At its Google I/O Conference in San Francisco, CA, Google Inc. introduced its first tablet offering, the Nexus 7. The device will start shipping in mid-July for US$199 - official word on Canadian pricing and availability hasn't been confirmed.

The device was built by ASUS and comes with a NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor and runs on Google's forthcoming Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) OS. It will come in 8GB and 16GB versions and feature 1GB RAM.

It has a 7" HD (1280 x 800) backlit IPS, Corning glass display, a 1.2MP front-facing camera, a microUSB port, as well as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. The battery can last up to 10 hours on a single charge.

In terms of size, the Nexus 7 weighs 340 grams and is 10.45mm thick.

Naturally, the product will also come preloaded with Google-centric apps like YouTube, Gmail, Google+ and Chrome.

As for Jelly Bean, one of the cooler new features of it is Google Now. The company says that this aspect of the new OS is able use a person's location, calendar entries and search history to offer better search results. Google Now is able to go as far as learning which route an individual takes to work each day and is able to soon offer daily traffic reports and the best available routes.

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