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Ask HN: What happened to the Nexus 7?

7 points by philip1209 ↗ HN
Over the summer I remember reading about the high anticipation for Google's Nexus 7 tablet. However, the launch itself seemed lackluster and I have never seen one in the wild.

Was there a flaw with the Nexus 7? Did consumers simply not adopt it? Is it successful and just under-publicized?

In my case, I was ready to pre-order a Nexus 7 but the fact that I had to use Google's payment gateway instead of just Amazon turned out to cause me enough hesitation that I did not purchase the product.

13 comments

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mathrawka
You made your decision based on a payment gateway... ?
Codhisattva
The irony of course is that Amazon and Google are at war.
philip1209
It wasn't intentional - it was a question of convenience. I searched for the Nexus 7 on the Amazon app on iPhone after reading the story, but then found out that I needed to pay on Google. I didn't want to fill out the payment info for Google on my phone as a matter of convenience, and I never returned to Google's site from my laptop to follow through with purchasing.
Codhisattva
I've got one. It's nice. Not iPad nice, but nice. I think it's mostly forgotten because Google really doesn't know how to do e-commerce. Play.Google.com/store is a mess. And the order process was such a mess I was skeptical that the order went through until the box arrived - and then a day later I received the shipping number and order confirmation.

It's not like anyone has to invent e-commerce anymore. It's pretty much solved from the UX all the way down to the taxonomy.

cylinder714
I've seen them at my local Staples store. It's pretty slick. I expect Best Buy has them in stock, as well.
enobrev
Got mine a week ago. Absolutely love it. I haven't played with other tablets very much, so I can't offer a serious comparison. I thing the size is perfect for reading, browsing and watching videos just about anywhere. It's also perfect for handling my morning email over coffee without taking over my little coffee table.

Also, having Jelly Bean on my tablet makes my 2 year old droid incredible (cyanogenmod) seem _much_ older.

Not by any means useful data to people who don't know me, but the four people I know who own one love theirs as well. My GF uses mine almost as much as I do and is hoping to get one for herself.

It also didn't hurt to get a $25 Google Play credit along with the device.

tehwebguy
I bought a few for an RFID project (they can read NFC/RFID with no extra hardware). Its very cool and seems well made but I couldn't really see myself using one as my personal tablet over an iPad.

I like the size though!

mikecane
What happened was the Kindle Fire HD series announcement. And then the Nook HD series announcement. And the continued rumors of an iPad Mini. Most people are not going to tear through a bunch of tablets. They will spend their money on the one they are willing to keep and use. And for most people, the rumor of the iPad Mini holds them back from buying anything else.
runjake
I see them all the time. I pre-ordered mine on launch and I've used it tons since.

My iPad 3 normally collects dust as the N7 form factor is so much better and lighter for reading, despite the screen inferiority.

phaus
I read a lot of PDFs, specifically programming books. I like my 7" Android tablet (Kindle Fire 1st Gen) but I find the reading experience terrible in comparison to the iPad 3. There really doesn't seem to be any way to display technical books on a 7" screen unless they are specifically designed for such a task. I had to sell the iPad a while back, so now I may take a look at the 8.9" Kindle Fire to see if it's big enough to properly display my PDFs.

While I'm interested in it, there is one thing about the 8.9" Kindle Fire that really disappointed me already. They advertise $50 a year for a mobile connection, but it's only for the first year. When you take a look at the huge price increase between the Wifi and the ATT 3G version, it's not a discount, you are just being forced to prepay for your service. Other than that, it looks pretty nice.

hiddenstage
I bought one and just recently sold my iPad. Everyone I know who has one loves it and everyone who comes over and uses mine now wants one.
hbdev
Google / Asus pushed them through retail channels here (Netherlands) and it generated quite a buzz. Demand was much bigger than the supply, especially at first, because the retailers didn't realize there was so much interest in this device. I can't say anything real about the numbers, it wasn't Apple-like but at some point they sold more than 5000 a day (quite a lot for a small country like ours), I imagine total number of sales is around 100k. No one slept in front of a store, but lots of people tried to get one and had to wait a few weeks for the next batches to become available.

That said, I like mine but don't love it. The screen is quite bland and not a lot of apps cater to the form factor. I mean, phone apps work fine if the aim is to have bigger fonts and a bit more screen real estate, but only a handful of apps do something useful with the extra space. Also, a number of apps is blocking either the tablet version or phone version through the Play store, even though either would reasonably work. It's nice as a reader (for anything other than PDF, but reflowing formats are fine) and certainly more comfortable to hold than my Samsung Tab 8.9 or 10.1. JB is a nice plus but my phone and Tabs should eventually get that as well. Not getting rid of the 8.9 / 10.1 form factors any time soon, though. I treat it as yet another digital accessory for a tech-addicted lifestyle, non-essential yet nice to have.

27182818284
Bought one as soon as it was available. My major problem with it is the same problem I have had with my Android smart phones: Lack of apps.

Almost all new Y Combinator startups choose iOS first. When Google has their $0.25 app sale, I had already purchased 95% of the apps they showed off.