The Google Nexus 7 was the first great small Android tablet
Today marks the eighth anniversary of Google releasing the original Nexus 7 tablet and it’s easy to forget the impact that it had on the industry at the time. Sure, many phones today are approaching that 7-inch screen size and tablets have become more niche products since then, but it wasn’t always the case A very different tablet world Back in 2012, Apple’s iPad was reigning supreme, with the iPad 3 launching in March that year. This was back when there was only one iPad range — no iPad Air or iPad Pro . The Android tablet world was also in a state of flux, as Google had launched a dedicated version of Android for tablets in 2011 dubbed Android 3.0 Honeycomb (seen above). Prior to Honeycomb, Android tablet manufacturers had to simply use Android as it was intended for phones. This predictably led to scaling issues, less than ideal UI elements, and other technical gremlins. Google then chose to unify the phone and tablet platforms with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich rel...