Nexus 9

[Symmetry]

Wait, they're using the 64 bit K1 as their processor? That's Project Denver[1]! I'm super excited to see how that thing benchmarks. This is basically Transmeta's Efficeon (same IP and team, even) with a bunch of improvements. They mentioned in the Hot Chips talk that they had made improvements like enabling native execution while the optimizer works - they benchmarks they provided said that it was very effective but I'm eager for third party tests.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver

EDIT: And here's Anandtech's article on Project Denver http://www.anandtech.com/show/7622/nvidia-tegra-k1/2

[corysama]

I would expect it to bench pretty much the same as the Shield Tablet. In fact, they are probably almost identical hardware-wise. I'll be interested to see if there is a price difference.

Anand's CPU benchmarks are very browser-oriented. The Shield usually beat all other Android devices, but still lost to the iPad Air. I suspect that has more to do with the quality of Mobile Safari than the differences in hardware. In the GPU benchmarks, the Shield does very, very well. http://www.anandtech.com/show/8296/the-nvidia-shield-tablet-...

Overall, the K1 has both CPU and GPU paper/marketing specs that are theoretically a little better than an Xbox 360. This is demoed by the 360 game Trine 2 running very nearly as well on a Shield as on the 360. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-can-tr...

edit: Looks like the Nexus has a 2048x1536 screen vs the Shield's 1920x1200. 51% more pixels on the same GPU will be a much prettier at the cost of more GPU|battery strain. Given the high power GPU, that seems like a good trade off for a non-gaming-oriented tab.

[ChuckMcM]

And of course the day before Apple announces its new iPad (allegedly). I really like having two very well funded companies in all out competition, it makes for some really great features and options in both products.

The size thing is what I'm interested in though. I'm waiting to see if there actually is a 12" iPad pro tomorrow, otherwise I'll pull the trigger on a Note Pro. I get the pocket/purse argument for 9" but my iPad has become pretty much a replacement book. Between 1dollarscan, Oreilly's drm free ebooks, and my pdf library of papers and data sheets, and various magazines, nearly all my space is being consumed by reading material. So for me (weird case I know) it is my library in my hand, and I really would like it to be a 12 - 13" screen.

That said, the Nook HD+ is my 'budget' 9" Android tablet that is my 'look up things' / 'play music' / 'cast netflix' device and this could easily replace that.

[pisarzp]

I was using this device for last couple months. It's by far the best tablet I've ever used. It feels great when you hold it and thank god for better aspect ratio! (compared to N7). I also have N10, but never really liked it, it was quite cumbersome to hold it. N9 feels much better in hands.

The thing I loved the most though was keyboard cover. It's narrow but you get used to it very fast. Typing on it was such a pleasure! I was not allowed to travel with this device but I could easily see myself just taking N9 instead of laptop for short trips.

[xur17]

How's the performance? I have a first gen Nexus 7 that's getting really slow, and this looks like an interesting option to replace it.

Is it faster, or at least comparable to the Nexus 5? I rarely use my tablet right now as my phone is considerably faster.

[davidw]

What is your relationship with Google?

[zastrowm]

The price is $400 [1], in case anyone else was wondering:

> Google’s Nexus 9 goes up for pre-order on October 17th, and should hit the shelves on November 3rd. The 16GB model will go for $400, the 32GB for $480, and a 32GB model with LTE built in will set you back $600.

[1]: http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/15/google-nexus-9/

[iSnow]

Top of the line is 32GB and costs $600? That's not just a bit dissapointing. How much can another 32GB of flash storage cost at OEM prices, $10? And no, I don't want to store everything on your servers, Google.

[izacus]

I love the 4:3 aspect ratio - after switching from iPad that was the thing that bothered me the most on Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 models. They were either not tall enough or too narrow for comfortable web browsing and reading (also, holding N10 in portrait was pretty tiring due to weight balance).

So finally having a good 4:3 Android tablet is good news for readers :)

[AdmiralAsshat]

Sad to see no SD card slot. I know that's not Google's thing, but Asus and Samsung have defied them in the past to include them in Nexus models and I was hoping HTC would follow suit.

That said, I hope this sells well. HTC badly needs some success.

[izacus]

Ehm.. no nexus since Nexus One had SD card slot. Which Nexus models are you talking about exactly?

[hoeppnertill]

The reason for not including an SD card slot is that this second-class storage is said to confuse users. It mounts after the system sends the BOOT_COMPLETED broadcast and may be removed at any time. Consequently, some operations are (or were) forbidden, like installing apps on the sdcard. Explaining this to users is fairly hard and, by removing the slot, unnecessary.

With 64GB inbuilt, I don't really see that as a problem, but for my 16GB N5 and N7, it's annoying at times. Also, file transfer on Linux is... improvable. I use adb to push my music onto the phone. :P

[Sanddancer]

Last year's nexus 5 didn't have an SD card slot either. They're pretty much a dying breed at this point.

[4ad]

It has an arm64 CPU. It looks like this will be the first cheap, easily obtainable and hackable (?) arm64 hardware out there.

I'm writing the arm64 Go compiler. I wonder if it's feasible to start testing on this machine too (e.g. how open it really is, how hard is to get a sane working environment, etc).

[corysama]

You should have a look at Nvidia's K1 dev kit. (edit: guess that's not 64 bit...)

https://developer.nvidia.com/jetson-tk1

https://developer.nvidia.com/tegra-development

Nvidia's dev support team is great. Using the Tegra Dev pack on a Shield is by far the best NDK environment I've found.

[rwmj]

Before I got my Mustang (:-) I was hacking on the OCaml arm64 compiler backend using this technique. The article describes setting it up for Fedora. Follow through the links for how to do this on SUSE and Debian. It's fairly reasonable as a userspace dev environment.

http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/how-to-run-aarch64-bina...

