
ASUS, manufacturer of Google's own-branded Nexus 7 Android tablet, has today announced that the device will be sold through major Australian retail stores.
The company has revealed that the 16GB model of the Nexus 7 will be sold in Australia through Harvey Norman, JB Hi Fi, Dick Smith, Bing Lee, The Good Guys, Retravision, Radio Rentals, Officeworks, EB Games, Costco, BSR and other authorised ASUS resellers from "late July".
The 16GB Nexus 7 will be priced at $319 in retail stores, which is the same cost as ordering it directly through Google's Play store when you add a $19.99 shipping cost to the $299 price tag. The cheaper 8GB version ($249 + $19.99 shipping) will only be available to purchase through the Play Store.
The Nexus 7 was officially announced last week at Google's I/O developers conference. It has a smaller 7in screen than the new iPad and is the first device to run the Google's new version of the Android OS, 4.1 Jelly Bean. The Jelly Bean 4.1 platform is a minor upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich, hence the version number jumping from 4.0 to 4.1, rather than leaping up to 5.0.
The Google Nexus 7 is powered by a 1.3Ghz quad-core Tegra 3 processor and comes with a GeForce 12-core GPU for gaming and other graphic intensive applications. The tablet has 1GB of RAM but no removable storage. It also has a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera and built-in NFC (Near Field Communication) connectivity but no rear facing camera, or 3G/4G connectivity.
The Google Nexus 7 sold by Australian retailers will be distributed by Synnex and Dicker Data.
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