Asus to offer 32GB Nexus 7 tablets in India soon

Computing hardware maker Asus yesterday announced that it would soon make available the 32 GB variants of the Nexus 7 tablet, which Google started selling in India last week after long delays, mix-ups.

The Nexus 7, made by Asus for Google, was released internationally in July. In November, Asus brought it to India, but had to discontinue it almost immediately given the steep pricing at Rs19,981, which nearly matched the price of an iPad Mini.

The internet search company, last week started selling the  devices on the Google Play Store in India. The Play Store, today not only has apps on offer, but also books, music, movies and devices. The 16 GB, Wi-Fi only version can be bought at a reasonable Rs15,999, making it one of the best value for money  tablet buys.

For this, tablet buffs need to thank, Google chairman Eric Schmidt whose visit to India for the Google Big Tent Active Summit on 21 March, cleared the decks for better availability of Nexus devices.

Apologising for the lack of Nexus devices in India, he said Google was working on the issue and part of the problem was that, the company's products were more expensive than what they should be in the country. He added there were also certification issues. He said Google wanted a fully-serviced market.

The Nexus 7 comes with a Rs15,999 (US$295) price tag for the 16 GB internal storage, expandable to 32 GB variant, with a 3 to 7 days shipping time.

Hailed as the lightest tablet, weighing only 340 grams, the specifications of the device include the Google Android 4.2 OS Jellybean, running on a NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad core processor with 1 GB of RAM. It also comes with a 12 core graphics processing unit (GPU) for gaming and has an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer.

The Nexus 7 incorporates a 7-inch backlit IPS HD display with 1200 X 800 resolution, and is covered by Corning Gorilla Glass for protection. The front camera, 1.2 MP is pretty basic and the fact that there is no rear camera either is an added disappointment.

Also quite unlike in other tablets, there is no SIM card slot or support. Though the Nexus 7 tablet connects only via Wi-Fi, it also has Bluetooth and Near Field Communications (NFC) support, in addition to USB, MicroUSB, and GPS.

According to experts, the NFC support seems to be a clever way of pushing consumers towards NFC in preparation of mobile payments and machine to machine (M2M) communications which may take some time coming to India. Retailers in India are mostly neither ready with technology nor the training for this to be implemented any time soon yet.