[fit2rule]

Put Linux on this and you've got a very viable development machine. I look forward to one day running arm64 Go on this machine in the near future! :) (Among other things..)

[nteon]

Are you working on this code publicly? I would love to take a look, as I've become quite interested in the gc compiler lately.

[WildUtah]

You could jailbreak an iPhone 5S for a year now.

[taylorbuley]

It bothers me that we've lost the meaning of "memory" in the technical marketing of mobile gadgets.

"Memory: 16 GB & 32 GB." Google, of course, means storage.

[Pinn2]

At some point we'll have unified memory and storage anyway. Our brains are already unified in our perception of memory, so I have no problem telling people the storage amount as "memory".

[Raphael]

Yeah, the name of flash memory ruins the shorthand of "memory" meaning "volatile memory". As you point out, "storage" is still a good term for persistent memory.

[rtpg]

This confusion has existed since the beginning of consumer PCs. Loads of people mix up RAM and HDD space (probably because they're the same units)

[jbellis]

Apple finally admitted that bigger phones are better. Looks like Google is finally admitting that 4:3 is the right tablet aspect ratio.

I'm kind of curious what the secret sauce is that makes Google think they are ready to sell a premium-priced tablet. Lollipop may be better than iOS 8 but is that enough to overcome the app gap?

(Anecdata: my wife had her ipad mini stolen last week. We have 5 Android devices in the house, but as long as Civilization is only available on iOS this isn't a serious contender for a replacement.)

[s9ix]

I'm not quite sure the 'app gap' exists still, does it? Recently switched from iPhone 5S > HTC One M8, and nothing reallllly I miss.

[sheldor]

And what exactly would that "app gap" be? I'm genuinely curious.

[Bud]

They're releasing a big expensive tablet in 2014 and the top-end storage size is 32GB? Really?

[freehunter]

Well they are a cloud company. They probably just expect you to not store anything locally.

No company puts a good amount of storage in their device for a reasonable price. It's a problem on par with battery life.

[astrodust]

It used to be you'd upgrade that with an SD card, but now that's not an option? That's a little odd.

[zmmmmm]

This marks an interesting if subtle change in direction for Google. Suddenly they are talking about productivity on their tablet and even including a keyboard. Also recently we've seen massive upgrades to the Google Docs suite of apps as well, after they long languished as almost comically useless on Android for a long time. Once again, it makes me question whether Pichai taking over has had the unexpected effect of boosting Android and making it into their premier platform across a range of form factors instead of what seemed before to be mainly pigeon holing it as a phone / small tablet platform mainly for entertainment. Interesting times.

[cwal37]

I assume this is the real, official end of the dream that I will ever get the case they initially showed off for my Nexus 10.

I enjoy the Nexus 10, but I really feel like I've kind of just been left in the cold. Android updates haven't been kind to the device in my experience.

[izacus]

On the other hand, Android 5.0 was announced for 10 as well, even though I agree, my 10 always felt like a bastard child of Nexus family.

[WildUtah]

So is it confirmed that there's no new Nexus 7? What is the best new alternative with some kind of clean Android mini tablet?

[tracker1]

Probably the nvidia shield tablet... Now that this is announced, I may go ahead and order one.

http://shield.nvidia.com/gaming-tablet/

[nikcub]

I spent a week and tracked down the Nexus 7 2nd gen last week to replace my older Nexus 7 tablet. I knew the new devices were coming out this week, but I love the form factor of the 7" and the device itself. They are still worth buying, you can find them for cheaper now. I'm generally an Apple user but the Nexus 7 is a great device, once you fall for it its hard to give it up.

[aetherson]

I don't understand why Google is making a Nexus 9. It seems crazy. Doesn't everyone understand at this point that 7-8" is the right size for a tablet?

Are they just of the impression that phablets will eat small tablets?

(I should say that of course there is SOME market for larger tablets out there. If they were producing a Nexus 7 and a Nexus 9, that would make more sense. But I thought that both expert consensus and sales were clear: the market for small tablets is much bigger than the market for big tablets. Unless you believe that small tablets are going to get replaced by phablets).

[Pxtl]

A nexus 6 wifi-only device could be a nice successor to the n7 and a nice shot at the oft-forgotten iPod too. But android companies seem to always forget the iPod exists.

[AnonNo15]

Sony Z3 Tablet compact.

[rkuykendall-com]

The Nexus 6 with no plan?

[mattgreenrocks]

Anyone have experience installing Linux on an Android tablet to use for development work? I'd love to use it with tmux/vim to hack on stuff.

Is battery life worth it?

[tdicola]

I'm impressed this is even lighter than the current iPad air (although it remains to be seen what happens with Apple's announcement tomorrow), and not by a trivial amount--almost 50 grams lighter. I've been a happy Nexus 7 user but am starting to feel I need a little bit bigger screen, and the 4:3 aspect ratio is much nicer for web browsing.

[Zigurd]

I'm aware that Nexus devices have lacked SD card slots seemingly as a matter of policy, but I still don't understand the logic of it for a tablet this powerful. You can buy micro SD cards with mind boggling capacity now. All the other specs are state of the art. And then you are limited to 32GB.

[donniezazen]

Where do you guys think Nexus 9 fits? I have gotten used to Nexus 7 for reading and Nexus 10 for writing/media consumption reading graphically rich stuff like magazine. Do you think Nexus 9 replaces both of those different types of works.

[imaginenore]

Seems like a step back from Nexus 10.

[davidw]

My Nexus 7's battery went kaput, so this looks like it'd be a nice replacement. Overall, I'm quite happy to use the Nexus stuff: the experience is very consistent, and they get regular upgrades.

[nutjob123]

4:3 aspect ratio on an andriod tablet! This should be interesting.