The New Nexus 9 tablet is now available for preorder

[razor767]

Want some hands-on time with one before I even consider buying one.

[Thony]

Want some hands-on time with one before I even consider buying one.

Should be fairly easy. Visit an electronics store near you when the tablet is lunched (launched?!)

[razor767]

Should be fairly easy. Visit an electronics store near you when the tablet is lunched (launched?!)

 

That's what I plan on doing. (it's launched)

[DudeWazap]

Im waiting for my Nexus 10 to get the 5.0 update should be available very very soon.

[tobi]

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.

That is some really good arguments there!

Mostly I'm dissapointed about the 32gb limit combined with the price for the higher storage capacity.

That said I'm probably going to buy the Nexus9 anyway... Lol

[LAwLz]

That is some really good arguments there!

Mostly I'm dissapointed about the 32gb limit combined with the price for the higher storage capacity.

That said I'm probably going to buy the Nexus9 anyway... Lol

Go ahead and buy it if you want. If you are okay with 4:3 then it's a decent/good tablet.

Personally I'll just wait for my dream tablet to be released.

12" with ~300 PPI (3000x2000) or similar (whichever makes the most sense, can be slightly lower res). 12" would be slightly too big. 10.1" with a resolution of 2400x1600 would be nice. That's 286 PPI and a 3:2 aspect ratio.

Thickness can be about the same as the Nexus 10. I'd rather have it the same size and weight as the Nexus 10 than to have a smaller battery.

Properly calibrated screen (either really good OLED like the Note 4 or IPS/PLS).

Exynos 7 Octa or Snapdragon 810.

3GB of RAM minimum.

32GB storage and microSD.

Front facing speakers (stereo)

Front and rear camera. The rear don't need to be good but at least get a decent front camera.

On screen buttons.

Google Play Edition available.

Make it happen Samsung.

[PillowSmoke]

my question is when will the price of it go down? I'd like to get one but not at that price.