Google Nexus 7: News Update & Top 5 Recommended Apps

Arguably the most popular Android tablet yet, Google's Nexus 7 has come just about as close as one can to capturing the magic Apple has achieved with its iPad.

"Nexus 7 brings you the best of Google-YouTube, Chrome, Gmail, Maps-and all the great content from Google Play in a slim, portable package that fits perfectly in your hand," says Google in its statement.

"To give you more room for all that great content you can now get Nexus 7 with 16GB ($199) or 32GB ($249) of storage. But we also wanted to make this highly portable tablet even more mobile. So we added HSPA+ mobile data. Nexus 7 is now also available with 32GB and HSPA+ mobile ($299), which can operate on more than 200 GSM providers worldwide, including AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S."

The Nexus 7 is available in the U.S., U.K., Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Canada and Japan, and also through Google's retail partners Gamestop, Office Depot, Office Max, Staples and Walmart.

Nexus 7 owners will finally have the opportunity to own an Asus-made dock for their Asus-made tablets soon. While no formal release date has been announced yet, the Google Nexus 7 dock will reportedly be released in the U.S. within the next two weeks, according to a "reliable source" who spoke to tech website The Verge.

Priced at $39.99, the dock allows users to charge their tablet and consume media or anything else at the same time. The accessory weighs just 280g, packs a 3.5mm audio-out and a micro-USB port, and allows users to charge their Nexus 7 cable-free.

Asus has been demonstrating the device at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, CNET reports.

A listing for the dock already appears on Manhattan retailer B&H's product page, displaying the price and an expected delivery date of Jan. 16, backing up The Verge's claim.

Nexus 7 Specs

Seven-inch 1280×800 pixel 216 ppi IPS display, Corning glass, weighs 340 grams, features front-facing 1.2 megapixels camera, 4325mAh batter, microUSB port, NFC (Android Beam), 1GB RAM, 8/16GB storage, microphone, 9 hours video, 10 hours of web browsing or reading, GPS, WiFi, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and quad-core Tegra 3 processor.

Top 5 apps

Google's device also has over 600,000 apps to choose from. Here, in no particular order, are our top five picks for essential apps to add to your new Android tablet.

1) Amazon Kindle

The Nexus 7's size and weight make it an ideal platform to replace conventional paperbacks, and the Kindle app from Amazon may be the best reading app we've found yet. The app allows you purchase and download millions of e-books and magazines from Amazon's online bookstore.

Kindle is packed with sleek features, too, elevating it several notches above other similar reading apps. Amazon's Whispersync technology lets you access your Kindle account, which means any books you've downloaded across the Kindle platform range, from apps on the iPhone, Android phones, Blackberrys, Windows Phone 7 handsets, and both Windows PCs and Macs, will all seamlessly be in one place, and will even tell you exactly where you left off reading in a particular book. The app can also read other types of documents like PDFs, making it handy for work as well.

2) Google Drive

The Nexus 7 is a Google device through and through, meaning if you're already plugged into the Google world, this is the tablet for you. And as far as productivity goes, no app extends that Google experience like Google Drive. The free app allows you create Word, Excel and Powerpoint style documents, which you can then edit and share between connected devices and even other users. The app is also great at multi-tasking. Google Drive lets you simultaneously edit files, and you can store things for offline reading, making it perfect for those on the go.

3) LinkedIn

The essential career social networking site is now available for free for the Nexus 7. LinkedIn is a great way to keep in touch with professional contacts, jobs, and career industry news in real time and this app's smooth interface makes that experience even more rewarding and easy to use.

4) Camera Launcher

While the Nexus 7 has a front-facing camera designed to work with apps such as Skype and Google+, the device lacks the ability to just take pictures like a normal camera. That's where Camera Launcher comes in. The app is a simple way to take stills and video and tweaks some of the settings of the Nexus 7's 1.2 megapixel front-facing camera.

5) Pulse

Pulse has been a mainstay on mobile devices for some time now, and the current Nexus 7 version improves on what made the app such a delight in the past. It's a curatorial news magazine app, so, you can pick and choose to only see news from your preferred sources. Pulse live streams only the news you want in an attractive layout.