A new day, a new rumour about the Google Nexus tablet! My news snippet this morning follows a couple of Tweets from @upleaks, the first said, “HTC T1#WL(CDMA/LTE model) coming to US and Japan.” The second simply said, “T1 will also be available from Amazon US.” This model name, the T1, is interchangeable with other terms you may have seen including the “Flounder,” “Volantis” or even the especially catchy, “0P8210000.” Many rumours point towards the tablet being announced, if not released, in the next fortnight and to be out by the end of the month.
What do we know about the Nexus 9 tablet? At this juncture we have a range of rumours but trying to determine the reality is impossible. Most leaks point towards the new Nexus tablet using a 64-bit processor and running the very latest version of Android, called “L” at this time (we’re still waiting for official confirmation of the name). It’s likely that Google would introduce a new tablet with a new version of the operating system and hardware to utilise the new features; initially 64-bit Intel processors were rumoured but now it appears that we are looking at a dual core version of the Nvidia Tegra K1 (Nvidia sell a quad core Tegra K1, which is 32-bit). Memory rumours range from 2 GB to 5 GB; in the past, Nexus devices have not led the field in this respect and so I would expect it to have 3 GB or 4 GB of memory. I also suspect Google will sell the device in a range of capacities; previous Nexus tablets have ranged from 8 GB to 32 GB, with the 8 GB Nexus 7 being dropped in 2013. if there’s a pattern here, the 16 GB model will be dropped and the new Nexus will launch with 32 GB. We can expect larger versions, perhaps going up to 128 GB.
UK O2, owned by Spanish Telefonica, appears to be preparing to sell the Nexus 9 from November. One thing to take from this article is the steep recommended retail price of £460. Seems expensive, right? The Nexus 10 was cheaper than many competitors at the time and the 32 GB model was £380. What does the extra £80 get us? O2 have only sold the more expensive Nexus 7 models so I’d expect their Nexus 9 device to include at least 64 GB of storage and LTE; paying £80 for twice the storage of the old Nexus 10 and LTE does not seem unreasonable. It might have 128 GB of storage. We can hope that the basic specification tablet is around £300 because if Google is to repeat the success of the two Nexus 7 devices, price needs to be kept under control.
The tweet purported to tell us that the new Nexus tablet will be sold via Amazon US, which ticks the “as expected” box for me. Google’s Nexus devices have been available to buy from the Google Play Store, Amazon and a few mainstream electronics retailers (typically Best Buy in the USA). And these rumours are not going away; we are drawing closer and closer to an announcement. HTC have a “double exposure” announcement next Wednesday; does this mean that they’re going to announce two new products or are going to do a “and one more thing” and somebody from Google gets up to talk about the new tablet? We’ll know in a few days.