Though just about every com­pany is try­ing to grab some of Apple’s tablet mojo, it’s no secret that Amazon’s seven-inch Kin­dle Fire, which is pow­ered by Android, was the tar­get. It was recently reported that Ama­zon is expected to release an updated Kin­dle Fire tablet at the end of July.

As the name would sug­gest, the Nexus 7 is a seven-inch tablet. It will run Android 4.1 (Jelly­bean), which was also announced today. The Nexus 7 will come in two mem­ory con­fig­u­ra­tions — 8GG for $199 and 16GB for $249. Here is a short video from Google about the devel­op­ment of the Nexus tablet.

If you’re inter­ested, here is the intro­duc­tion of the Nexus 7 at today’s Google I/O keynote.

SPECS

Check out Cnet’s recap of some of the new fea­tures in Android 4.1 — Jelly Bean.

Not want­ing to be left in the dust by Siri, Google has make sig­nif­i­cant enhance­ments to its voice com­mands. (It’s worth not­ing that the voice com­mands on Android devices was already pretty good.) Incor­po­rated with the Jelly Bean OS update will some­thing called Google Now. Here is Google’s teaser video.

Now, for a more prac­ti­cal, real-life per­spec­tive, check out The Verge’s walk­through of Google Now on the Nexus 7. He even fin­ishes with a com­par­i­son of Google Now and Apple’s Siri.

The Google Play store also received an update. The big news is the avail­abil­ity of mag­a­zines, TV shows, and an expanded library of movie titles.

UPDATE

I spot­ted a review of the Nexus 7 by Josh Topol­sky this morn­ing on The Verge, and thought that it would be addi­tive to this post.

I have been think­ing about pick­ing up a tablet for a while. I thought about the iPad, but started to lean away from it only because I will likely buy a Mac­Book Air. That left me think­ing that I would prob­a­bly fare bet­ter with a seven-inch tablet. I must admit that this is a shift for me. I orig­i­nally thought the seven-inch tablets were too small — kinda like a paper­back book com­pared to a hard cover. I’m hard cover kind of guy. With that said, though, I think the size and weight of a seven-inch tablet is more con­ducive to what I’d use it for — read­ing books, mag­a­zine arti­cles, and quick brows­ing. This is some­thing that I’d likely carry in my mes­sen­ger bag. At 12 ounces, it’s much lighter than the 1 1/2 pound iPad, Galaxy Tab, or upcom­ing Microsoft Sur­face. In this size cat­e­gory, the Kin­dle Fire was at the top of my list, but I’ve been hear­ing rumors about Google’s tablet for months. Asus makes good hard­ware, but, quite hon­estly, it is the Nexus badge on this tablet that tipped my hand. As soon as the Google Play store was updated today, I put in my pre-order for the 8GB Nexus 7. It is sched­uled to ship mid-July. Of course, I will def­i­nitely be back here with a “first impres­sions” piece, and fol­low up with a more sub­stan­tive review.

What about you? Are you in the mar­ket for a tablet? Does the Nexus 7 pique your inter­est? Let me know in the comments.