The LG G Pad 8.3 from Google Play has (as the name suggests) an 8.3-inch screen that clocks in at 1920×1200. So it’s the same resolution as the Nexus 7 2013, but a little larger. For some people, the Nexus 7 is simply too small to be the ideal tablet. All things considered, an 8-9 inch tablet is a really great size. This way Google can cater to those people with stock Android and not have to develop new hardware for the Nexus program.Google has been rapidly expanding the selection of Android devices it sells in the Play Store this year, and one of the recent additions might seem odd at first glance. The Google Play Edition LG G Pad 8.3 is only a little larger than the 2013 Nexus 7, but it starts at $350. However it fills a niche, and Google is all about niches these days.
The rest of the hardware is similarly impressive. The G Pad has a quad-core QualcommSnapdragon 600 at 1.7GHz per core, 2GB of RAM, and a 4600mAh battery. The battery is quite a bit larger than the Nexus 7′s 3950mAh unit, which is a happy side effect of the larger chassis size. It’s only slightly heavier than the Nexus 7, though. While the G Pad 8.3 only has 16GB of internal storage, it includes a microSD card slot, something that is lacking on the Nexus devices, much to the displeasure of a vocal subset of Android fans.
When the G Pad 8.3 came out recently, theconsensus was clear. It had very good hardware, but the software was a bit of a mess. By keeping LG from poking around too much with the UI and features of the software, the Google Play Edition tablet could rectify the one major problem facing the device. This tablet runs Android 4.4 KitKat, and should stay up to date much better than other devices.
In the past, when Google talked about Android, it was talking about a version of the platform that almost no one would ever see. OEMs skin and modify devices along with their carrier partners, which weakens Google’s control over Android. A Google Play phone or tablet provides a stock Android experience that is heavily influenced by Google. While the OEM still builds the update, there is virtually no change to the code beyond optimization for the hardware, and certainly no carrier bloatware. The result is more premium hardware that offers a pure Android experience in a variety of styles and form factors — something for everyone.
Via: ExtremeTech
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