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Nexus 9

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Re: Nexus 9

#71

Post by ktsmith »

aetherson wrote: post #57
WildUtah wrote: post #19

So is it confirmed that there's no new Nexus 7? What is the best new alternative with some kind of clean Android mini tablet?

I don't understand why Google is making a Nexus 9. It seems crazy. Doesn't everyone understand at this point that 7-8" is the right size for a tablet? Are they just of the impression that phablets will eat small tablets? (I should say that of course there is SOME market for larger tablets out there. If they were producing a Nexus 7 and a Nexus 9, that would make more sense. But I thought that both expert consensus an…

> Doesn't everyone understand at this point that 7-8" is the right size for a tablet?

I've grown to loathe the Nexus 7. It's got a nice weight and feel to it from a hardware perspective but it feels too tall/thin in portrait and too short in landscape. I'm much more likely to pick up my older iPad instead. The performance of the 7 (second version) was also very disappointing. I'm actually interested in seeing the Nexus 9 not only because it fits me a bit better being a bit bigger but by going to 4:3 I think some of what I hate about the 7 will be eliminated. That being said it doesn't have enough storage so I probably won't get one.

Re: Nexus 9

#72

Post by exDM69 »

corysama wrote: post #66
Symmetry wrote: post #16

Wait, they're using the 64 bit K1 as their processor? That's Project Denver[1]! I'm super excited to see how that thing benchmarks. This is basically Transmeta's Efficeon (same IP and team, even) with a bunch of improvements. They mentioned in the Hot Chips talk that they had made improvements like enabling native execution while the optimizer works - they benchmarks they provided said that it was very effective but…

I would expect it to bench pretty much the same as the Shield Tablet. In fact, they are probably almost identical hardware-wise. I'll be interested to see if there is a price difference. Anand's CPU benchmarks are very browser-oriented. The Shield usually beat all other Android devices, but still lost to the iPad Air. I suspect that has more to do with the quality of Mobile Safari than the differences in hardware. In…

> I would expect it to bench pretty much the same as the Shield Tablet.

It's not the same chip as in the Shield Tablet (which has an ARMv7 CPU). The GPU is the same but the CPU is the 64 bit Denver CPU (ARMv8). According to benchmarks should be a fair bit faster, especially in single thread execution.

Re: Nexus 9

#73

Post by corysama »

4ad wrote: post #4

It has an arm64 CPU. It looks like this will be the first cheap, easily obtainable and hackable (?) arm64 hardware out there. I'm writing the arm64 Go compiler. I wonder if it's feasible to start testing on this machine too (e.g. how open it really is, how hard is to get a sane working environment, etc).

You should have a look at Nvidia's K1 dev kit. (edit: guess that's not 64 bit...)

https://developer.nvidia.com/jetson-tk1

https://developer.nvidia.com/tegra-development

Nvidia's dev support team is great. Using the Tegra Dev pack on a Shield is by far the best NDK environment I've found.

Re: Nexus 9

#74

Post by xur17 »

pisarzp wrote: post #49

I was using this device for last couple months. It's by far the best tablet I've ever used. It feels great when you hold it and thank god for better aspect ratio! (compared to N7). I also have N10, but never really liked it, it was quite cumbersome to hold it. N9 feels much better in hands. The thing I loved the most though was keyboard cover. It's narrow but you get used to it very fast. Typing on it was such a plea…

How's the performance? I have a first gen Nexus 7 that's getting really slow, and this looks like an interesting option to replace it.

Is it faster, or at least comparable to the Nexus 5? I rarely use my tablet right now as my phone is considerably faster.

