Heh.. I suppose it's a variation of sorts on Letts' Law: All empegBBS threads eventually evolve to iFruit discussions. Or something like that.

Back on (the main) topic though: I have installed the stock Android web browser along with Adobe Flashplayer onto the Nexus 7. This might interest UK users, since doing so enables iPlayer access.

Cheers

I also mentioned WebOS, Android, and Windows Phone . All platforms I've had direct experiences with, and try to keep up on to be fully informed about the entire ecosystem.

I wanted it to stay relevant to the tech and usage side of the Nexus 7, not the Q/hand size/phones/other Google bits from the other thread. It's not meant as a fanboy thread either. It's simply to share experience, tips and to learn more about the Nexus 7. Comparisons to other products I think are fine as long as it doesn't derail things too much. These comparisons help people learn more by starting with a concept people may have past experience with.

The backup discussion is useful, for people like myself and Andy who do live mostly on the iOS side and want to honestly know what effort is needed to match or come close to a capability we make use of. I'm trying to judge this device fairly and know where it stands for when people ask me advice about tablets. And yes, there are many thing I do like about it, and will post more. Mark, your contributions are useful on this thread, though your tendency to be anti iFruit can be just as disruptive as people pro positions at times. Glad to see we are back on track now


Is Flash support the main advantage of adding back in the stock Android browser? Having Flash on the Nexus 7 would be handy, as I'm noticing many web videos aren't working even in the US.

Thus far, the (heretofore) stock Android Browser gives me four things:

• flashplayer, for sites that demand it.
• doesn't have the nasty bug that impedes entry of an IP address.
• works better with Swiftkey 3 (which is b0rked with Chrome).
• it's an alternative to Chrome.

Edit: it is possible that Firefox might work just as well for those.. dunno, tried it, didn't like it on the tablet.

Here's something that might be useful once in a while, CSipSimple: generic Open-Source SIP client,
for making phone calls from the tablet. This kind of functionality is built-into the GN phone, but missing from the stock tablet.

Skype is also available, for the millions who prefer it.

Geez, must everything devolve into a Microsoft fanboy thread?

Looks like Anandtech tested the internal speeds.

Can anyone find any information on whether Best Buy will carry the Nexus 7? If it did, I'd pick one up tomorrow. I've had a Best Buy gift card sitting around unused because there's so little worth buying at their store! I feel dumb spending most of a gift card on the difference of the online price...

Well, obviously they got something wrong, then. Their measurements only achieved half of what I saw.

The whole (only) point of measuring "MBytes/sec" is for large files. Smaller files are so quick it really doesn't matter so much. So I used very large files when measuring it, whereas they used relatively small ones.

I guess ideally one might want to see a scatter chart of various file sizes or something.

Cheers

So here's an unrelated question:

I want a case for my Nexus 7. I've poked around on Amazon and MoKo makes several popular cases (leather-wrapped, clip-on, and rotating). These seem to include a magnet to trigger the auto-wake-up feature of the tablet. One friend of mine loves his hardback book cover-style case. I'm sure there are many more variations.

I'm not entirely sure what features make for a good or bad case, although the idea of having a hand-strap on the back to make it easier to hold sounds attractive. Thoughts?

Mark, I know you linked to something relating to this tool, but I wanted to reiterate the point for those who are interested. After stumbling around for tools to un-root and re-lock my phone, I also came across the Galaxy Nexus Toolkit.

All I can say is: this is all you need. Given the confusing nature of the rooting world out there, that's the highest compliment I can pay to this tool. It does everything and does it pretty much without any additional interaction.

Lastly, if you're interested, it looks like my Galaxy Nexus has a serious power issue. It always thinks it's charging (which can't be healthy). Other times it can't charge. So I'll be sending it back, and I need to make it look like I didn't do anything bad to it

That's the one I linked to all right. He posted a similar kit for the N7 as well, but I found an even simpler one for that.

Is there a way to do a remote wipe of a Nexus 7 with just a personal Google (without GMail) account? Only thing official I saw was for Google Apps for Domains users.

Where is this? I've got a Nexus 7 and I am a GAFD user.

There are a ton of remote wipe apps in the Play Store. Intended for phones, but if they permit installation on the tablet then they should work the same. Most seem to require a subscription though (ugh!).

Manage Domain
Settings > Mobile > Advanced Settings > check "Allow user to remote wipe device" and "Enable device activation"

I'm using Google Apps for Business, so it might be different that what you see.

