Comments on: A Verbose, Hands-On Nexus 7 Review

By: Aaron

Aaron — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 03:26:27 +0000

For keyboarding on Android phones, I highly recommend Swype. The current Swype beta is even more featureful and quite impressive. I don’t know how well Swype would scale up on a tablet but believe the beta works fine on the Nexus 7.

http://www.swype.com/

By: hrvojem

hrvojem — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:55:21 +0000

I’m not sure if you tried Hacker’s keyboard it has all the features you’ve mentioned missing plus the arrow, Esc and some other keys useful for terminal/vi(m) stuff.

By: dhardy

dhardy — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:49:23 +0000

I can suggest a reason you might *not* want the pop-up visual feedback however, and possibly the reason it’s been removed.

I read an article a while back about some researchers using a video camera to view a phone screen from quite a distance — or even the reflection in sunglasses — and by using the location of the pop-up feedback they were able to reconstruct a lot of the key-presses. You don’t really want someone doing that, I take it?

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 02:27:00 +0000

That was an astonishingly good suggestion. Thanks. That keyboard is great. I appreciate the tip.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 23:41:01 +0000

I’ve been using Android gadgets since the original Motorola Droid, and this is the first I’ve ever had that sort of issue with. I think you’re making way too much out of it.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 23:40:19 +0000

Not really, at least on the Nexus 7. I’m looking at it now. The top row of letters (QWERTY) does not turn long presses into numbers, nor show a visual indication that it will. There are a few long press shortcuts (such as the period to a question mark), but none that pop up the ICS-style menu. It seems there may be differences between JB phones and tablets.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 23:37:10 +0000

Strange. I wonder why it is more limited on a tablet. I’m still waiting for the JB update for my Verizon Galaxy Nexus.

By: Max

Max — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 23:03:05 +0000

“I have had occasional issues with it not registering touches properly. This is always cleared up by touching the power button to put the unit to sleep, then waking it back up.”

^^^ enough reason to keep me away. Every single Android-powered gadget I own suffers from this. And I hate that. However, my 1st gen iPad never skips a beat when responding to touch. Goes to show you that lofty CPU claims made by android vendors fail to translate into a better user experience. Google gets a F for that.

By: Ken Bloom

Ken Bloom — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 22:40:02 +0000

My experience with Jelly Bean is that you’re wrong about the keyboard. My experience is that it does still have the long press features that were present in ICS.

By: mrjoel

mrjoel — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 22:10:36 +0000

As for the soft keyboard, check out the Thumb Keyboard by beansoft in the market. I played with several keyboards and now use that on all my Android devices, phone and tablet.

By: tom

tom — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 10:19:33 +0000

It seems there are some differences between Jelly Bean for tablets and for phones. On my Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.1.1, the stock browser isn’t Chrome and the keyboard behaves like in Ice Cream Sandwich (keys pop up, long-press shows other features).

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 04:59:42 +0000

I should add that run time with the screen on is also pretty low. Maybe in the range of a 2 hours or so.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 04:58:39 +0000

It seems the main problem is the CDMA modem. When I am in an area with weak signals in particular, which is most of the time for me, the battery drains at a rapid rate. It could last as little as 6 hours idle.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 04:34:10 +0000

What problem have you had with battery life on the Galaxy Nexus? Mine seems to last for days of intermittent use, or a day and a half or so of frequent use.