Google's Nexus 7 tablet arrives in India, but unofficially and over-priced

Nexus 7, Google's latest and only tablet offering, is now available for online purchase in India. Although the tablet has not been officially launched in the country, you can buy it from Indiatimes Shopping for Rs 16,952 and also from eBay India for Rs 17,690. The search giant has also launched a 16 GB version but that is not up for sale when we last checked those sites.

This is good news for Indian buyers as rumours are doing the rounds that Google has no plans to launch the device here before Q4 2012, if it does so at all. But here is the catch. You can get a Nexus 7 in the US for $199 (around Rs 11,000), which means you will end up paying Rs 6,000 (or 35 per cent) extra for this tablet.

But is it worth the extra bucks? Go through the specs first before you decide to pay.

The tablet, made by Google in partnership with ASUS, has a 7 inch IPS LCD touchscreen display (1280×800 pixel resolution) and will run on the latest Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system (out of the box). It is powered by a 1.3 GHz Quad-core Tegra-3 processor (which is quite impressive) and comes with 1 GB RAM. Users will have the choice between 8 GB and 16 GB of internal memory.

The device features a 1.2 MP front-facing camera for video calling that can also record high definition videos (720p). On the connectivity front, the tablet has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and comes with a microUSB port, but there is no microSD port.

Nexus 7 also features NFC, which means it will have Android Beam. It measures 198.5mm x 120mm x 10.45mm and weighs 340 gm. This one comes with a 4,325 mAh battery, which will provide 9 hours of HD video playback, 10 hours of Web browsing/e-reading and 300 hours of standby time (that's what Google claims).

In the same price range, you can get your hands on tablets like Samsung's Galaxy Tab 2 (Rs 18,990) and Amazon's Kindle Fire (Rs 15,664) – currently the biggest competitors of Nexus 7. Other tablets in this price range include Lenovo IdeaPad Tablet A1 (Rs 15,369), ViewSonic ViewPad 10e (Rs 17,325) and ASUS's own Transformer TF101-A1 (Rs 19,925), among others. However, Nexus 7 is a Google product and that essentially means it will have the edge over its Android competitors, as it will always be the first to receive all Google updates and upgrades.

So you have a choice now. You can either wait for Google to officially launch the tablet in October (most probably at a lower price) or you can go ahead and indulge yourself right now. On Indiatimes, the delivery time is half-a-month and for eBay, it will be 10 days.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)