? Sure, I totally get that Google wants you to keep all your stuff in the cloud (on a tablet SKU that don't have cellular data...) but even their Nexus 6 starts at 32GB. 16GB is just not enough these days. The only time I am alright (but still not pleased) with 16GB is if you also give the users the option to add a microSD card, but I already know where Google stands on that subject.

4) The screen is 4:3... This is by far the biggest complaint I got. To explain why I think this is such a horrible idea I want to list what people to use their tablets for (from what I have seen and my personal use).

Watching movies/video - Most modern videos are 16:9 or 21:9. If you want to watch 16:9 on your Nexus 9 then about 25% of your screen will be black bars. If you want to watch 21:9 then about 43% of your screen will be black bars. Yes, almost half of the screen will be black.

For comparison, if you are going to watch a 16:9 video then the image on the Nexus 9 will be as big as on an 8.4" 16:10 tablet. For people who watch a lot of video, Google has just replaced their 10.1" tablet with an 8.4" tablet. That's an enormous downgrade.

Web browsing - Most websites are narrow and tall. If you don't know what I mean by that then just look at it this way. How often to do you scroll sideways on a website relative to how often you scroll up/down? I am willing to bet that most people scroll up and down more than they scroll left and right. This applies to popular apps such as Twitter and Facebook as well. There is far more vertical scrolling going on than horizontal. Putting your 3:2 or 16:10 tablet in portrait mode seems like a far better idea than having a 4:3 tablet for web browsing, RSS feeds, social media and so on.

Gaming - Most of the Android games I have seen are designed for 16:9 or 16:10 screens. It's not really hard to explain why either. Phones and tablets have been 16:9 and 16:10 for ages so it's obvious that most apps will be designed for that. This point will become less and less important if more tablets start going for the 4:3 aspect ratio, but I don't see any indication than Asus, Samsung or Sony are going in that direction with their lineups.

Reading books and comics - This is one area where I will admit that 4:3 is better than 16:10. It is not better than 3:2 though. Most books where I live have the same aspect ratio as the A series of paper, the square root of 2. That puts it pretty much bang in the middle between 3:2 and 4:3. 3:2 being slightly too tall, and 4:3 being slightly too wide. However, there are 2 reasons why I think 3:2 is still better.

1) On books some of the paper becomes unusable because of the binding. That means that the actual text in books are usually slightly more narrow than the actual book itself (and thus making it closer to 3:2).

2) Android has a notification bar as well as a navigation bar. These two eats up some of the vertical resolution.

When you take these two into consideration I think 3:2 becomes the best option for reading things such as books on a screen.

Because of this, I will not upgrade my Nexus 10 to the Nexus 9. For me it would actually be a downgrade because of the screen. I would be very happy if someone from or close to Google/HTC could explain their rational for this decision. I am very, very disappointed by Google's and HTC's decision to go for a 4:3 screen instead of a 3:2 or 16:10. I am crossing all my figures and toes that Google will realize their mistake and release maybe an 11" or 12" tablet with a proper aspect ratio in the near future. Sadly I think that's just wishful thinking.

 

 

Oh and some credit where credit is due.

Great job sticking to having stereo front facing speakers. I don't understand why this is not on all tablets already.

It will be interesting to see what the Denver based Tegra K1 will be capable of. We already know the GPU is good but the CPU seems very interesting (doesn't seem to be an ARM based design).

Hopefully the screen will be as well calibrated as the Nexus 5 and 7 (2013) was. You guys did a great job with those. 

[Thony]

$334 for tablet. What is their excuse to sell Phablet Nexus 6 for a lot more ?! Seriously, why is phablet more expensive than a tablet ?

[Opcode]

SD card slot??

It's a Nexus device, what do you expect.

[LAwLz]

$334 for tablet. What is their excuse to sell Phablet Nexus 6 for a lot more ?! Seriously, why is phablet more expensive than a tablet ?

Well you need the extra radio and antennas for the cellular data. There are also a ton of different licensing fees you need. I would be very surprised if all that adds up to even 50 dollars though. People seem to be used to paying a premium for their phones.

[Thony]

Well you need the extra radio and antennas for the cellular data. There are also a ton of different licensing fees you need. I would be very surprised if all that adds up to even 50 dollars though. People seem to be used to paying a premium for their phones.

No hope in humanity. Apes can do better...