Nexus 7 or Galaxy Tab 2?

[TripleB]

My sister is buying each of her 5 grandkids (ages 7 through 10) a tablet...either the Google Nexus 7 or the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2.

Which should she go with and why?

Thanks.

TripleB

[quest01]

She should go with the Nexus 7. It's faster, it has a sharper screen, and it comes with the latest version of Android.

[movdqa]

I'd go with an iPad Mini for kids. There's far more tablet software available on iOS.

I have a Nexus 7, iPad and iPad 2. I don't know a lot of people that have a Nexus 7 and a Galaxy Tab 2.

[movdqa]

> It's faster, it has a sharper screen, and it comes with the latest
> version of Android.

I think that they actually ship with 4.0 or 4.1 and you get an OTA upgrade to 4.2. Mine was upgraded two days ago to 4.2. There have been a lot of complaints on vendors being slow on upgrades with Android or not doing upgrades at all. I went with Nexus products (I have a Galaxy Nexus too) hoping that Google would do a better job on updates than the carriers and manufacturers.

The Nexus 7 is a fantastic deal in what you get for the money. Google is basically selling these things at cost and the only other vendor willing to do that these days is Amazon.

[Torres]

If you're talking about the Tab 2 7.0, then the Nexus is a better device.

Problem with the Tab 2 (I have one) is that its slow and the overlay which Samsung have put on it is unnecessarily fiddly. For example, there's a 'take screen shot' icon right next to the menu button, which is pretty stupid. The buttons are also in the wrong position (left of screen, rather than center of screen), they're not physical buttons, can disappear when you don't expect them to etc. I think that my Phone (S2) blows it out of the water for usability, functionality, and speed.

Personally, I wouldn't get either of them. I'd get the iPad Mini. It's just exceptionally good, better than the Nexus 7, amazingly thin, very light, has an excellent screen, and is also more kid friendly.

[krz]

Originally Posted by Torres

If you're talking about the Tab 2 7.0, then the Nexus is a better device.

Problem with the Tab 2 (I have one) is that its slow and the overlay which Samsung have put on it is unnecessarily fiddly. For example, there's a 'take screen shot' icon right next to the menu button, which is pretty stupid. The buttons are also in the wrong position (left of screen, rather than center of screen), they're not physical buttons, can disappear when you don't expect them to etc. I think that my Phone (S2) blows it out of the water for usability, functionality, and speed.

Personally, I wouldn't get either of them. I'd get the iPad Mini. It's just exceptionally good, better than the Nexus 7, amazingly thin, very light, has an excellent screen, and is also more kid friendly.

Negative and I'm not an apple hater. I own an iPhone.

The mini is not "better" than the Nexus 7.

Processor? Quad core 1.3ghz vs Dual core A5.

Memory/Ram? 1GB vs 512MB

Excellent Screen? 216ppi vs 160ppi

The big kicker, price for a 16GB? $199 vs $329(for last years tech might I add!)

iOS vs Jelly Bean? Personal preference.

Apps? Apple has more but, honestly most stuff is available on both.



vs the Samsung I'd still take the Nexus. Being a google product it gets updates sooner, has a better screen, and doesn't have any bloated software added to it(which is a huge plus.)

[movdqa]

The iPad Mini is essentially a smaller iPad 2 and the iPad 2 has older hardware specs. What you're paying for is their tablet software library where they have 250K tablet apps to about 2K for Android.

I'd say that the Nexus 7 tends to need more maintenance than an iPad which is one of the reasons why I think that the iPads are better for kids.

Here's a link to the Nexus 7 forums at phandroid. People are talking about problems with the Android 4.2 upgrade. I personally have had zero problems with the upgrade but it seems that there are many out there that are seeing problems. In some cases it might be app/OS compatibility issues.

http://androidforums.com/nexus-7/

[Fee]

Great timing, I am considering this very same topic myself. I've been avoiding a tablet until I actually need one, and I'm going to Europe for 3 weeks and don't want to take my laptop. I want a 7" so that I can throw it in my purse and use it for the walking maps. Apple is not an option for me because I just don't have that kind of money to spend.

Costco is going to have the Samsung Tab 2 tablets, both sizes, on sale on Black Friday at 9 am. I think the 7 will be about $150.

The Samsung has an SD card slot, but I've read that the Nexus 7 will accept a USB drive with the proper cord and a particular app. I don't care about the rear camera, I would never really use it since I have a great camera and a pretty decent camera on my Nokia in a pinch.

So I don't know what to do, but I have until Thursday night to figure it out.

[Torres]

Originally Posted by krz

The mini is not "better" than the Nexus

Use them first before making the comparison. I thought the Mini was going to be unexceptional but it's an absolutely lovely device to use. Strange as it may sound, the screen on the Mini actually looks better in the real world than the nexus.

It's a better tab than the nexus.

[quest01]

The ipad mini has more tablet optimized apps but the screen resolution is worse than on the nexus 7. Personally I'm looking into the nexus 10, which looks better than the ipad.

[Dags]

Kids don't care about things like processor speed, memory or screen resolution. They just want something that works.

If money isn't an issue, then I'd go with the iPad mini. The App Store is huge: almost every app comes to iOS first.

If that's too extravagant, then of the two listed I'd pick the Nexus. Being able to run the latest OS is a big plus in terms of longevity.

[derickyan]

I agree with Dags. If money isn't a problem, go for mini.
But go for the Nexus 7, if you want that or the tab.

[krz]

Just tried to update my moms iPad3 to iOS6, apparently it didn't do it right and now it's stuck in recovery mode which would require me to wipe all her data.

"It just works!" thanks Apple!

Anybody have a work around for this?

[movdqa]

If you regularly sync to your PC, then all of your information should be backed up there. You should be able to wipe the iPad 3 and then restore from your backups. I don't know what you'd do if you do everything OTA.

[MAXXply]

Everytime I transfer pics from my Galaxy phone onto PC via USB, it also transfers duplicate thumbnails of whatever photo I've taken. It also transfers every little logo or banner image that may have been visited during (handset) websurfing. What on earth is happening and is there a fix? Thanks for any help.

[krz]

Originally Posted by movdqa

If you regularly sync to your PC, then all of your information should be backed up there. You should be able to wipe the iPad 3 and then restore from your backups. I don't know what you'd do if you do everything OTA.

Yea, unfortunately, this is my moms iPad and she doesn't do any of that, she's not very tech savy. I just saw that she had an update and clicked on install and this happened.

I set her up with icloud so this doesn't happen again though. But, god this really sucks because she just lost a lot of really important photos.

[quest01]

I have the nexus 7 which I like a lot, more so than the iPad.

[movdqa]

I'm planning on giving my mother a 3G iPad as she doesn't have internet access and this would give her a link to the outside world. I'm going to set it up on my PC but I suppose that I should also see if I can sync it to iCloud for backup. I had a chat with a brother-in-law and his comment was that he's been unsuccessful with trying to set up older people (60+) with technology systems that they will use.

I'm an hour away and my brother-in-law is about 20 minutes away so we can help out from time to time when we visit.