Google Releases Tablet, Android Version 4.1 Jelly Bean

Google's IO keynote just wrapped up, and boy was it a big one. As an Android fanatic it made me very, very excited. This might mark the first year where Google's developer conference has not only equaled Apple's, but exceeded it. There were many interesting announcements, but this one is about the tablet and Android Jelly Bean.

The tablet is a 7" device, as expected. It will have a quad-core Tegra 3 with 16 GPU's, which is a lot of graphics crunching power. It will have a gig of RAM, a 1.2 megapixel front-facing camera, NFC, and either 8 gigs of storage or 16. The 8 GB variety will cost a paltry $199.00, while the 16GB variety will cost 249.99, both of which are incredibly cheap. The device has 8 hours of "active use" battery life and 300 hours of standby time. The screen is an 1280x800 IPS panel with surprisingly good sunlight readability. All that and the device only weighs .74 pounds.

To go with the tablet, Google is releasing a magazine store a la Apple's or Amazon's. And, of course, there is a new version of Android. We'll have a more thorough breakdown of Android version 4.1 tomorrow, but here's what we know so far: pretty much everything improved in Ice Cream Sandwich has been made even better, battery life will be helped by automatic CPU throttling, a stellar, quick to use camera and (this is the big one) a Siri competitor.

Okay, not a Siri competitor. More like the natural expansion of Voice Actions into Siri's realm. But we'll save that for our other article.

Photo by : Google