Well, we’ve been assuming for months that if Google is preparing a big reveal for the much-rumored Nexus Tablet, it would be at the company’s yearly developer conference, Google I/O. TechnoBuffalo
is claiming information from an anonymous source (the best kind!) that
says the tablet will absolutely show up at the conference, and as other
rumors have indicated, ASUS will produce the hardware. New software is
also rumored, though whether or not it’s Android 5.0 is still in
question. Note that this comes just hours after DiGiTimes reported the same thing.
The source goes on to say that it is indeed a 7-inch tablet, lending
even more credence to the idea that it’s a copied or reworked version of
the $250 MeMO 370T. ASUS’ Tegra 3-powered budget machine has been conspicuously absent since its announcement earlier this year, and NVIDIA recently showed off plans to bring quad-core tablets (with a definite ASUS teaser image) to market at a price of $200.
What’s more interesting at this point is what software it’ll be
running. The source was unclear on whether or not the “Nexus Tablet”
would be running Jelly Bean, if in fact that is the next version of
Android. Google will certainly have some new software to show off at
Google I/O, but whether or not it’s ready for prime time is yet to be
determined. An incremental update, say Android 4.1 or 4.5, seems more
likely.
As always with news from unverified sources, treat this rumor as just
that: rumor. We haven’t heard anything about a Nexus Tablet from a
source that we’d consider 100% dependable yet. That said, we’re
certainly hoping to see something in San Francisco in two months’ time,
and hear about Google’s potential plans for expanding the Nexus program to as many as five manufacturers.
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