Re: Nexus 9

#75

Post by Symmetry »

corysama wrote: post #66
Symmetry wrote: post #16

Wait, they're using the 64 bit K1 as their processor? That's Project Denver[1]! I'm super excited to see how that thing benchmarks. This is basically Transmeta's Efficeon (same IP and team, even) with a bunch of improvements. They mentioned in the Hot Chips talk that they had made improvements like enabling native execution while the optimizer works - they benchmarks they provided said that it was very effective but…

I would expect it to bench pretty much the same as the Shield Tablet. In fact, they are probably almost identical hardware-wise. I'll be interested to see if there is a price difference. Anand's CPU benchmarks are very browser-oriented. The Shield usually beat all other Android devices, but still lost to the iPad Air. I suspect that has more to do with the quality of Mobile Safari than the differences in hardware. In…

That's possible, but the Shield has a K1 varient with 4 32-bit A15 cores on the chip while the Nexus 9 has a varient of the K9 that has 2 64-bit Project Denver cores. The graphics are identical between the two versions of the K1 so I don't expect much difference in the GPU benchmarks, but I expect the CPU benchmark comparison to be interesting. On one hand we'll have four 3-wide conventional OoO cores. On the other we'll have two cores that are initially narrow and in order but are 7-wide VLIWs once the code morphing software has had a chance to run.

Re: Nexus 9

#76

Post by superbaconman »

seanflyon wrote: post #67
superbaconman wrote: post #62

What's up with keyboards that lack a right side ctrl key? Is it bad form to type using right-ctrl or something? Can someone shed some light on this? :\

What would you remove from the keyboard to accommodate a right side ctrl key?

In this case the alt keys appear to be the size of two letter keys. We could steal some room from there. Maybe I'm just too picky, it's a small form factor.

Re: Nexus 9

#77

Post by donniezazen »

Where do you guys think Nexus 9 fits? I have gotten used to Nexus 7 for reading and Nexus 10 for writing/media consumption reading graphically rich stuff like magazine. Do you think Nexus 9 replaces both of those different types of works.

Re: Nexus 9

#78

Post by ChuckMcM »

sliverstorm wrote: post #70
ChuckMcM wrote: post #42

And of course the day before Apple announces its new iPad (allegedly). I really like having two very well funded companies in all out competition, it makes for some really great features and options in both products. The size thing is what I'm interested in though. I'm waiting to see if there actually is a 12" iPad pro tomorrow, otherwise I'll pull the trigger on a Note Pro. I get the pocket/purse argument for 9" but…

You find 9-10" is insufficient for reading material? I have a 7" Android I got to test the waters, and reading ebooks/pdfs/textbooks/magazines is my use case so I'm thinking of going up in screen size- but how much?

   > You find 9-10" is insufficient for reading material?
No, I find 12 - 13" better for reading material. The reason my Retina iPad became my default "book" is because it was sufficient. :-)

12.5" is the 'printable' area of an 8.5 x 11" page with 1" margins. (14" if you include the margins). So especially for PDFs that are 'zoomed to the margins' a retina 12.5" display can be pretty much a 1 for 1 reproduction. And that is something I've wanted for a very very long time.

Re: Nexus 9

#79

Post by [deleted] »

sliverstorm wrote: post #70
ChuckMcM wrote: post #42

And of course the day before Apple announces its new iPad (allegedly). I really like having two very well funded companies in all out competition, it makes for some really great features and options in both products. The size thing is what I'm interested in though. I'm waiting to see if there actually is a 12" iPad pro tomorrow, otherwise I'll pull the trigger on a Note Pro. I get the pocket/purse argument for 9" but…

You find 9-10" is insufficient for reading material? I have a 7" Android I got to test the waters, and reading ebooks/pdfs/textbooks/magazines is my use case so I'm thinking of going up in screen size- but how much?

[deleted]

Re: Nexus 9

#80

Post by tdicola »

I'm impressed this is even lighter than the current iPad air (although it remains to be seen what happens with Apple's announcement tomorrow), and not by a trivial amount--almost 50 grams lighter. I've been a happy Nexus 7 user but am starting to feel I need a little bit bigger screen, and the 4:3 aspect ratio is much nicer for web browsing.
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