Report: Google to release 7-inch Huawei-built Android tablet with 4GB RAM this year
Here's something you might not have been expecting: alongside two new phones, it possible that Google will also announce a new 7-inch Android tablet very soon. According to Evan Blass, it will be released …
Context & Ripple Effects
Back in May 2015, sourcing pointed to [[a:829533|two new Nexus phones for the year — an LG Angler and a Huawei Bullhead — and explicitly no new Nexus tablet]]. This report reverses that call: Google is now said to be adding a 7-inch Huawei-built tablet with 4GB RAM to the same 2016 lineup, extending a partner relationship that already covers one of the two phones.
Two weeks of follow-up sharpened the picture, with later sourcing tying the device to Nexus branding and a possible run on Andromeda OS, Google's long-rumored Android-Chrome OS convergence project. That makes this small tablet potentially more than a spec refresh — it could be the vehicle for an OS transition.
First-order effects
- Huawei becomes Google's most heavily used Nexus hardware partner, building both the Bullhead phone and this tablet, while LG's role shrinks to a single phone.
- A 7-inch Android tablet shipping with 4GB RAM would double the memory of the closest recent comparable in the corpus, the LG G Pad II 10.1's 2GB configuration, resetting the small-tablet spec floor.
Second-order effects
- If the Andromeda OS tie-up proves real, rival Android tablet makers face a fork: build on the converged OS early or watch Google's own device define the reference experience.
- LG, whose G Pad line was the incumbent mid-range Android tablet play in this coverage, gets squeezed between Google's better-specced in-house-branded device and the coming shift away from plain Android tablets.
Third-order effects
- The arc runs through divergence: Google's tablet line later migrates to Chrome OS entirely with the $329 Acer Chromebook Tab 10, the first Chrome OS tablet, while Huawei — this device's builder — ends up shipping the MatePad Pro with no Google Play apps at all.
- That split points toward a structural lesson for contract manufacturers: hardware partnerships with platform owners are contingent on the platform owner's politics, and ODMs that lean on one ecosystem need a plan for losing it.
The trend: Google's Nexus program was consolidating around fewer manufacturing partners while converging its operating systems — a Huawei-built tablet sat exactly at that intersection before the partnership came apart.