How's not being based on quad-core tegra3 is a plus? As for battery life, the new Fire obviously doesn't have any hands-on reviews yet but nexus 7 battery life has been very solid according to all reviews.
Mine is strange. I left the house yesterday and it was at 14% (got an alert), came home after work and it was dead. I didn't use it all evening, but plugged it up overnight and looked at it this morning and the meter was at about 50%. I hope the battery isn't defective because there isn't an Asus/Google store to take this thing to.
If they based it on tegra 3 it would be very hard to understand, as a "techie", the differences between this and the collection of other tegra 3 products on the market. I think this helps set it apart from Google, rather than the instant retort of "its just a rebranded nexus 7"
That's a strange kind of argument for favoring something "as a techie". Wouldn't you be more excited by the two extra cores (not to mention the additional "phantom" core) that tegra 3 provides.
Hey, at least it keeps TI in the consumer SoC business. It's not like they've had that many OMAP4 design wins, OMAP4 is long in the tooth at this point, and OMAP5 isn't with customers yet (to the best of my knowledge).