The second generation of Google’s flagship seven-inch tablet, the Nexus 7, was announced at last month’s I/O developer’s conference for a release of sometime this year. Then, there were rumors of the slate going for a sweet price of $150. On Friday, a story from DigiTimes speculated that the Nexus 7 will see a proper release sometime in July, with two variants: an 8 GB and a 16 GB model, which may go for $199 and $229 respectively. This puts the cheaper priced new generation tablet rumor to bed, as the current generation Nexus 7 starts at $199 as well. This summer, Google’s Nexus 7...

From The Digital Shift comes the intriguing news that Google's app store is launching an education portal in a bid to gain traction in the schools. With Google Play for Education, coming this fall, schools will be able to purchase educational apps using money orders and other alternative methods, to push them to Nexus tablets in bulk to all devices, groupings of them, or to individual devices. They can also select from curated app lists to easily find content that interests them. At launch, the program will only work on Nexus tablets. That may change in the future. Speaking personally as an educator,...

It's hard to believe it's already/only been three years since Apple introduced its category defining iPad. On the one hand, it seems like only yesterday. On the other hand, for those of us with tablet computers of one stripe or another, it's hard to imagine life before our new constant companions—in the same way those of us who came up before the Internet can barely remember the days before Pine. There was a great piece on Ars Technica about two weeks ago in which its editors reflected on the device, their initial impressions and its impact on their lives since. I recall my own...

We love the Nexus 7 tab. Google’s valiant iPad competitor nicely packs inside everything we enjoy about the company’s Android OS, their services and the streamlined symbiosis among them. Oh, and it being a full ‘Benjamin’ cheaper than Apple’s must-have tab makes the 7-inch Nexus even more desirable. First unleashed in July, it makes sense for an updated version to be quickly approaching, no? Well, we’re happy, as a report published today from Reuters leads us to believe exactly that. Google will allegedly be discontinuing its first batch of Nexus 7 devices alongside the roll out of its next-gen model. Ridding the floor plans of NVIDIA’s...

When looking for a new tablet, it seems consumers have Apple on the brain. The Yankee Group recently disclosed the results of a December survey in which it asked, "What brand of tablet do you intend to buy [next]?" For Apple, it was good news as nearly half of the 506 questioned picked the iconic brand. Apple Insider contends this is bad news for the rest of the tablet market, as 47 percent of surveyed consumers mentioned their intention to purchase an iPad. That left 26 percent of respondents going for an Android-based tablet, and 23 percent saying they were unsure, or didn’t know. Just one percent...

The Verge is carrying what it considers a mostly credible rumor that Google is preparing a low-end $99 Nexus tablet for release by the end of the year. Among the company’s rumored manufacturing partners is Quanta, known for putting together OLPC’s XO-1 and XO-1.5 budget notebooks. The Verge discusses the possible hardware configurations to be found in such a device, which is interesting enough but not really relevant here. We’ve already seen plenty of cheap Chinese tablets that have mostly proven the worthlessness of cheap Chinese tablets, but is the time right yet for a major name brand to come out...