Google Nexus 10 gets pictured three days before announcement

It appears that all the pieces of the puzzle are falling in place and now we have a pretty good picture of what to expect from Google on October 29. After the leaked LG Nexus 4, images of the rumored Samsung made Nexus 10 tablet have also been leaked courtesy Brief Mobile.
Actually, the leakage spree of the Nexus 10 started first with a leaked manual that spelled out the name loud and clear, then Google’s own Vic Gundotra posted images on Google+ that has EXIF data showing the Nexus 10.

Unlike the Nexus 7 tablet, the Nexus 10 is expected to go toe-to-toe with Apple’s iPad with Retina Display and the avalanche of Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets that have arrived post the launch of Microsoft’s latest operating system.

Even according to the Brief Mobile report the Nexus 10 is expected to be a powerhouse. They are reporting an incredible 10.1-inch  Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 2560×1600 pixels converting to 298.9 pixels per inch, a 1.7GHz dual-core Samsung Exynos 5250 processor built on the ARM Cortex A15 design, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, NFC, dual-side speakers like the Galaxy Note 10.1 and a 5-megapixel rear camera along side a front facing camera.  The device is apparently running Android 4.2, but there is no word on the Key Lime Pie nomenclature.

One should note that if Samsung does manage to pack in so many pixels in the Nexus 10, then Apple’s iPad with Retina Display will not remain the most pixel dense tablet in the world. In fact, the 2560×1600 resolution can be found in Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display and also on its 27-inch iMac. Additionally, the Exynos 5250 chip was only recently seen in the new Chromebook Samsung launched, but had a lower clock speed. This is actually Samsung’s first ARM chip to be built on the ARM Cortex A15 platform and it should definitely be a major step above the quad-core Exynos chip found in the Galaxy S III, Galaxy Note II and the Galaxy Note 10.1. That said, we’d bet Samsung actually needed such a powerful processor to drive so many pixels.

Remember one of the reasons that we have not seen more Retina display tablets is because of processor support. Most of the tablets out in the market are either powered by the Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core chip which actually cannot drive iPad like Retina resolutions. In fact, even Apple had to customize the memory bandwidth of the A5 chip on the third generation iPad and added more graphical cores that eventually led to the creation of the A5X chip which powered the third generation iPad and later it followed the same principle with the A6X chip on the fourth generation iPad.

Notably, some of the UI shots in the Brief Mobile report show that Google has indeed reworked the user interface of Android on larger tablets. Earlier in the year with the launch of the Nexus 7, Google had reworked Android to work better in portrait mode, but with the screenshots of the Nexus 10, the orientation remains landscape.

At the moment of writing Brief Mobile seems to be down, perhaps due to the sheer inflow of traffic, so bear with us if the read link ends up at a dead end.
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Sahil 'Bones' Gupta
REad