Google announced its antipated tablet PC called the Nexus 7 at its annual developers event called Google I/O 2012 in San Francisco, California.

Bearing the brand Asus, Nexus 7 has a 7-inch screen, a 1280×800 display resolution, a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC or near-field communication, gyroscope, global positioning system, accelerometer, microphone and Micro-USB port.

The tablet runs on the latest version of Android operating system called Jelly Bean, which was also announced during the event, and is powered by a 1.3GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core CPU, a 12-core GPU, 1GB of RAM, and a 4,325mAh battery that provides 9 hours of video playback.

Jelly Bean is faster in performance than IceCreamSandwich. It also automatically resizes widgets, has a better dictionary and predictive typing, does offline voice typing, has a faster voice search, and has additional Arabic. Persian, Indian and Thai fonts.

The tablet is 0.4 inch thick and weighs 12 ounces.

The 8GB model sells for $199 and the16GB model for $249 on the Google Play store. Both models come with the Chrome browser and purchases on Google Play entitle buyers a $25 credit to spend on Google Play media. Units start shipping in mid-July.

The Nexus 7 will compete with Apple's iPad and Amazon's Kindle Fire that also runs on a modified Android OS.

 

A new Google small tablet computer, called Nexus 7, was unveiled at the company's annual "I/O" conference in San Francisco. Priced at $199, it will be a direct challenge to Amazon's Kindle Fire

 

California court bars sale of Samsung tablet in U.S.

San Jose, CA

A federal court in California has issued an injunction against the sale of Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the U.S.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh issued the relief sought by Apple Inc. citing that the Samsung product likely infringes on the iPad maker's patent related to the design of the tablet PC.

The ban is effective upon Apple's posting of a $2.6 million bond meant to compensate Samsung if the court later finds the injunction unnecessary. The hearing of the patent infringement case begins on July 30.

Koh's order came after a federal appeals court heard Apple's appeal on the judge's earlier refusal to grant the injunction against the tablet and Samsung smartphones.

Samsung said it will appeal Koh's decision.

The ban does not cover a new edition of the Samsung product, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 II.

Apple is accusing Samsung of copying the design and look of its iPad. While the iPad's share of the global tablet market is 63 percent in the first quarter of this year, the counterpart product from Samsung is also gaining in sales making the Korean firm the main competitor of the American company.

The two companies are also locked in patent infringement disputes in other countries.