On Tuesday Google made available their new tablets so I ordered the new Nexus 7 3G (which also had 32Gb of storage). I needed 3G as my existing MIFI dongle was on it’s last legs so needed something to replace it & one less item to carry is a good thing.
Anyhow ordered it around 3pm and Google said 3-5 business days for delivery. No problem I’m not in a rush for it.
3pm the following day, one brand new tablet in my hands 🙂
So I’ve been playing with the thing for two days & I have to say I’m well pleased with it. Batter life is good, 3G reception is brilliant (actually better signal than my phone) and it’s even downloading faster.
So expect a few more articles about the nexus over the next few weeks.
But as a start, the Nexus 7 3G has Android 4.2 on it – in fact the first thing mine did when I plugged it into wifi was to download and install an update for it. The downside is that the developer tools button isn’t present anymore – perhaps non-developers were accidentally selecting it.
Well, the option is still there, just hidden, in a developer sort of way. To turn on the developers you need to convince the tablet you are one.
- Open settings
- Press About Tablet
- Press Build Number. Nothing happens.
- Keep on pressing Build Number, quickly.
- After a short while you’ll see a message along the lines of “you are 3 clicks away from being a developer” which will count down.
- You’ll end up with a message “You are now a developer” & the tools will be present.
Peter Mount's Blog 
Thanks for this Peter, it was driving me mad. I recently bought a NEXUS 7 3G in the US and was dismayed to find the tethering option wasn’t there. Then even more frustrated to find the developer options weren’t there either when I wanted to root the damn thing.
Have you enabled tethering on yours? I’d be interested to hear what worked…
I’ve not yet tried it yet, I’m planning on rooting it tomorrow as I want to put the messaging app on to get SMS working & hopefully sip.
Once I have that sorted then tethering would be the next target.
I finally rooted it and got tethering enabled. If you’re interested, you can read about my experiences at https://plus.google.com/u/0/103519655975029093996/posts/BAZvFkrWa2E
Thanks for that. I think I’ll spend time tomorrow now rooting it, it’ll be nice to have tethering working.
Ok after some playing I got tethering to work, I ended up rolling back to JOP40C (4.2) with a custom rom I got from here: http://www.modaco.com/topic/359324-jr1-3g-jop40c-42-mcr-new-tethering-sms-support-epm-more/
That rom has enabled both tethering & sms (messaging app) although I’ve not yet tested sms myself.
Apparently there’s an update in the works to get 4.2.1 (JOP40D) due out Monday.
Hello there
I’ve just bought a Nexus 3G and my employer gave me a micro SIM for it (O2)
i put that in – it is definitely registered – but Nothing. No browsing available – nothing.
I’m disgusted.
I called Nexus/Google – and they were about as helpful as my Gran would have been had ai asked her ( she is 99)
The guy on the phone did seem to refer to some issues and fixes that he wasn’t allowed to tell me about.
any ideas?
Cx
Was the O2 sim enabled & if so did it have a data plan? Not all sims are the same. If it was a phone sim then it’s possible it wouldn’t work in a tablet.
Last weekend I switched Sims from t-mobile UK to giffgaff (actually a subsidiary of O2) and at first it didn’t work, although I did see it detect O2.
To fix it I had to manually configure the APN details for giffgaff & then it worked fine, I’m actually replying this overt 3g right now.
The APN problem isn’t really a nexus issue, most phones don’t always have every operator defined & although in the UK as sim should be detected, not all are.
I used to use an unlocked 3 mifi unit & I had to configure every sim manually on that as well.
I JUST discovered that on accident by randomly spamming taps on the screen and I thought I was freaking awesome and now I’m like aww man Lol