ASUS on building the Google Nexus 7: “Our engineers told me it is like torture”

Secrecy in the mobile space is fascinating. Everybody wants to know what’s coming next and Apple has promised to “double down” on security surrounding their products. Last week Samsung gave some insight into how they protected the final design of the Galaxy S III – their engineers stated they lived “a double life” and swore not to talk about it, possibly hinting that they could be out of a job.

With Google’s release of the Nexus 7 tablet they apparently put ASUS through “torture.” In an interview with All Things D, Asus Chairman Jonney Shih, said they only had 4-months to make the Nexus 7 and that “Our engineers told me it is like torture…They ask a lot.” This ASUS team who designed the tablet called it the “Project A-Team” and worked a 24-hour development cycle. The end results was a 7-inch quad-core tablet that runs OS 4.1 Jelly Bean. The price, as rumoured, is around the $200 mark. According to Google’s Andy Rubin, the father of Android, notes that there’s little profit in the tablet and that “when it gets sold through the Play store, there’s no margin. It just basically gets (sold) through.”

For us Canadians, the Nexus 7 tablet is up for pre-order and is expected to be available mid-July. The price of the 8GB version is $209 and the 16GB version is $259.

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