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Google Officially Discontinues Nexus 7 Tablet
An anonymous reader writes: Google's 7-inch tablet has disappeared from the Google Store, where a note in red type simply states that the device is no longer available for purchase. "The Nexus 7 was first released back in 2013, so it's fair to say it had a good run. The Android-based tablet received great reviews, but what really made it a long-term success was the fact that it was affordable and continually received updates from Google. Manufactured by Asus, the Nexus 7 was even treated to Android Lollipop, the latest version of the operating system, although not with bug-free results. The discontinuation shouldn't come as a big surprise, however, as Google pulled a similar move back in March with the Nexus 5 smartphone, not to mention the Nexus 9 tablet's release last fall."
I've never seen a lollipop device that didn't have bad memory management (app restart) issues. They really dropped the ball with lollipop.
Not to mention the new broken notifications system.
Like a vapid valley girl, all Lollipop has going for it is its looks.
The article was pretty poor.
There were two Nexus 7 devices:
1) The 2012 Nexus 7 (often referred to by its internal codename, grouper), using an NVidia Tegra3 chipset. This did get Lollipop, although it was kind of "meh", mostly with performance issues, showing that the hardware was getting a little on the old side. Google may have been trying to make up for the Galaxy Nexus getting dropped prematurely due to TI by keeping a different Nexus device supported for as long as absolutely possible. This device was discontinued in Summer 2013 when its successor was announced.
2) The 2013 Nexus 7 (often referred to by its internal codename, flo), using a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro (APQ8064), pretty much the same as the Snapdragon 600 at a slightly lower clock speed. This runs Lollipop well due to newer hardware. This is the device that was just discontinued.
grouper was always a bit "meh" - I don't know if it was the fault of Asus or NVidia, but Tegra3 tablets from Asus were always notorious for poor storage performance. I think other Tegra3 tablets had similar issues, but honestly - Asus was the largest Tegra3 customer by far thanks to grouper and the Transformer series of tablets, so it's hard to tell who was at fault.
The fact that flo didn't have grouper's storage performance issues (same device manufacturer, different chip inside) indicates it was probably the Tegra3.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Came here to say the same thing. It's slow/unusable on the original Nexus 7, but on the 2013 version, it's fine.
Why would you buy an iPad if you want vanilla Android?