Google announces Nexus 4 phone, Nexus 10 tablet and HSPA+ Nexus 7

 

Google may have cancelled today's event due to hurricane Sandy, but they've still gone ahead with announcing the Nexus 4 smartphone built by LG and the Nexus 10 tablet build by Samsung. Both devices come with Android 4.2 which adds Gesture Typing, allowing users to glide fingers over letters to type, support for wireless display, allowing users to watch movies and play games on a Miracast-compatible HDTV, and multiple user support (on tablets).

Nexus 4
































The Nexus 4 features a 4.7-inch 1280 x 768 IPS display (320ppi), a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, 2GB Of RAM, a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera, 8 megapixel rear camera, up to 16GB of storage, NFC, Bluetooth, and wireless charging via Google's new Wireless Charging Orb (see image below). The back is made of glass and features a sparkley pattern underneath the surface.

The device will go on sale unlocked for $299 with 8GB of storage and $349 with 16GB from the Google Play store in the U.S., U.K., Australia, France, Germany, Spain and Canada on November 13. T-Mobile will also sell the device unlocked for $199 on a two-year contract.
Nexus 10

The Nexus 10 is a 10-inch tablet with a resolution of 2560 x 1600, which comes in at a whopping 300ppi. It features a dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 chip with a quad-core Mali T604 GPU, 2GB of RAM, a 5-megapixel camera on the back, a 1.8 megapixel camera on the front, dual-front facing speakers, micro HDMI, micro USB, two NFC chips, and a 8,000mAh battery, that Google says should latest around 9 hours of HD video playback.
The Nexus 10 will go on sale on November 13 on Google Play in the U.S., U.K., Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Canada and Japan. 16GB will cost $399 and 32GB will cost $499.
Nexus 7 32GB and mobile data


Google also announced a 32GB version of its Nexus 7 tablet for $249, along with a 32GB version with HSPA+ mobile data for $299, which can operate on more than 200 GSM providers worldwide according to Google.

Ubuntu 13.04 Will Run on the Google Nexus 7 Tablet

Jono Bacon announced yesterday, October 26th, on his personal blog that the upcoming Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) operating system will support the Nexus 7 tablet from Google. 
 The Ubuntu Developer Summit for Ubuntu 13.04 will start next Monday, on October 29th and the development team is preparing to give attendees a demonstration of Ubuntu OS on the Google Nexus 7 tablet.

“A core goal for Ubuntu 13.04 is to get Ubuntu running on a Nexus 7 tablet. To be clear, this is not going to be a tablet Unity interface running on the 8/16GB Nexus 7,” said Jono Bacon on his blog.

“But instead will focus on getting the current Ubuntu Desktop running on the Nexus so that we can ensure pieces such as the kernel, power management and other related areas are working effectively on a tablet device.” he continued.

However, the good news is that Canonical already tested the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) and Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) releases on Nexus 7, and they provide a native installer for it, called Ubuntu Nexus 7 Desktop Installer, with step by step installation instructions (with screenshots).

 Unfortunately, we don’t have a Google Nexus 7 tablet so we can test the Ubuntu operating system on it, but from the Ubuntu Wiki page above it looks like the installation is pretty simple. Basically you’ll have to add the PPA for the installer, unlock your tablet, and install Ubuntu on Nexus 7.

If you don’t have a Nexus 7 tablet from Google and you want to buy one, just in case you would like to install Ubuntu on it, please visit its official website.

Don’t forget to visit our website next week, as we will cover the entire Ubuntu Developer Summit for Ubuntu 13.04 event and give you all the latest news from the Canonical world.

Ubuntu 12.04 Firmware for SmartQ T20 Tablet

Smartdevices Inc. announced the immediate availability for download of a firmware for its SmartQ T20 tablet device.

The SmartQ T20 tablet comes with the Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) mobile operating system by default. It boasts the following hardware specifications: dual-core 1.5 Ghz ARM Cortex A9 CPU, full HD playback through PowerVR SGX 540 GPU, 1 GB of RAM, 16 GB of internal storage, 1280x800 10.1″ capacitive multi-touch screen, built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, USB ports, HDMI port, headphone jack, 2MP front-facing camera, 5MP rear facing camera and accelerometer.

With the newly released firmware, users of the SmartQ T20 tablet can officially download and install the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system.

Detailed installation instruction (in Chinese), as well as known issues, can be found on the official announcement.

Download the Ubuntu 12.04 firmware for the SmartQ T20 tablet right now from here.