I can go to http://www.google.com/apps/mydevices and locate my devices, wipe them, or sound an alarm. The admin of the domain (also myself) can do this as well.

Looks like there is no out of the box way, especially when the device is not at ones side. Oh well, I worked around the issue by having my wireless router block the Nexus 7.

The reason I wanted to remote wipe it was to stop it from updating Latitude. Seems when I turned Latitude on from the web, the Nexus automatically started updating it. My trip log from yesterday is rather interesting, showing points on the route, and each one connected back to Austin. My phone is the only device I want pushing out to Latitude for the trip.

Yep. Google Apps for Domains doesn't have it:

Yeah: ugh!

SeekDroid is a one-time fee if you just want the basic functions of locating and remote wiping your phone. I used to use it before I got hooked up with the Device Policy thing. I would say it's worth the few dollars they charge.

I found this comment in the SeekDroid forums: "Seekdroid does work with the Asus/Google Nexus 7.."

It was also rather difficult to find out what the monthly fees would be, should one choose to subscribe. Found those too (I think):

Not stated there, is that paying monthly fees also enables the "extra" features of the app.

My Nexus 7 doesn't see a ton of use, and at times I find it's completely drained power wise. Standby time doesn't seem to be as good as other platforms I've used.

In the past, I've just plugged in it's standard microUSB cable to a powered USB port on a computer, and came back to a charged device. But this wasn't 100%, and sometimes it seemed it wouldn't start charging.

Tonight, it's now just stuck in a loop, where it boots, immediacy powers down when it hits the PIN lock screen, then ends with a few seconds of video distortion and an audible hiss. Anyone seen similar? Is this a defect I need to be seeking warranty service for, or just bad low power handling?

Nexus 7 Charging Issue

The first two paragraphs match my experience with my N7. Haven't seen the other problem though.

Seems better on the OS update from the other week though.

It may be getting better. Moved it to a wall plug where it still did the same cycle 3 more times, before it finally shutdown with a low power icon on the screen instead of the video distortion and hiss. Tapping the power button now also shows the battery icon instead of it trying to boot.

Never had an issue with standby/run time on battery with my N7. It had gobs and gobs of battery run time.

That was all before Android 4.2/.4.2.1 though -- some users report that things went way downhill on the N7 after that.

I sold my N7 a few weeks before the update, though (never figured out what tablets are good for, other than as a photo album), so I have no experience with it after the update.

Cheers

I've been running the open-source Prey Project. It's all about trying to track your lost gear. I don't think it supports remote wiping, but it does have all sorts of other things, like GPS tracking.

Another tracker that seems to be highly regarded is Cerberus, which does seem to have a remote wipe feature, among other things. I haven't played with it myself, but the pricing (one time EUR 2.99) seems pretty reasonable.

Out of the box the standby time on my n7 was crap, but by default it has WiFi enabled all the time, even when asleep.

Once I toggled that off it fixed the problem. I can leave it a week and there's still loads of juice left when I wake it back up.

I'm not willing to cripple my Internet connect tablet to restore the battery performance it should have

You should be able to leave wifi on and still get good battery performance, like you can on an iPad. The root cause isn't wifi, it appears to be badly behaved apps. If I force all the apps running background stuff out of memory it will last far better.

Unfortunately I've never taken the time to work out which apps are at fault specifically and just killing everything is just as bad as turning off wifi. Which is one of the reasons my N7 goes unused.

Horses for courses, I tend not to surf the internet on it when it's asleep.

That is to say that I don't really care for "notifications" from ebay, email or whatever, I get those on my phone and that's always on my person - which the N7 isn't.

I'd rather know that when I went to it there was a good chance of there being enough battery life to do stuff - rather that having to actively remember to recharge the thing OCD stylee.

I agree though, it'd be better if it was negligible and it could be kept on, but it isn't and it turning wifi off while it's asleep has zero impact on its usage for me, YMMV.

It is very difficult to receiving incoming Skype calls and Google+ Hangouts when wifi is off

(for a while the N7 was the only Google+ client I could rely on to work for Hangouts, not an issue anymore*, another reason it doesn't get used)

* at the time Google+ Hangouts tended to hang Chrome on OSX when I tried and the iOS client didn't work very well for me either, both of those issues aren't a problem anymore

Ahh...I don't use either of those.

Well, I occasionally use skype (to the wife) but I dislike video calls, so I use it as a phone anyway.

It gets used only when I'm abroad when I have access to WiFi and that usually means that I've texted the wife to say "turn on Skype" before I ring her on it because she invariably never has it running anyway.