Comparison: Nexus 7, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Vs Surface Tablet: How Do They Compare?

Google announced the Nexus 7 tablet at its 2012 Google I/O conference, so how does it compare to the Surface tablet?

Yes we’ve done a speculative comparison, but how do the features – not the hardware – compare to Surface

With the announcement of the Google Nexus 7 tablet at the company’s I/O conference yesterday, which continues to run this week, we got to see what features Google thinks will provide a compelling tablet experience. There are some new features, but are they different enough to create a compelling device?

Google Now

Google Now is basically an always-on, real-time updating service for content based on elements such as your location and search history. It’s compelling, actually, because you might be on the train and remember your football team is playing and the score would have been updating in the background. Another example is that it’ll show stores locally, such as Target, which is especially useful when you’re in a new city and you want to find the nearest Microsoft Store.

Notification Bar

The almost iconic Android notification bar has been reworked: it’s now semi-transparent, and only takes up the middle of the screen, while notifications can be expanded and reduced with the pinch of fingers and a thumb. It a useful way for viewing a bigger preview of content without opening the application, such as the first few lines of an e-mail or a text message.

Siri Rival: Promising

In Windows 8 there isn’t a slide-down bar, but notifications do appear when an event occurs. They’re both functional, and it depends if you want an option to control notifications or you just want an indicator.

Voice-to-Text

Voice-to-text implementation is basically like Siri, but a little more specific: rather than provide a card with a snapshot of information, it provides a focused result. An example is searching for the President of United States of America, which would show a picture of Barack Obama and his WIkipedia entry. Siri would say it back and present the card.

Widget Customization 2.0

Drag-and-drop widget customization has been a mainstay of Android, and a feature often cited over iOS, and now users can drop widgets in a predefined box where existing widgets will rearrange if a larger one is being introduced.