Top 32 Useful Apps for Nexus 7

The Nexus 7 tablet is Google’s former flagship tablet and current competitor for the iPad Mini. We have gotten used to this tablet and all its nice features by now, but for those who are just now looking for information about it, let us introduce it again. The device is a 7 inch tablet, has a Quad Core nVidia Tegra 3 processor, 2 GB of RAM memory and it comes in two flavors: 16 or 32 GB of storage space. Although it does has its drawbacks, the tablet is pretty powerful and a great gadget for Nexus lovers that want to enjoy the latest Android 4.2 operating system.
One particular drawback that users of the Nexus 7 and the Nexus 10 (7’s bigger brother) tablets have been complaining about is the lack of tablet dedicated apps. Unlike the iOS competitors, developers of Android apps have more to worry about, and the process of developing tablet apps takes a bit longer. But, if you have purchased a Nexus 7 tablet, don’t worry! There are apps that work great on it. We’ll try to give you a list of the best ones we could find.

The roots of the problem

Because of the large number of complaints, developers are starting to add more tablet dedicated apps that have higher resolutions suited for bigger HD displays. I do believe that in a short time, this issue will be a thing of the past, and users will have a better experience and benefit from a wider array of apps. I believe that this issue is caused by a number of factors. Let’s take a look at some of them and see if we can better understand what is the cause of them.

Fragmentation – I know, I know…everyone is talking about this, but I believe that this is one of the biggest problems that Google’s OS is facing. Although manufacturers of tablets and smartphones are trying to bring out devices that run on the newest version of Android, many other still stick to older versions like Gingerbread or Honeycomb. Updates make their way pretty slow and this issue will take some time before it will be resolved.
Devices – Also, another type of fragmentation is because of the shear number of devices. Apple is pumping its chest that they have dedicated apps for their tablets and smartphones, but if you think about it, they only have two flagship products: an iPhone and an iPad, each having their own variations. This makes it easy for developers to create apps, but in the case of Android, these are hundreds of devices, coming from different manufacturers, with different features, specs or screen sizes. This makes it pretty hard for developers to reach a wide number of users.
Developers – Although this might be considered a “touchy” subject, it’s not one that can be overlooked. Think of the fact that many Android developers are people like you and me, and they do not posses the necessary manpower or financial resources to spend time developing apps for different devices. As opposed, iOS developers benefit from having many paid apps that generate a lot of income, so many stick only with iOS development.

Nevertheless, these drawbacks, I believe, are starting to go. The number of Android tablets being developed is rising, and the number of users is also on the rise. Developers will have another shot in bringing tablet-friendly apps to the Play Store and this will more or less take care of the problem.

List of the best Nexus 7 apps

Because such a list is not easy to generate, we will show you different types of apps that are Nexus 7 friendly. They will take full advantage of the of the power that the Nexus 7 has, provided by its Tegra 3 processor, and of course, from the gorgeous looking 7 inch display. But now, here is our list of the best Nexus 7 apps:

Games

Because playing games will probably be one of the most frequent activities that you will do on your Nexus 7 Tablet (after all, it has a big screen and lots of power for rendering complex graphics), here are some of the most entertaining we thought of.

Entertainment

The bigger display of a tablet gives you much more freedom, and such, there are a few apps that let you take advantage of this. Also, with further development, other multimedia apps will quickly make the list. As for now, we did not add them to the list because the developers need to iron out the issues first.

News

I love reading the new every day (or multiple times a day), but finding an app that would satisfy me was a bit of a struggle. However, those that had what it took are just…awesome. Also, there are other news apps on the Play Store, but they still need some work before they can be added to the list.

Social

For some, socializing is very important. And it was a pretty big surprise when I found out that the two most used social networks had apps that need a lot of work before they can be deemed Nexus 7 – worthy. I am talking of course about Facebook (which is a very low quality app for smartphones also) and Twitter. I really hope these two will receive the proper updates so they could come on this list.

Tools

Who does not like tool apps? They have the power to transform a device from “a tablet” to “your tablet” by adding features, changing the appearance of the UI or making it more user friendly and more productive. These apps should be the very first you look at for your Nexus 7 tablet.

As you can see, the number of apps is slowly, but surely growing, and with the coming of the Nexus 10, the list will become bigger and bigger. Of course, these are not all the apps that you can install on your Nexus 7 tablet, the Play Store has many more to offer. This is but a taste of what we found to be the most interesting. If you have any recommendations of Nexus 7 apps that you have tried and liked, please let us know by leaving a comment.

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