This is an excellent review of the Nexus 7 by Fraser Speirs. What especially stood out to me in Speirs’ article is how much he compared the Nexus 7 against the iPhone rather than the iPad:
After living with the Nexus 7 for about 10 days now, I’m not even thinking about it in the same bracket as the iPad. I’m thinking about it in the same bracket as my iPhone.
But ultimately, Speirs concludes that he sees no advantage to a device that sits in-between an iPhone and an iPad:
I just find the Nexus 7 a weird mix. […] Not as portable as a smartphone yet nowhere near as powerful as an iPad.
Many reviewers have said that the Nexus 7 made them want Apple to build a 7″ iPad. I disagree. The Nexus 7 has made me want a slightly bigger iPhone. I can get all of the software functionality I get from the Nexus 7 – and more – on my iPhone. If we are going to trade off functionality for portability, let’s go all the way and make the thing really portable.
So, though it’s getting far out on a limb to take a device built by a competitor and use it as a comparison against a hypothetical, rumored, still-as-of-yet-non-existent device, but… If Apple does make an iPad mini, perhaps “a big iPod touch” (what people dubbed the original iPad) will turn out to be a pretty fair description of it.