Nexus 10 2 (2014) release date, price & specs rumours

We have the Google Nexus 5 smartphone and the Google Nexus 7 tablet, both with the new Android 4.4 (KitKat) operating system, and very nice they are too. But those looking for a 10in Android tablet are being left out, with no new Nexus 10 device being announced since last year’s Samsung-made Nexus 10.

This is only credible picture of the new Nexus 10 (2014) to date, or a decent enough fake that the finished article is likely to look pretty much identical

NEXUS 10 2 (2014) RELEASE DATE

It has been almost a year since that device’s launch and so we should have a new Nexus 10 with us any day. If the sudden launch of the Nexus 5 is anything to go by, it should go on sale with barely any fanfare at all. We were hoping for a launch late last year, around the anniversary of the previous device’s unveiling, but that date, and then Christmas, slipped by without any news.

However, now things are heating up with the old model finally being withdrawn from sale, with a ‘We are out of inventory. Please check back soon’ the same message that adorned the pages of other outgoing devices before the launch of their successors.

Some rumours point to Asus taking over manufacturing duties from Samsung, which is great news based on the excellent Nexus 7 devices made by the company in the past. Asus hasn’t shared anything with us yet regarding this though, and there’s no upcoming events organised by the company, so we wouldn’t expect the device to launch quite yet.

NEXUS 10 2 (2014) SPECIFICATIONS

Amazingly, given the constant leaks that surround Apple’s new products, there’s been very little coming out about the new tablet, we’ve yet to see any blurry pictures of what might, or might not, be the new Nexus 10. Almost all the information available comes from one source, where an eagle-eyed user claims to have captured a listing, now withdrawn, for the tablet on Google’s own Play store. It’s happened before and all the specs listed make perfect sense.

Here’s a screengrab from the supposed specs, it’s at least a well-executed fake

The display appears to be same 2,560×1,600 pixel (300PPI), 16:10 aspect ratio, PLS-technology screen we saw on the last model. That makes perfect sense as that screen was well ahead of its time anyway and would still be the most impressive screen on an Android tablet even a year on. The screen will apparently be protected by Gorilla Glass 3.

Behind the screen is likely to be a SnapDragon 800 chipset. We don’t need any leaks to tell us that, it’s practically a dead cert for a high-end Android tablet at present. The chipset is used in the Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 (2013), so we’d be amazed if it wasn’t here too. It has proved itself to be blistering fast too, applications, browsing, driving the OS, playing games. It’s hard to see us needing more from a mobile chipset in the foreseeable future.

This is backed up by 32GB of storage and 3GB of RAM. The Nexus 5 was also rumoured to have 3GB of RAM but that didn’t pan out, and Google even boasted that it had reduced the memory footprint of the OS, which is a mark against the validity of this spec sheet.

At 584g the new Nexus 10 looks to be a little weighty compared to the 469g iPad Air. It’s pretty slender though at just 7.9mm, but has bigger bezels measuring 258.9×172.6mm compared to 240×169.5mm on the iPad Air (it’s hard to compare directly due to the difference screen shapes). It’s a pretty compact tablet then, but no iPad beater.