The Nexus 7 tablet is not the only Google-branded hardware emerging from the I/O developer conference-- Google also reveals the Nexus Q, a spherical media player or "social streaming device."
At first glance the Nexus Q looks like a piece of modern sculpture or the "intoxication orb" from the Woody Allen film Sleeper. A matte black, satin-finish 4.6-inch sphere, the Nexus Q streams online content and boosts audio with a built-in 25-Watt class D amplifier.
The Q pulls content from either a limited selection of online sources (Google Music, Movies and Youtube) or Android devices (no iOS support), connecting to the internet via wifi. It runs on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and plays MP3 files at up to 320 kbps quality.
It even has lights-- 32 RGB LEDs, glowing through a 1mm gap slicing the sphere in half.
Inside are an OMAP 4460 dual-core ARM CPU, an SGX540 graphics core, 16GB of NAND flash memory and 1GB of RaM. Connectivity comes through Micro HDMI, TOSLink (S/PDIF), Micro USB, ethernet and Banana jack speaker outputs, as well as wifi, Bluetooth and NFC.
Will Google take over the world's living rooms, or will it simply cannibalise Google TV STB sales? We will know once the Nexus Q ships on July 2012.