So I got the nexus 7 and I'm setting it up and putting it through the paces.
Hardware feels solid. I hope my sis is ok with form factor. A little worried. I think it's too big for her to hold in her palm like a phone, so she will have to hold it with a thumb grip, but the side bevels are two narrow.
Not thrilled about the power button on the side. (at first i thought there was a smudge on the front but later i realized it was a mark to tell you which end is up, so you can find the power button.) The screen and bevel are both glossy black and when using night theme they blend together so I keep touching the screen inadvertently.
Screen looks pretty good thanks to the 300+ dpi. But black levels are just so so. Black text looks grey compared to my iPad 3.
Overall, it feels a bit rough. Things are fast and responsive until they are not. For example: scrolling. It goes really fast and then grinds to a near stop then does a couple jerks then stops.
The app switcher is really nice. Better than iOS. I like the customizable home screen, once I figured it out. (wow, google spared no effort spamming with every service they have. If this is the clean android build I don't want to know what the spammy ones look like)
Stereo speakers! okay, tinny, but stereo nevertheless
Battery life seems low for a brand new fully charged device. Maybe 8 hrs?
One thing I really appreciate about android is a lot of apps go for the dark high contrast look. I hate the flat, unrelentingly white and bright look adopted by ios 7. Apple must realize how eye tiring all that white is, so what do they do? Add color blobs to app background. :facepalm:
Android has what I wish apple would add: a common, general storage space that can be accessed by all apps. (ios has that but only for music and photos). unfortunately, android apps all have their own idea of where to put files so I have folders littered all over.
The major apps on android are pretty much the same as on ios (many of them were probably ported over from ios, so that's not surprising). However, the smaller, independent apps are not very good, from what I see so far.
Example: I'm trying to find an ebook reader and there's nothing as good as Marvin or Stanza on the iPad. I've tried moon, aldiko, montano, cool reader. They all have some annoying flaws -- not missing or incomplete features, but flaws in basic operation and lousy implementation of features. Like: it's all or nothing when it comes to publisher css settings. You can't just change font and margin and keep the other CSS settings intact. Tapping to turn page does not working consistently (I installed a touch test app, and it registers my touches fine). Ditto comic / manga reader. Perfect viewer has a ton of settings and tweaks, but doesn't have a simple scrubber. Komik doesn't let you flick scroll, you have to drag the page from too to bottom if you are zoomed in. Etc
My problem with these apps 1/ they seem to follow the do-whatever-you-feel-like design guideline. One app uses double tap to return to library instead of zooming in. Another uses swipe up as show menu. They all look and behave differently with idiosyncratic defaults. Like one has 9 tap zones assigned to various functions so it does weird random things until I dug into the menu. You think they could've shown you on first run the tap zone assignment. 2/ none of them is good at giving you visual feedback and telling you what is happening. A lot of times, I tap something, nothing seems to happen, I tap again, then again, then 3 things happen quick succession. 3/ they put emphasis on customizability while not getting basic functions working correctly. 4/ just lousy user experience in general. Since I've done gui programming myself, I'm way better than the average person at putting myself in the head of the developer, but I still spend way too much time trying to figure out how to do things.
Ps: I don't have a menu or search key. Since they're soft keys, there must be a way to add them, but I can't find it.