Nexus family – 2012 Nexus 7 on the right

A new rumor originating from Asia says that the new Nexus 7 tablet could be launched by the end of the month in Taiwan, with other markets to follow after that.

Moreover, the 16GB version of the tablet is said to cost $229 (apparently with LTE support) while the 32GB model could cost as much as $299 (again, LTE support included).

We’ll point out that it’s a bit difficult to see where this rumor really originates from, so take everything with a grain of salt for now. We’re looking at a variety of Asian sources that ultimately point to a website that hides under a paywall information initially published by Taiwan paper Economic Daily.

Moving through the Google translations, we find out that the new tablet will be sold as the “new Nexus 7,” a name we did hear in the past.  Furthermore, the device is now said to pack a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor instead of a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 CPU as a previous rumor revealed.

Rbmen lists the following list of specs and features for the Asus K009 / ME571K – in case you’re not familiar with that product number we’ll remind you that the K009 is the device spotted at the FCC with Nexus branding:

• ASUS K009/ME571K
• Snapdragon APQ8064 processor
• JDI made LT070ME05000 liquid crystal panel
• 2GB of RAM
• Storage capacity of 32GB
• 5-megapixel rear camera, 1.2-megapixels front camera
• LTE B1/B2/B3/B4/B5/B13 · B17
• WCDMA 1900/1700/850Mhz GSM 1900/850Mhz
• Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth, NFC enabled
• Battery capacity of 3950mAh

But then there’s also an Asus K008 model, which is expected to be the Wi-Fi-only version of the tablet. TechKiddy lists similar specs for both the K008 and K009. Interestingly, neither publication lists a 16GB model.

Google was somewhat criticized last year for not including microSD support in the first-gen Nexus 7 tablet that came with 8GB of storage, not all of it available to the user. That’s why we’re definitely curious to see what this year’s base models will have to offer when it comes to storage.

From a different point of view, the specs and features above are more or less similar with what previous rumors have suggested, but that doesn’t mean they’re confirmed at this time.

We’ll end our speculation there, and get back to waiting for Google to announce the new Nexus 7 tablet(s).