Missed Google‘s big announcement(s)? Fear not, for we have you covered. On the 24th, Google held a special event – Breakfast with Sundar Pichai, the Senior Vice President at Google. During the event, Sundar spoke well about Android and its prospects, and immediately after he left the stage, we were presented with the new Nexus 7, which was followed by a couple of more goodies.
Nexus 7 (2013)
The Nexus 7 was a beauty in every way, right from the form-factor to the smoothness to the price. It did, however, lack in certain aspects, but that’s what you get for cutting costs. Nonetheless, the Nexus 7 was probably the best tablet of its time, and this week, Google decided it bump it up a notch with the new Nexus 7. Now featuring a rear-facing camera as well, the highest resolution display on a 7-inch tablet, 2GB of RAM and shipping with Android 4.3 (amongst other cool features), this tab has easily made it into my wish list.
Android 4.3
Yep! You read that right. Android 4.3 is here, and even though it doesn’t bring a plethora of new features, is does bring some significant ones. Before you start wondering, no. We didn’t get Key Lime Pie. But we did get Bluetooth LE (Low Energy – currently only supported by the Nexus 4 and the Nexus 7), Open GL ES 3.0 (that means awesome graphics for your games) and better multiple user-accounts. Like I said, Android 4.3 does bring in some significant features.
Chromecast
The Chromecast is perhaps Google’s answer to Apple TV. Built to look like a simple pen drive, the Google Chromecast plugs into your ordinary TV (through a USB port) and converts it (as Google says) into a smart TV, by coupling it with your phone. This gives the user a similar feel to Apple’s AirPlay, wherein the user can, at the tap/click of a button, stream their content straight to their TV from their device, and I mean any device running Google’s services. Yep! Not specifically Android.
Google Play Games
Of course, with all the leaks earlier this year, Google had to eventually launch their cross-device gaming platform. Google Play Games, available as a separate app, allows users to keep a track of their scoreboards, challenge other friends, download new games and so on. It is very similar to Game Center on iOS, and just like Game Center did after its initial launch, Google Play Games will only support a handful of games for the time-being, but I believe that the number will grow drastically. Also, Google announced Google Play Textbooks, but more of that later.
To read more about any of the above, simply click on the title in bold. Links for each article will be up as soon as we have the articles up themselves. Till then, feel free to share what you think about the announcements over breakfast. Do you think the event was worth it? Or should it have been clubbed with Motorola’s event coming next Thursday? If you enjoyed what you just read, then you can click here to view a list of articles by the same author(s). Till then, keep the comments rolling, swallow the red pill and accept this - thank you for reading, but our princess is in another castle!